Peru's 2026 General Elections

Over the past decade, Peru has had eight presidents — a clear indicator of ongoing political and institutional instability driven by recurrent impeachments by the Peruvian Congress. As a result, there has been massive social unrest, state repression, and an unprecedented rise in organized criminal activity. 

Peru held general elections April 12-13, 2026. On the morning of May 15, the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) confirmed the presidential runoff election on June 7 between Keiko Fujimori, leader of the right-wing populist party Fuerza Popular, and Roberto Sánchez of Juntos por el Perú, a left-wing coalition. This runoff closely resembles the 2021 election, when Fujimori faced Pedro Castillo in a highly polarized contest. However, the electoral process itself revealed the depth of democratic deterioration. The release of official results took about one month due to serious logistical failures by ONPE. Problems distributing electoral materials in several districts of Lima forced voting to extend into a second day, further undermining confidence in an already fragile electoral process.

Almost a week after Peru's runoff election, the country did not have official results of who would take office as president on July 28 (Independence Day). With 98% of votes counted, the June 7 runoff between Keiko Fujimori and Roberto Sánchez has revealed a highly polarized election, with a vote difference of only 0.008%. Early in the week, as vote counting began, Sánchez appeared to hold a lead. However, the results shifted dramatically when election officials began processing ballots from over 309,000 Peruvians living abroad across 73 countries. This shift has put Fujimori ahead, yet without any official declaration from ONPE, the result remains deeply contested. As Peruvians say, it is better to “no cantar victoria” — don't claim victory yet.

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_{ONPE's near-final tally of Peru's 2026 general election, with 99.64% of ballots processed, showed Keiko Fujimori leading Roberto Sánchez and Rafael López A. ahead of the June 7 runoff. Credit: La Republicá}

Democratic Hollowing 

Alberto Vergara, along with his colleague Rodrigo Barnechea, introduced a new key political concept, democratic hollowing, to better explain Peru's democratic erosion and the political crisis during the past decade. Most of the current academic literature argues that “democracy backsliding” occurs when there is a structural shift toward authoritarianism and the concentration of power in the hands of a lone strongman or a political party. Across Latin America, this trend has been particularly visible in Venezuela under Chavismo, in Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega, and in Cuba under Communist Party rule. In Peru, however, Vergara argues that democracy can also die through the dissolution of power, which he calls democratic hollowing. This political landscape has been shaped by fragmented political parties, amateur politicians with no long-term incentives, and a weakened rule of law, producing chronic, self-reinforcing political instability.

Therefore, weak political representation and breaches of the rule of law have disincentivized the current political system from protecting and representing Peruvian citizens' interests. During the lethal repression of the 2022 and 2023 protests in Peru, under Dina Boluarte's regime, the Peruvian police and army left around 50 civilian protesters dead and more than 1400 people injured. These acts remained unpunished, with no justice delivered and no reparations provided to the victims or their families. Vergara argues that control over the judiciary becomes essential because politicians are implicated in informal or criminal activity, and in the outgoing Congress, 68 of 130 congressmen were under judicial investigation; in the current one, 60, for crimes including money laundering, criminal organization, and rape.

There are three main characteristics of democratic hollowing that Vergara has included:

Electoral fragmentation: Political parties have become "mere legal entities" with no real roots in society, and politicians have learned to rely on personal resources and reputations rather than party structures to get elected. The result is a system where loyalty to parties is almost nonexistent, politicians split off and regroup constantly, and each electoral cycle effectively “resets” the political landscape. The current Congress includes members from 12 different political parties and 11 unaffiliated congressmen. 

Personalistic amateurism: Amateurism arises from the lack of established political parties that do not sustain political careers. Presidents Boluarte, Castillo, Sagasti, Merino, Vizcarra, and Kuczynski all had almost no political experience before the presidency. Without organizational ties or long-term incentives, these amateurs are prone to miscalculation, predatory behavior, and short-term rent-seeking that deepens Peru's institutional decay with every new government.

Absence of political linkages: Since Fujimori's authoritarian regime and the collapse of the party system, political parties have been replaced not by political identities but by "anti-identities.” Vergara argues that the most stable bond between politicians and citizens is not a shared agenda but a shared rejection, whether of Fujimorismo or, more recently, of the left. This is precisely what he observes in the current election. Rather than offering a vision or a program, both runoff candidates campaign purely on the message that the other is worse. Parties that are little more than names on a poster cannot hold politicians accountable, and outsiders who reach office have nothing to sustain them once they get there — no organization, no ideology, no base. The result is a political system where representation is performed but never actually delivered.

