This workshop and panel grapple with the fundamental question of how membership in the European Union influences the regime type of members and candidates – whether and how robustly they maintain democratic institutions and the rule of law, and how they interact with competing powers in the international system. Part II is planned for Fall 2021.

This workshop with Professor Milada Vachudova focuses on trying to understand how the EU shapes the quality of democracy in existing and candidate states at this difficult crossroads in its history – and how Russia and even the United States may be pulling them in a different, more authoritarian direction. It is also to unpack one of the key drivers of domestic political change: when and why political parties change positions, and when those changes lead to polarization that in turn undermines both the quality of democracy and support for European integration and democratic values.

Workshop Papers & Participants

For full titles and research interests, please see the descriptions in the Panel event section below.
Dominika Kruszewska
Harvard University
“Patriots or Partisans? Movements and Parties in Contemporary Poland.”

Maria Snegovaya
Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies
“The Left Parties’ Economic Policies and the Proletarization of the Populist Radical Right”

Anna Grzymala-Busse
Stanford University
“Immigration, Religion and Populism”

Grigore Pop-Eleches
Princeton University
“The Aggrieved Nation: Territorial Losses and Nationalist Support”

Courtney Blackington and Milada Anna Vachudova
UNC-Chapel Hill
“Populists and the Parties that Oppose Them”

Anna Grzymala-Busse is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. Her research interests include political parties, state development and transformation, informal political institutions, religion and politics, and post-communist politics.

Dominika Kruszewska received her PhD in Government from Harvard University in May 2019, where she was also a Graduate Student Associate of the Center for European Studies, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the Davis Center. During the 2019-2020 academic year, she will be a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Weatherhead Scholars Program at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. You can find more information on her background in her CV.

Grigore Pop-Eleches is Professor of Politics and Public and International Affairs at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs. His main research interests lie at the intersection between political economy and comparative political behavior, with a particular interest in Eastern Europe and Latin America.

Maria Snegovaya is a a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. Her research focus is the democratic backsliding and the spread of populist actors in East Central Europe.

The panel is moderated by Milada Anna Vachudova, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She specializes in the democratization of postcommunist Europe, the enlargement of the European Union, and the impact of international actors on domestic politics.

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These events are co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, the UNC-CH Curriculum in Global Studies, and the Chancellor’s Education Fund.

The European Commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.