Kellogg & the Democracy Initiatives

Global Democracy Conference 2026

The Global Democracy Conference (GDC) returned in 2026, with scholars, policymakers, and activists coming together at the University of Notre Dame to explore urgent strategies for defending and renewing democracy worldwide. That year’s theme, Confronting Public Support for Anti-Democratic Leaders, guided two days of keynotes, plenary roundtables, and breakout sessions featuring academic and policy partners of the Kellogg Institute.

In old and new democracies, voters appeared increasingly willing to support radical candidates who, once elected, dismantled democracy from the inside. Judges, legislators, journalists, and civil society could resist the process of democratic backsliding, but mere containment was insufficient. Reversing the process ultimately required electoral majorities committed to consistently voting democratic parties into office and rejecting illiberal electoral appeals at the ballot box. This conference was guided by the following key questions:

• What factors had prompted the rise of public support for anti-democratic leaders?
• How did illiberal executives rally public approval?
• Under what conditions could democratic actors mobilize public support for democracy?
• What strategies were more effective to confront anti-democratic leaders at the ballot box?
• What role did digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence and social media, play in the mobilization of public support?

The 2026 Global Democracy Conference convened scholars and practitioners to explore new areas of collaboration between academia and the policy world, connected scholars and practitioners from different regions of the world, and improved our collective ability to understand and address antidemocratic support among voters. The GDC included two types of sessions: Plenary roundtables, colored gold on the conference schedule, featured 12-minute presentations by academics and practitioners, followed by a conversation led by a moderator. Breakout sessions, colored red on the conference schedule, featured topics and formats proposed by leading academic and policy organizations at the Kellogg Institute’s invitation, broadening the range of conversations at the GDC.

Full Conference information

GDC 2026 Conference Briefs

Why do voters back leaders who dismantle democracy once in office—and how can democratic actors win them back at the ballot box? The 2026 briefs take up that question across six expert roundtables.

• When Does Citizen Support for Democracy Erode—or Endure? 
  Examines what leads voters to abandon or hold onto their democratic commitments, and where the openings for renewal lie.
   
• When Civil Society Helps—or Hurts—Public Support for Democracy
  Shows how civic organizations can both strengthen and erode democratic attitudes, and how to steer them toward reinforcing democracy.
   

• How Authoritarian Leaders Manufacture Legitimacy—and How Democratic Movements Can Counter Them
  Unpacks the tactics illiberal leaders use to appear legitimate, and the counter-strategies available to democratic movements.

• Why Citizens Turn Away from Human Rights—and How to Win Them Back
  Explores why public support for human rights erodes, and how advocates can rebuild it in a skeptical climate.

• Citizen Participation and New Media
  Looks at how digital platforms and AI reshape political participation—for better and worse—in the contest over democracy.

• The Autocratic Campaign Toolkit—and Effective Democratic Responses
  Details the playbook illiberal candidates use to win elections, and the democratic responses that prove most effective against it.

   

Voices from the 2026 Global Democracy Conference

Special series: “Voices from the 2026 Global Democracy Conference,” featuring panelists who participated in the 2026 GDC, hosted by the Kellogg Institute between May 19-20, 2026 at the University of Notre Dame.

Global Democracy Conference 2025

The road to dictatorship was cleared by the expansion of executive power. Whether in Hungary, Turkey, El Salvador, or Venezuela, elected presidents and prime ministers used their constitutional authority and legislative majorities to undermine, and ultimately capture, other institutions.

These countries were just illustrative of a broader trend: anti-democratic executives had progressively packed the judiciary, purged the civil service, undermined electoral management bodies, silenced independent media, prosecuted dissidents, restricted non-governmental organizations, regulated the business sector in favor of cronies, and politicized the security forces. Small actions against those institutions, under the cover of executive immunity, eventually accumulated into the breakdown of democracy.

• How could we distinguish legitimate conflicts among institutions, part of normal democratic politics, from dangerous executive aggrandizement?
• What was known to be the best strategies to contain or delay the anti-democratic expansion of executive power?
• Could democracy advocates act effectively against illiberal executives without embracing radical positions themselves?
• What instruments did they mobilize? Could executive overreach be reversed? What did success look like?

The 2025 Global Democracy Conference (GDC) convened scholars and practitioners to address these urgent questions, combining the inspiration of academic research and practical experience. The GDC adopted a comparative perspective to inspire new research questions with practical implications, and to support activist engagement in academic and policy debates.

The ultimate goal of the conference was to improve our collective ability to identify antidemocratic behaviors and the effective ways to resist them. The GDC also aimed to open new areas of collaboration between academia and the policy world, as well as between scholars and practitioners based in different countries.

Full Conference information.

GDC 2025 Brief Series 

In 2025, the GDC convened global experts to examine how executives—from Hungary to Venezuela—have systematically undermined independent institutions and cleared the path toward authoritarianism. Each of the conference’s panels explored executive overreach in a different arena, from electoral politics, to the judiciary, to traditional and social media. 