Professor Alberto Vergara's discussion of democratic hollowing in Peru invites us to reflect on how practices such as impunity, lack of access to justice, rent-seeking, and repeated breaches of the rule of law continue to be institutionalized. In this context, elections function only as a “band-aid” that, once removed, reveals the nation’s underlying fracture. Unfortunately, these patterns are historically rooted in the fact that “equality before the law never took deep root in Peru.” The State has never credibly guaranteed equal civil and political rights, which has deeply weakened citizens’ trust in institutions. This distrust is reinforced when those who claim to protect citizens are often the same actors who repress them during protests, or favor laws on illegal mining, criminal organizations, and money laundering. While these structural problems persist, Peruvians continue working hard to sustain their households amid growing insecurity and the rise of organized crime, often without any guarantee that they will return home safely. Ultimately, Peru’s democratic hollowing is not only a political crisis but a social reality that shapes everyday life, exposing the fragility of democracy and the urgent need for a state that can truly guarantee justice, representation, and security for all.

The numbers and the map beneath them

Weintraub opened with data he had scraped that morning, and the maps told a story of a country voting almost exactly along the lines it already knew. Cepeda's support mapped with striking precision onto Gustavo Petro's 2022 coalition — he flipped essentially no municipality where the combined right-wing vote had exceeded Petro's four years earlier — while De la Espriella's strength traced the same geography as the “No” vote in Colombia's 2016 referendum on the FARC peace agreement. Turnout, oddly, had risen more in Petro's 2022 strongholds than in the right's, which Weintraub read less as good news for Cepeda than as a sign his coalition may already be close to its ceiling, with more untapped voters available to De la Espriella heading into the runoff. Modeling out several scenarios for how Valencia's, Fajardo's, and López's voters might split, most of his projections had De la Espriella winning comfortably — though, as he noted, Colombian elections have a way of moving in the three weeks between rounds.

What the numbers don't show

Mejía pushed back on two points he felt the quantitative read was missing. First, the Pacto Histórico's cohesion: a Colombian left with a long history of fragmentation had, remarkably, stayed unified behind a famously self-centered leader in Petro — though Mejía flagged early signs that some in the movement were quietly urging Cepeda to distance himself, a tension he expected to shape the run-up to the runoff and, potentially, Colombian politics well past this election cycle.

Second, and more pointedly, Mejía argued against reading De la Espriella as simply Colombia's version of an internationally franchised populism — Bukele, Milei, Trump — with the usual explanations about fear and security anxiety layered on top. There's some of that, he allowed. But he made the case that De la Espriella had tapped something more specifically Colombian: a cultural premium on hard work as the individual, personally-earned marker of social standing — a value Mejía argued Petrismo's more abstract, structural language about labor and capital simply doesn't speak to — paired with a live-and-let-live, self-reliant streak that runs across class lines. He pointed to a viral interview De la Espriella gave the streamer Westcol, where he defended a truck driver's right to carry a gun against highway robbers in strikingly plain, non-ideological terms, as the clearest illustration of a message landing well beyond the demographic most analysts assumed was his base.

A clean vote, an anxious moment

Kaplan drew on firsthand observation, having been in Colombia both eighteen months earlier and again just weeks before the vote, where he watched supporters of every camp convince themselves their candidate would win. He was careful to note the good news first: Colombia's electoral authority and EU observers both called the vote clean, turnout was strong, and — in a detail that made the local news cycle that morning — Colombian voters get paid time off work for each round they vote in. But the deeper story, in his read, was a political system whipsawed by unmet expectations since the 2016 peace deal, Petro's stalled “total peace” negotiations, and a personal, legal feud between Cepeda and former president Álvaro Uribe layered on top of an election that had become, in effect, a referendum on Petro himself. Cepeda's central problem, Kaplan argued, echoed Kamala Harris's in the 2024 U.S. election: tied to an unpopular incumbent's record without ever having been able to fully break from it. Whether he could move toward the center — a softer task against De la Espriella than it might have been against the more centrist Valencia — was, in Kaplan's view, the pivotal question of the next three weeks. He closed by naming the deeper worry running under both campaigns: real, if differently shaped, concerns about what either winner might do to Colombia's political institutions.

A regional pattern, and a geopolitical wildcard

Curiel widened the lens. She was careful not to flatten every recent right-populist surge in Latin America into a single story, but she argued it's hard to ignore a regional pattern all the same — strikingly similar candidates, rhetorical strategies, and now fraud allegations recurring across countries (Honduras, Peru, Bolivia among them) whose underlying security and political problems differ substantially. She suggested it might be worth studying today's crop of outsider-right figures the way scholars once studied the diffusion of Latin America's leftist movements in the 1960s and '70s — as a phenomenon with its own cross-border mechanics, not just parallel domestic stories.

