Global Democracy Conference 2025: Global Democracy and Executive Power

More details will be added to the schedule as they are confirmed.
All sessions will take place at the Keough School Washington Office - Conference Center, 1400 16th Street NW, Washington, DC

Monday, May 12, 2025
 

• Resisting Executive Overreach and Democratic Backsliding
  • Nancy Bermeo, Princeton University
  • Steven Levitsky, Harvard University
  • A practitioner will be added to this list of speakers when confirmed
     
• The Electoral Arena: Opposition parties and Electoral Management Bodies
  How, and under what conditions, do executives encroach on the electoral process? How can political parties and EMBs contain this process of encroachment?
  • Laura Gamboa, University of Notre Dame
  • Holly Ann Garnet, Royal Military College of Canada
  • A practitioner will be added to this list of speakers when confirmed
     
• The Legal System: Judges and Prosecutors
  How, and under what conditions, do executives encroach on the judiciary and the legal system? How can courts and judicial operators contain this process of encroachment? 
  • Diana Kapiszewski, Georgetown University
  • Julio Rios-Figueroa, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (Mexico)
  • A practitioner will be added to this list of speakers when confirmed
     
• Keynote Presentation with Chief Justice Luís Roberto Barroso, President of the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil
   

Tuesday, May 13, 2025
 

• Keynote Presentation with Obiageli “Oby” Katryn Ezekwesili, Senior Economic Adviser of the Africa Economic Development Policy Initiative; Founder of Transparency International
   
• Civil Society: NGOs, Social Movements, and International Donors
  How do executives encroach on civil society? How can social movements, NGOs, and their international supporters contain this process of encroachment?
  • Michael Bernhard, University of Florida
    • Ann Mische, University of Notre Dame
    • A practitioner will be added to this list of speakers when confirmed
       
• The Bureaucracy: How Public Officials Resist Backsliding
  How do executives encroach on public service? How do they use a captured bureaucracy to undermine democracy? How can appointed officials and career bureaucrats contain this process of encroachment?
  • Kate Bersch, Davidson College
  • Russell Muirhead, Dartmouth College
  • Zsuzsanna Szelényi, Democracy Institute Leadership Academy (DILA),  Central European University, Hungary
     
• Mass Media and Social Networks: Journalists and Influencers
  How do executives encroach on the independent media and manipulate social networks? How can journalists, editors, and technology companies contain this process of encroachment?
  • Nara Pavao, Federal University of Pernambuco (Brazil)
  • Michael Mirny, IREX
  • An additional scholar will be added to this list of speakers when confirmed
     
• Keynote presentation with A. G. Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times

Presenters

Nancy Bermeo
Senior Research Fellow 
Nuffield College, Oxford University
After Bermeo’s retirement from her position as a senior member of the Princeton University politics faculty in 2007, she accepted the position of Nuffield Chair in Comparative Politics at Oxford University. Bermeo won the Stanley Kelley Teaching Prize at Princeton University in 1998 and the Oxford University Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009. Her writing focuses on regime change and the effects of systematic shock on human behavior and institutions.

Michael Bernhard
Ehrlich Professor of Political Science 
University of Florida
Bernhard in the inaugural Raymond and Miriam Ehlrich Eminent Scholar Chair in Political Science at the University of Florida. Previously, he was on the faculty of Penn State University and was a visiting researcher at both the Institute of Sociology and Philosophy at Warsaw University and the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. His research centers around questions of democratization and development, globally and in the context of Europe.

Kate Bersch
Associate Professor of Political Science 
Davidson College 
In Addition to her position at Davidson College, Bersch is an investigator with The Governance Project at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and a co-founder of the Global Survey of Public Servants. A former Kellogg Institute visiting fellow, she earned a doctorate in government from the University of Texas at Austin, then completed postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University and at McGill University’s Institute for the Study of International Development.

Jeff Conroy-Krutz
Associate Professor and Chair, Comparative Politics
Michigan State University 
Alongside his role as associate professor, Conroy-Krutz serves as a core member in the African Studies Center at Michigan State University. His research focuses on media and information, ethnicity, clientelism, electoral campaigns, and polarization in Africa. His current work is focused on radio-based efforts to combat scapegoating and hate speech, and encourage democratic engagement, with ongoing projects in Burundi, DR Congo, Kenya, Mali, Niger, and Rwanda. Since 2018, Conroy-Krutz has served as the editor of the Afrobarometer Working Papers Series. He holds a PhD in political science from Columbia University.

Laura Gamboa
Assistant Professor of Democracy and Global Affairs 
University of Notre Dame 
A former Kellogg Institute PhD Fellow, Gamboa is assistant professor of democracy and global affairs in the Keough School of Global Affairs. She received her PhD in political science from the University of Notre Dame and an MA in Latin American Studies from University of Texas at Austin. Her research expertise lies in comparative politics, regimes and regime change, parties and party systems, and Latin American politics, centering her research around questions related to the survival and quality of democratic system. Gamboa has received numerous fellowships and awards, including Notre Dame’s Eli J. and Helen Shaheen Award in Social Science, University of Utah’s 2024 CSBS Superior Research Award, and Harvard University’s DRCLAS’ Santo Domingo visiting fellowship. 

Benjamín Garcia-Holgado
Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations 
University of Delaware
A former PhD fellow at the Kellogg Institute, Garcia-Holgado focuses his research on democratic erosion, strategic dismantling of democracy by populist leaders, and strategies that can be implemented to halt executive encroachment. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Notre Dame, where he was awarded the Notre Dame Presidential Fellowship.

