CEU Democracy Institute

🎙️ In our new podcast produced in collaboration with the @jodemocracy.bsky.social, @chenoweth.bsky.social and @matthewcebul.bsky.social discuss the political profile of Gen-Z protesters and what ignited their recent protests across the globe. ✊🪧

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/ypefjnjx

✍️ Donald Trump’s second term exposes how the structural logic of populism breaks down under its own expansion. What once relied on a clear moral divide now operates through thinning legitimacy and the staging of permanent confrontation, Ece Özbey argues.

🧑‍💻 Read it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/4nw23536

Mark your calendar for the next event in our series, focusing on religious actors.

🗣️ @emiliapalonen.bsky.social
🗣️ @lomascolo.bsky.social
🗣️ @shekhovtsov.substack.com
🗣️ @zsolt.bsky.social

🗓️ Mar 9, 5pm CET
📍 Budapest / YouTube

Details:
👉 shorturl.at/b8ZrY
Registration:
👉 shorturl.at/REo2i

Mark your calendar for the second event in our series! 🇭🇺🇭🇺

🗣️ Peter Kreko
🗣️ Veronika Kovesdi
🗣️ Balint Mikola
🗣️ @boralexander.bsky.social

🗓️ Mar 2, 5pm CET
📍 Budapest / YouTube

Details:
👉 cutt.ly/1tnq3bkY
Registration:
👉 shorturl.at/2rN2p

🎙️ In our new podcast, produced in collaboration with the @jodemocracy.bsky.social, Galo Mayorga and @kaimthaler.bsky.social discuss how state weakness, militarized security policies, and public fear are reshaping Ecuador’s democracy. 🇪🇨🇪🇨

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/y5zyn6jp

🎙️ In our new podcast produced in collaboration with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, @raschwartz.bsky.social discusses how logistical failures, elite conflict, and long-term democratic erosion combined to the uncertainty surrounding the elections in Honduras. 🇭🇳🇭🇳🗳️

🎧 Listen now:
👉 tinyurl.com/yk339tbx

🎙️ In this exclusive end-of-year conversation with our Co-Managing Editor Ece Özbey, Nobel Prize-winning political economist @dacemoglumit.bsky.social reflects on what 2025 revealed and failed to resolve about the state of democracy.

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/mfh3zv6u

🎙️ In our new podcast, Pedro Abramovay (@open-society.bsky.social) offers a wide-ranging analysis of the rise of illiberal forces in Latin America and the democratic vulnerabilities they exploit.

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/2att7rwb

🎙️ In the new episode of our podcast series produced in cooperation with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, @nateschenkkan.bsky.social examines transnational repression: a practice where states pursue individuals and groups beyond their own borders.

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/mvbfhx4t

✍️ In the first op-ed of his new series, @danielhegedus.bsky.social outlines the strategic framework for a reorientation of the foreign policy of a future democratic Hungary, mapping the challenges, trade-offs, and opportunities. 🇭🇺🇭🇺

🧑‍💻 Read it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/cbtcew39

✍️ Across the world, strongmen follow the same playbook to dismantle democracy. But their favorite tool could also become their greatest weakness if democracy’s defenders learn to flip the script, Filip Milacic writes in his op-ed.

🧑‍💻 Read it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/yn3uczmx

🔙👥🧑‍⚖️ At the @ceudeminst.bsky.social’s Rule of Law Clinic, Artūrs Kučs, Judge of the @echr.coe.int, analyzed how courts shape the understanding and protection of the rule of law in Europe.

🧑‍💻 Read a summary by Karolina Godal:
👉 tinyurl.com/4mdxnsfj

🎙️ In our new podcast produced in collaboration with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, Maya Tudor argues that today’s decline in trust in democracy stems from misconceptions about its achievements.

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/2s965u3f

✍️ Peru’s democracy is eroding not through aspiring autocrats but through exhaustion. Entrenched informality hollows out authority and turns governance into a marketplace of deals rather than a system of rules, @eljorobado.bsky.social argues in his op-ed. 🇵🇪🇵🇪

🧑‍💻 Read it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/3hdcnjjb

🎙️ In our new podcast, @ashkingdon.bsky.social and @lubardab.bsky.social discuss how both the far-right and the far-left mobilize ecological ideas, often drawing from the same language of resistance.