On the United States, Curiel expected rhetorical engagement from the Trump administration — De la Espriella is an open admirer who had already met with Trump officials in Miami — but was skeptical it would prove decisive; Cepeda, by contrast, might govern more in the pragmatic, arm's-length mode of Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum, building on the more accommodating turn Petro's own relationship with Washington had taken since earlier in the year. She also flagged a looming energy question neither candidate had addressed in any detail: an anticipated El Niño-driven drop in hydroelectric capacity, and the resulting scramble for imported natural gas — from the United States or, potentially, Venezuela — that whoever won would inherit almost immediately. And she pointed to a genuine irony in De la Espriella's biography: a right-wing candidate whose past legal work had tied him personally to a figure associated with the Maduro government, complicating any simple ideological reading of what a De la Espriella presidency would mean for Colombia–Venezuela relations.

Where the center went, and what comes next

The discussion that followed ranged widely: why Paloma Valencia's campaign collapsed after polling near 20 percent just weeks earlier (the panel's rough consensus: a hard right that structurally tends to outflank the establishment right across the region, compounded by a Petrista strategy that concentrated its fire on De la Espriella as the tougher runoff opponent, leaving Valencia to absorb collateral damage); whether Colombia's center had simply disappeared with the 2016 peace agreement; and how much weight to put on U.S. involvement or even World Cup-driven national sentiment as runoff wildcards. Nobody thought either would be decisive on its own.

Asked directly what a De la Espriella or a Cepeda presidency would mean for the health of Colombian democracy, Weintraub was candid about his concern — less because either candidate is uniquely dangerous, he said, than because Colombia's political system has grown exhausted, its 1991 constitutional settlement showing diminishing returns and a public “willing to experiment” after the unfulfilled promise of Petro's own presidency. Curiel and Kaplan both located genuine grounds for hope in the same place: an unusually fragmented political landscape, without a single unchallenged caudillo on either side, and courts and regulatory institutions that had — so far — held their independence through repeated stress tests. On violence specifically, the panel's closing predictions diverged by scenario. Under De la Espriella, Weintraub and Kaplan worried that a rupture in Petro's ongoing peace talks would trigger retaliatory violence, that a return to aerial coca fumigation would collide head-on with the Constitutional Court, and that elite or paramilitary backlash would follow if Cepeda had instead pursued land reform and a constituent assembly. Under Cepeda, the concern ran more toward armed groups continuing to exploit ceasefires and extortion economies, and toward the durability of institutional checks on a government still tied to Petro's unfinished agenda.

Díaz-Cayeros closed the session on a note that has stayed with the panel since: a viewer's comment in the chat had framed the choice as one between “the devil you know and the devil you don't.” Fair enough, he said — but democracy remains one of the few systems humanity has built that lets a society get rid of either devil, peacefully, and try again.

Postscript: what actually happened

Set against the news since, the panel's read holds up better in its worries than in its point estimates.

The margin was the first surprise. Weintraub's scenario modeling, built the morning after round one, had De la Espriella winning comfortably in most transfer scenarios. The actual runoff, held as scheduled on June 21, was instead a nail-biter: 49.66 percent to 48.70 percent, a gap of roughly 246,000 votes out of some 26 million cast — under one percentage point, and close enough that Cepeda initially declined to concede, contesting results from close to a quarter of polling stations before formally accepting the outcome on June 24 with a pledge to “exercise a democratic, vigilant and constructive opposition.” Election night itself brought clashes between protesters and police in Cali, an early sign of the social tension the panel had flagged as a risk under either outcome.

Weintraub's own post-election analysis, published the day of the runoff, put hard numbers behind the panel's “entrenched spatial blocks” thesis — and, in the process, revised one of the panel's own central premises. Only 26 of Colombia's more than eleven hundred municipalities changed which candidate won between the two rounds (14 flipping to De la Espriella, 12 to Cepeda), and nearly all of those flips came in places that were already razor-thin in round one. The country that voted for De la Espriella — Norte de Santander at 77 percent, Casanare at 69, Santander at 65, Antioquia at 64 — and the country that voted for Cepeda — Chocó and Vaupés both above 80 percent, Putumayo at 79, Nariño at 77, Cauca at 76 — barely overlapped at all. Bogotá told a version of the story Weintraub had flagged live on the panel, now with exact numbers: Cepeda carried the capital 52.5 percent to 45.4, a margin of about 302,000 votes, solid but well short of what Petro had won there in 2022, even as Cepeda gained ground in every other major city between rounds — up 8.7 points in Medellín, 8.2 in Cali, 8.0 in Cartagena, 7.1 in Barranquilla.

