Milada Anna Vachudova of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill presented on “Europe in the Face of War and America’s Authoritarian Turn” during a Rethinking European Development and Security (REDS) seminar, co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and The Europe Center (TEC). Drawing on research coauthored with Nadiia Koval of the European Policy Institute in Kyiv, Vachudova examined how Russia’s war in Ukraine, democratic backsliding within the European Union, and changing U.S. foreign policy are reshaping Europe’s geopolitical role.

Vachudova began by arguing that Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s full-scale invasion is also a defense of European democracy, national sovereignty, and the security of EU and NATO members. She situated this claim within a broader account of the EU’s power. Historically, the union has exerted influence through its democratic norms, economic integration, market access, and enlargement rather than military force alone. Yet she rejected the idea that Europe must choose between defending liberal values and pursuing geopolitical interests. Military capabilities, she suggested, can complement the EU’s normative and economic strengths.

That potential has long been undermined by political expediency. Vachudova pointed to Europe’s pre-2022 dependence on Russian energy and continued economic engagement with Moscow, as well as the challenge posed by authoritarian-minded political parties within the EU. These vulnerabilities illustrated the costs of prioritizing short-term economic interests over democratic commitments and long-term security.

Russia’s February 2022 invasion nevertheless prompted an unusually rapid European response. EU institutions, particularly the European Commission, moved to assist Ukrainian refugees, expand market access, impose sanctions, provide financial and military assistance, and revive enlargement. Vachudova emphasized that this early institutional leadership occurred amid an absence of traditional French-German leadership. It also coincided with the emergence of ad hoc coalitions and a shift in influence toward northern and eastern European states, whose governments have often taken a more urgent view of the Russian threat.

However, translating this initial momentum into sustained military capacity has proven difficult. Increased defense spending, including in Germany and Poland, has not eliminated obstacles to coordination, implementation, and collective action. The EU must contend with powerful veto players even as uncertainty about the United States raises questions about Europe's ability to defend Ukraine and itself.

Vachudova characterized the current U.S. trajectory as an “authoritarian turn,” arguing that the Trump administration’s approach to Russia and Ukraine has eroded transatlantic trust. In her assessment, perceived American unreliability carries significant security, reputational, and economic costs, including growing doubts among allies about dependence on U.S.-made weapons systems.

Despite these challenges, Vachudova identified reasons for cautious optimism. External threats can catalyze European integration, while democratic mobilization can counter authoritarian movements and Russian influence. She also described a pattern of “democratic bandwagoning,” exemplified by Canada moving closer to the EU. Ultimately, she suggested that Ukraine’s determination could help sustain enlargement and strengthen Europe’s identity as both a democratic community and a geopolitical actor. The central question is whether Europe can convert crisis-driven solidarity into lasting political unity and defense capabilities.

On October 8, 2026, Aleksandar Matovski presented at a Rethinking European Development and Security (REDS) seminar, co-sponsored by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and The Europe Center (TEC), on Russia’s nuclear escalation and restraint during the war in Ukraine. The central puzzle he sought to explain was why the severity of an external shock does not necessarily correspond to the timing or intensity of Russia’s response. Moscow has repeatedly resorted to nuclear threats and provocative signaling. Yet, at other times, it has absorbed substantial military setbacks without responding with comparable ferocity. The question, therefore, is what explains this variation in restraint and escalation.

Matovski identified three broad explanations in the existing literature. The first concerns external constraints, including backlash from Russia’s remaining partners, the limited battlefield utility of nuclear weapons, and the danger of confrontation with NATO. However, these factors primarily explain restraint rather than escalation. The second concerns credibility decay, whereby repeated threats without follow-through undermine credibility and encourage riskier behavior to restore it. The third concerns domestic political influences, including hardliner pressure, regime survival threats, and risk-averse elites and citizens. Interestingly, domestic politics can generate both escalation and restraint. The question is which pressures matter, when, and how they interact with external constraints.

Matovski consequently proposed his pressure cooker framework, based on three premises. First, Putin needs a “forever war” to maintain political control. Continued confrontation allows the regime to mobilize nationalism, justify repression, and redirect dissatisfaction toward foreign adversaries. Second, military failure does not necessarily imply domestic political failure. Much depends on how the Kremlin frames setbacks and manages their political consequences. Third, nuclear coercion is essential to sustaining the war. It discourages Western intervention and reinforces the domestic narrative that Russia cannot ultimately be defeated.