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/y6tm5b4a

✍️ Southeast Asia shows how democracy’s openness can be weaponized. Flexible illiberalism, the art of using democratic institutions to pursue illiberal ends, reveals how democracy endures not by collapsing, but by changing hands, Aqida Salma argues in her op-ed.

🧑‍💻 Read it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/4xv4vyte

🎙️ In the new podcast of our series co-produced with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, Dean Jackson and Samuel Woolley discuss the ways in which AI could strain, or even crack, the foundations of democracies.

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/4t2z3p3c

Join us for this film screening, followed by a discussion! 📽️👥

🗣️ Adrian Favell
🗣️ Pavel Bandakov
🗣️ @sarahganty.bsky.social
🗣️ @cobrien.bsky.social

🗓️ Nov 7, 4:30pm CET
📍 Budapest, Nador u. 15

Details:
👉 cutt.ly/6r3eHsOx
Registration:
👉 cutt.ly/hr3eIyW0

Mark your calendar for this lecture and discussion!

🗣️ Artūrs Kučs, Judge, @echr.coe.int
🗣️ @grabowskamoroz.bsky.social
🗣️ Paolo Pinto de Albuquerque
🗣️ András Sajó
🗣️ Renáta Uitz

🗓️ Nov 7, 1pm CET
📍 Budapest, Nador u. 15

Details:
👉 cutt.ly/nr3eUK84
Registration:
👉 cutt.ly/hr3eIyW0

Crisis and Renewal: Rethinking Democracy in the 21st Century YouTube video by CEU Democracy Institute

🔴 LIVE NOW 🔴

Follow the roundtable, co-hosted with our journal, the @revdem2020.bsky.social, featuring László Bruszt, Pedro Abramovay, @cqschneider.bsky.social, Fiona Tregenna, and Zsuzsanna Szelényi!

📹👇
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uay3...

🎙️ In the latest episode of our special series produced in partnership with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, Jennifer Cyr and @fromagehomme.bsky.social reflect on why projects of re-democratization after periods of authoritarian rule often fail in the long term.

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/pasz7maz

✍️ Being considered the architect of the BRICS group, China successfully blends both far-left and far-right elements to design a hybrid ideological identity, aligned with its worldview, Giullia Neagu writes in her op-ed. 🇨🇳🇨🇳

🧑‍💻 Read it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/4y3cta8d

🎙️ In the new episode of our special series produced in partnership with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, @semuhi.bsky.social and @lucanway.bsky.social reflect on capitalism’s enduring imperfections while presenting it as a plausible force for democratic change.

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/2mdcv2cw

👥 The Budapest Forum, co-organized by the Municipality of Budapest, Political Capital, and us returns to discuss the most pressing issues facing citizens of democratic and nominally democratic countries.

📅 Sept 17

Details and registration:
👉 budapestforum.org

🎙️ In this new episode of our special series produced in partnership with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, @stanleysbill.bsky.social and @benstanley.eu discuss the challenges, dilemmas, and paradoxes of liberalism after illiberalism in Poland. 🇵🇱🇵🇱

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/3kaezn2y

🎙️ In Part 2 of our latest episode in the special series produced in partnership with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, @berkesen.bsky.social explains how Turkey’s opposition is pushing back against an increasingly hegemonic regime. 🇹🇷🇹🇷

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/te3m6wkr

🎙️ In Part 1 of our latest podcast in the special series produced in partnership with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, @berkesen.bsky.social unpacks how Turkey’s competitive authoritarian regime is veering toward full autocracy. 🇹🇷🇹🇷

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/mw9dpb83

🎙️ In this new episode of our podcast series created in partnership with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, @richheydarian.bsky.social discusses the Philippines’ dynastic democracy and political prospects in a truly global framework. 🇵🇭🇵🇭

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/bdhmynrn

🎙️ In the latest episode of our special series produced in collaboration with @jodemocracy.bsky.social, @paolososa.bsky.social and Moisés Arce discuss the rise of legislative authoritarianism and explore its implications both in theory and in practice.

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/5vm466x8

🎙️ In our new podcast, Balazs Trencsenyi offers a sweeping re-narration of modern European intellectual history through the lens of “crisis,” not only as an analytical category, but as a powerful tool of political mobilization.

🎧 Listen to it now:
👉 tinyurl.com/4jjek43h