The more important correction concerns the “pivotal center” the panel spent so much of its discussion on the day after round one — the roughly 2.8 million voters who had backed Valencia, Fajardo, and López. Weintraub's later numbers show both campaigns' gains between rounds exceeded that entire pool on their own: De la Espriella added nearly 2.6 million votes beyond his first-round total, more than Valencia's whole first-round universe by itself, while Cepeda added over 3 million, more than the combined Fajardo-López vote. The runoff, in other words, wasn't decided mainly by which side won over centrist defectors but by each campaign's ability to pull entirely new voters to the polls, a dynamic already visible in round one, when turnout had risen 2.25 million over 2022, disproportionately in Cepeda's Caribbean and Pacific strongholds. Between rounds, turnout climbed further, up 5.6 points to 63.5 percent (3.6 million more voters than the 2022 runoff), and Cepeda's operation mobilized more of them in absolute terms than De la Espriella's. It simply wasn't enough to close a gap that had already opened in round one. As Weintraub summarized: De la Espriella won a close, high-turnout election on the strength of an intact regional coalition plus modest gains in the center; Cepeda outgrew his first-round vote proportionally, but never closed the gap he faced.

Washington reacted exactly as Curiel expected, if more enthusiastically than her cautious framing implied: Trump declared on Truth Social that De la Espriella had “Won, BIG!,” and Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the president-elect to discuss regional security cooperation, immigration, and trade. Precisely, the rhetorical engagement Curiel predicted, delivered with more warmth than skepticism.

Despite initial post-election tensions, transfer of power went ahead on schedule, if uneasily. De la Espriella was sworn in on August 7, not in Bogotá, but in Cali, under an unprecedented security operation of some 11,000 troops and a drone ban, with Javier Milei and José Antonio Kast among the foreign leaders in attendance.

On policy, the new president has moved fast to confirm Weintraub's most specific fears. He has vowed to end the Petro government's peace negotiations with armed groups, resume aerial fumigation of coca crops (a practice suspended for more than a decade), and the exact flashpoint Weintraub predicted would trigger a “choque” with the Constitutional Court — and expand the military's role against criminal organizations, alongside new large-scale prison construction. Analysts are now warning, in terms that echo Weintraub and Kaplan's closing remarks almost exactly, that abandoning negotiations could backfire: an estimated 27,000 members of armed groups currently have no reintegration pathway if talks collapse entirely. On foreign policy, De la Espriella has aligned closely with the Trump administration, backing its military strikes on suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean, expediting extraditions, severing relations with Cuba, and restoring ties with Israel. 

Six weeks into the new administration, the question the panel closed on that afternoon has stopped being hypothetical and started being lived: can Colombia's institutions absorb what comes next? It's the story DAL's "Democracy at the Ballot Box" series intends to keep following.

Introduction and Contribution

Nearly half of the world (46%) lives in authoritarian regimes that hold regular elections — compared to 28% who live in autocracies without elections and 26% who live under democracy. In these “electoral autocracies,” the ruling party can theoretically lose power, but its ability to repress and co-opt its opponents makes defeat unlikely. Incumbent executives and parties in electoral autocracies have become increasingly sophisticated in their repressive techniques and increasingly connected to other regimes that share similar fears of democracy. “How can electoral authoritarianism be resisted?” is thus a pressing question for domestic opposition parties and civil society organizations (CSOs) as well as international actors seeking to promote democracy, including governments, nonprofits, think tanks, and academics. 

In “Opposition strategies and electoral challenges under autocracy,” Oren Samet analyzes five strategies opposition parties use to fight electoral authoritarianism during campaigns, on election day, and after polls have closed. These are: joining multiparty coalitions, strengthening their party organization, mobilizing mass protests, boycotting elections, and seeking international assistance. Samet shows that each strategy entails tradeoffs, increasing opposition competitiveness while making authoritarian repression more likely or efficient. For example, joining a multiparty coalition can both increase the incumbent’s likelihood of defeat and increase his propensity to repress — insofar as he perceives the opposition as popular and threatening.

Samet offers several prescriptions for international democracy promoters. First, they must collaborate with domestic opposition parties, because only they — and not CSOs — can win elections. Yet many international actors avoid this approach; for instance, some opposition parties may care more about power than democracy, or collaborating with them may invite criticism that democracy promotion is partisan. While these risks cannot be ignored, neither can political parties.

A second prescription follows from the fact that oppositions have at least five tools at their disposal: there can be no single “best practice” in democracy promotion; it requires flexibility, adaptability, and an integrated approach. Finally, because autocrats continue to become more sophisticated, democracy promoters must take steps to prepare for the repression of their partners. 

Five Approaches and Their Pitfalls

Otherwise effective strategies for winning democratic elections — such as running savvy campaigns on primetime television that are informed by public opinion polling — will not work for opposition parties under electoral autocracy. This is because the system is structurally biased toward incumbents. As such, one common approach has been for individual opposition parties to join together in a coalition: sharing policy platforms, endorsing joint candidates, and merging their party organizations. And indeed, multiparty coalitions are statistically associated with higher vote shares and a higher likelihood that autocrats are defeated. At the same time, however, such coalitions are difficult to form and sustain due to ideological differences and polarization. In especially repressive electoral autocracies, such as Ethiopia or Cambodia, incumbent parties are often able to neutralize or eliminate coalitions. Finally, when coalitions pose a serious challenge on election day but without winning, autocrats may repress even harder.