In two pages, the GDC Conference Briefs aim to capture key insights to identify and hold back executive overreach in each of the identified arenas, as shared by expert panelists in the conference sessions. The briefs are further enriched by takeaways from broader conference conversations, as well as the recent literature on democratization. Their objective is to help practitioners, policymakers, activists, funders and applied researchers to: 

1. Clearly identify patterns of executive overreach in a timely manner via a detailed description of overreach attempts, aided by the inclusion of global examples. 
2. Design strategies to slow down or reverse executive overreach via the provision of key recommendations, aided by examples of resistance. 
3. Guide readers to additional resources, developed by the University of Notre Dame and the broader academic and practitioner community, 

Together, these resources reflect the GDC’s commitment to bridging academic research and practical action for defending democracy worldwide. Explore the lessons captured in the official GDC 2025 briefs below: 

Conference Brief 1: Executive Overreach and Democratic Backsliding

Conference Brief 2: Executive Overreach in the Electoral Arena 

Conference Brief 3: Executive Overreach in the Legal System

Conference Brief 4: Executive Overreach and Civil Society

Conference Brief 5: Executive Overreach and Public Bureaucracies

Conference Brief 6: Executive Overreach, Mass Media, & Social Networks

GDC 2025 Videos

Keynotes

Panels

Scholars at Risk

The Kellogg Institute has a long history of hosting scholars at risk – those who hail from areas in the world where the individual's safety and/or scholarship are at risk, particularly those working to advance democracy, human rights, and human development in their home countries. Recent scholars hosted have included Nazarii Stetsyk from Ukraine, Juan Sebastián Chamorro from Nicaragua, Eric Lemus Escalante from El Salvador and Cristian Velix García from Guatemalan.

News:

Defending Democracy: Kellogg Visiting Fellows Work Towards Justice in their Native Countries

Video:
 

Global Democracy Conference 2024

The Global Democracy Conference (GDC), organized by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, is an integral component of the broader University of Notre Dame Global Democracy Initiative designed to connect academic research and non-academic audiences. This forum projected the University as a leader and convener on questions of democracy, while simultaneously facilitating positive, tangible impact on global democratic practices.

With the theme "Understanding Today, Shaping Tomorrow," the inaugural GDC saw the Kellogg Institute convene leading defenders of global democracy at the University of Notre Dame for a series of profound, actionable conversations about the state of democracy around the world. Animated by an understanding of the multidimensional, complex nature of democratic erosion, this conference aimed to:

• Identify emerging challenges to democracies and possible solutions
• Highlight the research being undertaken by top universities in order to have meaningful impact in the world of policy
• Convene global actors who would help lay the foundation for partnerships with institutions and leaders who might utilize that research in protecting local democratic structures

The GDC included two types of sessions: panels, in which participants made formal, 12-minute presentations, and roundtables, which followed a conversational format led by a moderator. Sessions were organized in three thematic blocs:

• New Ideas: Panels primarily formed by academics. They presented original research on democracy to a broader audience, emphasizing the substantive relevance of their findings and mapping ongoing debates in the field. A practitioner might discuss how that line of research was relevant to practice.
• The State of the World: Roundtables formed by academics and practitioners. They assessed the state of democracy in particular countries or regions, with a particular interest in the near future.
• The Path Forward: Sessions focused on practical lessons to protect and promote democratic governance. Those sessions took the form of panels or roundtables and included practitioners or academics. Of particular interest were sessions focusing on specific sectors, such as industries (e.g., technology, finance) or professional fields (e.g., international law) discussing their ability to strengthen democracy.

Full Conference information

GDC 2024 Conference Report

Many thanks to our 2024 Global Democracy Fellows and conference rapporteurs for their hard work in documenting the content of the inaugural Global Democracy Conference. Our special gratitude to Kellogg Doctoral Student Affiliate Patrick McQuestion for synthesising their work and putting together the text for this 2024 Global Democracy Conference Summary Report.

Global Democracy Conference 2024 Policy Takeaways
 

Lessons for Defending Democracy

Get involved

• National Endowment for Democracy’s Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program, University of York's Human Rights Defenders Hub and the Kellogg Institute Hewlett Visiting Fellowship for Public Policy offer valuable support to scholars and activists who can contribute to democracy promotion on the ground.
• Develop adequate regulatory frameworks for AI and social media platforms to curb disinformation and verify information sources, addressing concerns of misinformation. AI technology can be used instead to cultivate a genuine “marketplace of ideas” (i.e. Pol.is ) to crowd out disinformation.
• Develop scholar-advocate partnerships for democracy-promotion such as the Digital Society Project and the Consortium for Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS) to combat the sources and effects of disinformation with grounded advocacy.
   

Lessons for Enhancing Democracy

Get involved

• USAID, Ford Foundation, and other organizations have organized to fundraise for democracy promotion activities, including the 2022 Democracy Delivers Initiative.
• The US federal government is recruiting AI-experts on platforms like AI.gov to harness the benefits and mitigate the risks of artificial intelligence in regular government operations.
• The Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC) supports academic and public collaboration efforts to pool expertise from various disciplines to improving government use of AI.

GDC 2024 Videos

Voices from the 2024 Global Democracy Conference

Introducing “Voices from the 2024 Global Democracy Conference,” a special series of Kellogg's Global Stage podcast featuring panelists and students who participated in the inaugural GDC, hosted by the Kellogg Institute May 20-22, 2024.