Holly Ann Garnet 
Class of 1965 Professor of Leadership
Associate Professor of Political Science and Economics
Royal Military College of Canada
In addition to her roles at the Royal Military College of Canada, Garnet is a cross-appointed faculty at the School of Policy Studies and Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University. Her research focuses on how electoral integrity can be strengthened throughout the electoral cycle, including the role of election management, registration and voting, cyber-security and election technologies, civic literacy, and campaign finance.

Diana Kapiszewski 
Provost Distinguished Associate Professor of Government
Georgetown University 
Kapiszewski’s research interests include public law, comparative politics, and research methods. Her current work examines judicial politics and the uses of law in Latin America, and includes projects that analyze institutions of electoral governance and informal workers’ use of legal strategies in the region. She co-directs the Qualitative Data Repository and co-edits the new Cambridge University Press book series, "Methods of Social Inquiry.”  She holds a Phd in political science from UC Berkeley.

Steven Levitsky
Professor of Latin American Studies and Government 
Harvard University
A former Kellogg Institute visiting fellow, Levitsky is director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, where he also works as professor of Latin American Studies and Government. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions with a focus on Latin America. He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Levitsky is co-author of the New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, which was published in 30 languages, and holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Michael Mirny
Senior Director, Information and Media
IREX
 With more than 20 years of experience in international development, Mirny is senior director of the Information and Media Practice at IREX, managing a portfolio of programs in Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Asia, Europe and Eurasia, and Central America. Previously he was chief of party of a USAID-funded media program and ran a number of media projects at private consulting corporations in Washington, DC. He started his career as a journalist at the BBC and Radio Free Europe and received a Golden Microphone Award for a BBC program about war reporting. He currently serves as a steering committee member of the Global Fund for Media Development.

Ann Mische
Associate Professor of Sociology and Peace Studies 
University of Notre Dame
A Kellogg Institute faculty fellow, Mische studies Brazilian youth politics during redemocratization; anti-partisanship in recent global protest waves; and communication, deliberation, and leadership in social movements. She is a cultural and political sociologist interested in social movements, civic engagement, political parties, social networks, peace and conflict, future thinking, and public deliberation.

Russell Muirhead
Professor of Democracy and Politics
Co-Director of the Political Economy Project 
Dartmouth College
Alongside his roles at Dartmouth, Muirhead also is an adjunct professor at the Tuck School of Business and a New Hampshire state representative. He holds expertise in multiple areas of study, including ideas and institutions in American constitutional democracy, American political thought, and political economy. Muirhead holds an AB and PhD from Harvard University and a BA from Oxford University.

Nara Pavao 
Associate Professor- Political Science Department
Federal University of Pernambuco (Recife, Brazil)
A former Kellogg Institute Dissertation Year Fellow, Pavao earned her PhD in political science from the University of Notre Dame. She was then a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University prior to her current position. Her research is centered around the intersections of political behavior, public opinion, and comparative politics, exploring how individuals engage with information about the political world and use this to develop perspectives on pertinent issues and navigate their decision-making processes.

Julio Ríos-Figueroa
Associate Professor of Law
The Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico
Alongside his work as a professor, Figueroa is a non-resident fellow at the Neukom Center for the Rule of Law at Stanford University School of Law. After earning his PhD in Politics from New York University, Figureroa worked as a professor of political science at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching in Mexico City. His research focuses on comparative judicial politics, the rule of law, and empirical legal studies.

Zsuzsanna Szelényi
Director
Democracy Institute Leadership Academy, Central European University (Hungary)
A Hungarian political thinker and foreign policy specialist, Szelényi is director at the CEU Democracy Institute in Budapest and a non-resident senior fellow with Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Previously she was elected to the Hungarian Parliament (2014-2018) and served at the Council of Europe (1996-2010) developing democracy all over Europe, including conflict regions such as the Western Balkans and the countries of Caucasus. Her  2022 book, Tainted Democracy, tells an inside story of Hungary’s descent into autocracy at the hands of Viktor Orbán. 

An important part of this year's GDC is the integration of "Action Labs." These are spaces of collaboration between academics and practitioners, and among practitioners from different countries who confront similar challenges. They are designed to help participants connect with each other, identify common lessons, and establish future collaborations. Time will be allotted within the conference for the labs to meet.

The main goal of the Action Labs is to help democracy activists craft concrete and coordinated actions to address executive branch issues through a dynamic combination of research insights, strategic support, and effective activism.  The labs are meant to focus on specific challenges, driven by the empirical concerns, lessons, and experiences of democratic champions.  Promoting effective joint action may be an elusive goal for a group of stakeholders with diverse expertise and geographical backgrounds, who are meeting for the first time. This is why the proposed ALs will pay as much attention to the process as well as the expected outcomes. In the meantime, there are some intermediate and attainable objectives:

• To facilitate dialogues between democratic activists and champions from different countries working on similar campaigns and facing comparable challenges.
• To provide learning and networking opportunities between country activists, scholars, and cooperation agencies stationed outside the country.
• To identify, challenge and review existing cooperation strategies to provide effective support to activists and democracy champions on the ground.  
• To identify relevant literature, challenge existing research insights, and demand new empirical research to better guide effective democratic activism.

Inaugural Global Democracy Conference: "Understanding Today, Shaping Tomorrow" 

May 20-22, 2024

The Kellogg Institute convened 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 our understanding of the multidimensional, complex nature of democratic erosion, this conference aimed to:   i) identify emerging challenges to democracies and possible solutions; ii) highlight the research being undertaken by top universities in order to have meaningful impact in the world of policy; and iii) convene global actors that help lay the foundation for partnerships with institutions and leaders who might utilize our research in protecting local democratic structures.

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