A second strategy involves strengthening party organization, for example, by improving its geographic reach or recruiting more professional candidates. These efforts can increase competitiveness and popular appeal, but they risk providing the incumbent with a large amount of information that he can use to more efficiently target his opponents. This includes formal lists of members, candidates, and party branch locations. Meanwhile, more organized opposition parties may inadvertently legitimize the system by affording it some semblance of democracy.

Encouraging mass protests is a third strategy available to opposition parties. As the number of protesters grows, authoritarian repression becomes more costly and more likely to backfire, while the incumbent’s allies become more likely to defect and join the opposition. Parties help with this process by translating protester demands into coherent party platforms. However, and especially after the 2010-12 Arab Uprisings, electoral authoritarian regimes have become highly sensitive to and ready to combat protests. This may be accomplished via surveillance or assistance from powerful third parties such as China or Russia.

A fourth, common strategy has been for parties to boycott the autocrat’s electoral facade. Doing so signals to the international community that the playing field is skewed and the system illegitimate. Yet boycotts can lead to missed opportunities for the opposition to build electoral strength, influence policy change as legislative minorities, or monitor the autocrat from inside government. In addition, they rob oppositions of the chance to take advantage of the autocrat’s miscalculations, which may even lead to his defeat. 

Finally, opposition parties can reach out to international actors for support. This may involve requesting that they sanction the regime or intervene in the name of democracy. International pressure can indeed encourage political openings and is especially useful for oppositions with low visibility. However, autocrats are adept at demonizing those who use this strategy as agents of malign foreign influence. These appeals can strengthen the autocrat’s domestic support base among those who see him as protecting the nation. In all, these tradeoffs suggest that effective democracy promotion requires a deep understanding of the political context in which oppositions operate.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

Introduction and Contribution

Democracies face a host of ongoing challenges, including the rise of elected autocrats, income inequality, mainstreamed forms of xenophobic nationalism, and political apathy. All of these challenges pose threats to democratic participation — elected autocrats restrict it, inequality makes it easier for oligarchs to sway election outcomes, and xenophobia can discourage cultural outsiders from voting.

Apart from practical threats to democratic participation, an established intellectual tradition has viewed participation with deep skepticism. In this view, democracy is good simply because it ensures peaceful transfers of power and protects individual rights. Collective decisions, however, cannot be meaningfully viewed as representing the “will of the people” owing to manipulation, apathy, and the high costs of acquiring political knowledge. Is this “realist” vision the best one can hope for in democratic life?

In “Can deliberation have lasting effects?,” James Fishkin, Valentin Bolotnyy, Joshua Lerner, Alice Siu, and Norman Bradburn show how a three-day deliberative experiment in late 2019 had large and long-term effects on turnout and voting behavior. Those most likely to exhibit these civic behaviors nearly a year later had come to follow politics more closely and see their political opinions as valuable. At the same time, the experiment’s effects on participants’ policy views were significant only in the short term — most deliberators eventually reverted to their previously held policy positions.

That three days of deliberation had such lasting civic effects suggests that efforts to create more inclusive forms of democratic participation are both possible and scalable. Moreover, it suggests that academic skepticism about democratic participation is not an argument against citizens’ capacities for reasonable decision-making; rather, it is an argument against our imperfect contexts of participation. Deliberative experiments may offer hope for improving these contexts.

The Deliberative Experiment and Its Effects on Policy Views

In September 2019 — one week prior to the experiment — a treatment group (i.e., those who would deliberate) of 523 registered voters from around the US and a control group of 844 voters were surveyed on their political attitudes. Members of the treatment group then deliberated on five issue domains (the economy, environment, immigration, health care, foreign policy) in small groups and on 47 policy proposals (e.g., redistributing wealth in some way). 26 of these proposals were characterized by extreme partisan polarization, meaning significant numbers of those who identified as Democrats or Republicans held the most extreme views. After the deliberations ended, both the treatment and control groups were surveyed. Then, three subsequent surveys were conducted in late 2020.

Among the treatment group, deliberation produced significant, short-term depolarization on 20 of the 26 (polarized) policy proposals. In other words, the averages for participants who identified with each party moved closer together (though not necessarily toward the center). These changes were large, sometimes 40 percentage points, as in the case of Republicans abandoning extreme positions on immigration. Meanwhile, the control group’s policy positions changed hardly at all — pointing to the key role played by deliberation. Within the five issue areas, averages among deliberators shifted leftward on all but the economy.
 

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Figure 1. Policy-Based Score (PBS) Changes over Time
Note: Policy-based score (PBS) is constructed for each individual based on responses to 26 questions identified as the most polarizing. The upper chart shows the participant group, and the lower chart shows the control group. T1 is the survey wave prior to the deliberations, T2 is right after the deliberations, and T3 is 10 months after, in July 2020.
 

By late 2020, however, the treatment group’s policy positions mostly reverted to their pre-deliberation levels. The differences between these two points in time were still significant compared with the control group, yet relatively small in absolute terms. These policy reversions are perhaps unsurprising: deliberators returned to an environment of heightened polarization and aggressive campaigning during the 2020 election cycle. (To be sure, and from the standpoint of finding solutions to collective problems, policy reversion is not especially concerning — the aim of deliberation is to bring citizens together to reason and compromise, which the experiment accomplished.)

A Civic Awakening?

The lack of long-term policy effects suggests that three-day deliberations may be limited in their ability to create a more encompassing, participatory society. However, the treatment group demonstrated large and persistent changes in their intention to vote (i.e., turnout) and their candidate of choice. Among the control group, Joe Biden was favored over Donald Trump by about four percentage points — very close to Biden’s actual margin in the popular vote. Among the treatment group, however, Biden was favored by 28 percentage points. The gaps in turnout were similarly large. (Note that these are intentions, not reports of actual decisions. However, Tables 6 and 7 in the article show similar effects for recollected votes after the election.)
 

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Table 2. Voting Intention for Participant and Control Groups, Time 4
 

These civic outcomes are especially surprising because (a) voting behavior is thought to be stable and deeply rooted in one’s psychology and social context, and (b) experimental efforts to increase turnout have been most successful when undertaken shortly before elections, as opposed to one whole year prior. The effects were most pronounced among political moderates and those without college degrees — perhaps pointing to the educative effects of deliberation.
 

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Figure 5. Effects on Vote Intention Captured by Predictive Modeling, by Education
Note: Middle are those participants who have Policy-Based Scores between 3 and 5 (inclusive) at Time 1. Non-middle participants are all other participants. Positive prediction error shows that, on average, participants were more likely to vote for Biden than predicted by the model. Vote intention data are collected at Time 4, in October, 2020. Full calibrated model used to construct this figure can be found in the APSR Dataverse.
 

Why did deliberation produce only short-term policy effects but long-term effects on voting behavior? The authors posit that deliberation caused an “awakening of civic capacities.” They reason that deliberation was a transformative experience in terms of stimulating political engagement and a sense of efficacy. And indeed, the treatment group was, in the long term, more likely than the control group to follow the 2020 election campaign, believe their political opinions mattered, and acquire general information about American politics. (The latter is measured in terms of knowing which party controlled the House and Senate.)
 

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Figure 9. Having “Political Opinions Worth Listening to”
Note: Policy-based score is constructed for each individual based on responses to 26 questions identified as the most polarizing. Responses to the question “How strongly would you disagree or agree with the following statement?”[I have opinions about politics that are worth listening to.] were collected at T1 (just before deliberations), T2 (just after), and T3 (10 months later, July 2020).
 

The authors close by discussing efforts to scale up civic engagement, such as the Stanford Online Deliberation Platform. In all, “Can deliberation have lasting effects?” provides a rigorous case for the value of deliberation in strengthening democratic participation.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

In May 2023, Thai pro-democracy reformer and lawmaker Pita Limjaroenrat led Thailand’s Move Forward Party to a stunning victory in the general election on a platform of progressive change. The party won a clear mandate from over 14 million voters, but conservative powers and military-appointed senators blocked Pita’s path to the prime ministership. Fifteen months later, Thailand’s Constitutional Court dissolved the Move Forward Party – the same fate its predecessor, the Future Forward Party, met in 2020. The court also barred Pita from politics for a decade.

It is a story he recounts in his political memoir, The Almost Prime Minister, and one he discussed at a February 2025 fireside chat hosted by APARC’s Southeast Asia Program. In his current role as a Senior Democracy Fellow back at his alma mater, the Harvard Kennedy School, Pita continues to champion transparent and equitable governance, coaches a new generation of political leaders, and strategizes a democratic path forward for Thailand. 

On May 29, 2026, Pita returned to Stanford for a follow-up discussion with APARC Director Kiyoteru Tsutsui, who also serves as co-director of the Southeast Asia Program. Pita examined political developments in Thailand since the contentious 2023 election, the tensions between Thailand and Cambodia, the crisis in Myanmar, ASEAN’s role in the region, and how Thailand and other middle powers should hedge their bets amid the U.S.-China competition and a fragmenting world order. 

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Anatomy of a Defeat

Pita’s opening remarks focused on the outcome of Thailand’s recent general election, in which the People’s Party – the successor to the dissolved Move Forward Party – suffered a decisive defeat. Entering the February 8, 2026, election, the People’s Party had hoped to convert widespread calls for democratic reform into power. Instead, the conservative Bhumjaithai Party secured a clear victory and then joined forces with the third-place populist Pheu Thai Party to form a coalition government.

Pita, who had campaigned for the People’s Party ahead of the election – a political activity he remains eligible to undertake despite being barred from seeking office – offered a candid assessment of the party’s loss.

Lower voter turnout was a key determinant of the February 8 election results, he argued: at 65 percent, it was sharply down from 76 percent in the 2023 general election that he won. Many voters came to believe that the costs of participating in the political process outweighed the potential benefits, Pita said.

That is the calculus of autocrats when they manipulate elections, he argued. Recognizing that electoral participation is the linchpin of a representative democracy's legitimacy and power, and that voter turnout of upward of 70 percent would all but guarantee a People Party victory, "they want to make sure that the cost of going to an election is higher than the benefit."

Pita pointed to his experience as evidence. Despite winning the 2023 election, Thai supporters now see him, three years later, living in Boston rather than governing from Bangkok. The message to voters, he said, is clear: If you keep voting and nothing changes, then why bother?

Pita calls this "voter fatigue by design" – a tactic used by autocrats to make politics seem “dramatized, boring, or irrelevant.”

He labels this Thai establishment's effort to convince voters that political participation is futile as “constituency.” It is one element in a “five C’s framework” that explains the People’s Party’s recent election defeat, he says.

A second factor, which he names “competitive collusion,” was evident in the decision by conservative candidates to coordinate their efforts – whether by merging campaigns or stepping aside – to avoid splitting the vote and present a unified front against the reformist People’s Party.

Third, conflict – by which Pita refers to the recent flare-up of tensions between Thailand and Cambodia – rallied nationalistic sentiment, lending greater legitimacy to the military and thus benefiting the conservative parties associated with it.

The fourth element, according to Pita, is Thailand’s Constitution, under which the Election Commission – the country’s sole election management body – is effectively appointed by the King on the recommendation of the Senate. “So I felt the [February 2026] election was not fair,” Pita said. “There was no linkage to the people, and there were no checks and balances.”

Finally, Pita pointed to the People Party's own missteps, which he categorizes as “candidacy.” He described a “Brahmin left versus merchant right” dynamic, arguing that the party became overly focused on technocratic, urban-centered policies and lost touch with the rural grassroots base that had been crucial to the Move Forward Party’s 2023 electoral success.

Regional Flashpoints: Cambodia and Myanmar

On the Thailand-Cambodia border dispute, Pita called for a renewed commitment to diplomacy, arguing that lasting peace can only be achieved through dialogue. He pointed to the Joint Boundary Commission, the bilateral body the two countries established in 1997 to oversee the demarcation of their border, as the most viable mechanism for resolving the dispute.

“If we return to the table and try to negotiate that out, I think that could be a path toward durable peace between Thailand and Cambodia.”

Turning to Myanmar, Pita stressed the need for Thailand and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to take a more active role in addressing the civil war that has devastated the country since the military coup of February 2021. The conflict’s spillover effects, he noted, extend well beyond Myanmar’s borders, fueling cyber scam operations, human trafficking, and illicit financial activity that directly affect Thailand.

“If the ASEAN core, especially Thailand, with its geographic proximity, doesn't do anything, it's going to keep going in a dangerous drift like that.” 

Pita noted, however, that the crisis in Myanmar has grown more complex in recent years. Beyond the struggle among ethnic armed groups and between the military and pro-democracy forces, it now encompasses resource politics as part of a broader competition over rare earths and China’s expanding strategic interests linked to trade corridors and energy infrastructure.

As China’s involvement in the region deepens through its trade routes and gas pipeline interests, the conflict in Myanmar has become much harder to resolve, he said.

As a way forward, Pita proposed a minilateral coalition comprising key ASEAN states, along with India, China, and possibly Japan and South Korea. The goal, he said, would be to work with Myanmar’s opposition forces to “turn resistance into governance” and lay the groundwork for a viable political transition toward a post-conflict Myanmar.

The Middle Power Moment and U.S.-China Rivalry

Zooming out to the global stage, Pita spoke of his interest in the prospects of a "middle power moment" taking shape, citing Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent diplomatic tour of the Indo-Pacific region to urge middle power nations, including India, Australia, and Japan, to unite in response to the U.S.-China great power rivalry and the transformation of U.S. foreign policy under the Trump administration.

“Thailand is still the second-largest country in ASEAN,” Pita said. “So we have agency and autonomy. Whether we use it or not, that is something that remains to be seen.”

“You realize that if you rely on the Americans for security and the Chinese for the economy, you are going to be forced to choose sides. And once you choose sides, that's the end of everything that you have.” He argued that, if nations are to avoid being forced to choose sides, they must redefine neutrality as an active capability rather than a passive position.

Here, too, he suggested, flexible, issue-based minilaterals could be beneficial. “So I think we'll see a rise of multilaterals on various issues, whether it's AI governance, semiconductors, maritime management, cybersecurity, or critical minerals.”

From Player to Coach

Forced to the sidelines of Thai politics, Pita has embraced a new role. "My calling now is to groom next-gen leaders. I used to be a player, and I did a good job. And then they stopped me. They forced me to sit down. So I decided to become a coach instead.” At Harvard Kennedy School, he now co-teaches a class on running for public office in developing countries, turning his recent, raw experiences into a textbook for the next generation.

Despite the setbacks, Pita’s message remains one of resilience and determination. When asked if he could still win, he was unequivocal. "I think I can," he stated. “I think about it every single night, to return to the arena and become a player. But I can wait. I could strategize, I could accumulate small victories until I'm strong, vigorous, and capable. And when I return, I will change Thailand for good.”.

In His Own Words: Pita's Column in Matichon Weekly

Pita contributes a regular column to the Thai-language news magazine Matichon Weekly (มติชนสุดสัปดาห์), providing analysis on topics ranging from global economic shifts and international politics to urban development and his experiences engaging with leaders in politics, technology, business, and social activism. In his column of June 12, 2026, he reflects on his May 29 visit to Stanford and APARC.

Below is an English version of the column, generated by Google Translate. It has been mildly edited for accuracy and style.

Palo Alto Annual Event

I'm back at Stanford University and Palo Alto again, after visiting last year. I was so impressed that I've decided I'd like to visit every year if I can, not just because of the good weather and pleasant atmosphere, but because this place is a hub of knowledge, conversation, and unique perspectives on the world that are hard to find elsewhere.

I spent three days as a guest of APARC, or the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University's Asia-Pacific research center, which is part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), one of the world's most influential institutions in international relations and public policy, as well as the Hoover Institution, a public policy institute that brings together thinkers, historians, economists, and former policymakers from around the globe.

These three institutions set Stanford apart from typical universities, creating a space where the academic and policy worlds converge tangibly. The people you pass each day might be Larry Diamond, who has studied democratic transitions and declines for decades; Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man; Gi-Wook Shin, an expert on East Asia; or Kiyoteru Tsutsui, who studies human rights issues. On the other side of the university is a collection of former top U.S. policymakers, from Condoleezza Rice to Michael McFaul, making conversations here both academic and practical. Importantly, the questions I'm asked at Stanford are always more difficult than anywhere else.

Many conversations this year have revolved around the same question: Is the world entering an era where geopolitics and technology are increasingly intertwined? While in the past, technology companies competed to create superior products, today they face geopolitical questions similar to those governments do. From restrictions on chip exports and access to rare earth minerals to energy security and the restructuring of international supply chains, the names Nvidia, TSMC, and ASML are frequently mentioned alongside those of major powers, as the ability to design, manufacture, and control advanced technology has become an integral part of state power.

In the world of AI, the question has changed significantly this year. At Stanford and Silicon Valley, I hear less talk about frontier models than I expected, but more and more talk about inference, compute, and energy. The excitement isn't about how well the next model will perform, but about who can get these models out of the lab and into real-world economic applications first.

On the other hand, competition is shifting from the digital world to the physical world. Waymo's self-driving cars are becoming commonplace on San Francisco streets, while Amazon's Zoox is beginning to enter the fray as a major player. The development of humanoid robots is also being discussed more seriously than ever before. Many believe that the next decade will be the time when AI begins to develop its own "arms and legs," no longer confined to computer screens.

As technology has advanced to this point, the conversation has once again turned to geopolitics. This includes issues such as controls on the export of advanced chips, competition to attract leading researchers, access to energy for hyperscale data centers, and concerns about the concentration of computing power in the hands of a few companies and countries. If in the 20th century, oil was the strategic resource of superpowers, many are beginning to see that in the 21st century, computing may be heading towards a similar status. The world is therefore not just witnessing a technological competition, but a new restructuring of power through technology.

Another thing I always try to do whenever I come to Stanford and Silicon Valley is to meet Thai students, researchers, entrepreneurs, and Thais working in the technology industry. Because, if you look closely, Thais are already a part of the global competitiveness we talk about.

Over the past two years, since being disqualified from politics, I have dedicated part of my time to traveling, meeting, and systematically building a database of Thai talent abroad. This includes scientists, engineers, economists, artificial intelligence researchers, and executives in global technology companies. This trip was no exception. I had the opportunity to meet Thais working at Google, Meta, Apple, Salesforce, Nvidia, OpenAI, and many other leading technology companies. Some work in semiconductors, some develop AI models, and some manage products with hundreds of millions of users worldwide. Many may not be well-known in Thailand, but they are part of the workforce driving the world's future economy today.

Every time I speak with this group of Thais, I leave feeling hopeful. Hopeful to see that Thais can stand at the forefront of industries that are shaping the future of the world, on par with anyone else. And hopeful that their knowledge, experience, and networks can connect and create even more value for Thailand in the future. I can only hope that one day I will have the opportunity to work with them for the future of our nation.