The mechanism begins with an external shock, followed by initial restraint and the gradual accumulation of political pressure. Initially, restraint may be advantageous because escalation can publicly acknowledge military failure, alarm risk-averse citizens, and create further external risks. The Kremlin can also temporarily defer the political costs of inaction by controlling the narrative. However, as setbacks accumulate, hardliners increasingly interpret restraint as weakness. Meanwhile, the wider public may question the war’s sustainability. Repeated unenforced threats also undermine Russia’s credibility and may encourage adversaries to test its limits. Eventually, the political costs of restraint may outweigh those of escalation, prompting more dramatic action.

Matovski illustrated this through the 2022 mobilization and nuclear scare. Despite the failure of Russia’s initial invasion, Putin initially avoided large-scale mobilization. However, following further setbacks, particularly Ukraine’s Kharkiv counteroffensive in September, domestic pressures arguably intensified. Putin subsequently announced partial mobilization and the purported annexation of four Ukrainian regions. Russia also intensified nuclear threats. In October, Moscow made allegations concerning a potential Ukrainian “dirty bomb,” amid heightened fears of nuclear escalation. Yet Russia subsequently withdrew from Kherson in November without nuclear retaliation. Matovski interpreted this sequence as consistent with his argument that escalation follows accumulated pressures rather than necessarily responding immediately to individual setbacks.

The central implication is that Russian restraint and escalation may represent different phases of the same political process. Apparent restraint may therefore be unstable, making subsequent escalation difficult to anticipate.

In a Rethinking European Development and Security (REDS) seminar held on April 9, 2026,  and co-hosted by CDDRL and The Europe Center, Konstantin Sonin, a John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, presented his research on “The Reverse Cargo Cult: Why Authoritarian Governments Lie to Their People,” offering a theoretical explanation for why regimes such as the Soviet Union would knowingly tell citizens visibly false statements. According to Sonin’s research, authoritarian propaganda is much more complex than simple misinformation or manipulation, as it is often designed not to convince people of a single claim, but to shape how they evaluate information more broadly. 

Sonin begins with a personal anecdote, reflecting on his own experience participating in Soviet elections where there was only one candidate on the ballot, despite the process being presented as a meaningful choice. Using this example, he questions why regimes like the Soviet Union invest so heavily in clearly staged elections or exaggerated portrayals of Western life, even when citizens recognize these distortions. From this, he introduces the idea that such actions are not meant to persuade citizens of a specific falsehood, but instead to influence how they interpret all incoming information. Drawing on the metaphor of a “reverse cargo cult,” he suggests that just as some communities misinterpret the source of Western goods, citizens in authoritarian systems may come to believe that institutions in other countries are equally performative or deceptive. In this sense, narratives about foreign countries become an integral tool for reinforcing domestic political stability. 

He further explores how citizens evaluate elections and the decision to replace an incumbent under uncertainty about both competence and trustworthiness. He recognizes that in these regimes, citizens are not entirely naïve and may often recognize when a leader is lying. However, Sonin shows that even obvious lies can be effective. When a domestic leader lies about conditions that citizens already know to be bad, it signals not only that the leader is untrustworthy but also raises the perceived likelihood that foreign leaders are similarly dishonest. As a result, citizens downgrade their expectations of potential replacements, concluding that alternatives may not be any better. This dynamic ultimately reduces the incentive to replace the incumbent. 

As his theory suggests, negative information about conditions abroad, or even skepticism toward foreign success, can benefit authoritarian leaders. For example, Sonin points to Soviet reactions to the American National Exhibition in Moscow, where displays of a typical American home were dismissed by officials as unrealistic or misleading. This kind of framing encouraged citizens to question whether life in the United States was truly better, reinforcing the idea that shortcomings at home were not unique. As a result, domestic failures appear less exceptional, helping explain why authoritarian propaganda frequently emphasizes criticism of other countries and why such narratives often reinforce one another. 

Sonin concludes by emphasizing that lying in this context is not primarily about persuading citizens of a particular false claim, but about shaping their broader beliefs about the reliability of information. By weakening trust in information overall, leaders can make bad conditions at home seem like the safer or more reliable option compared to the uncertainty of change.

In a REDS Seminar co-sponsored by CDDRL, TEC, and the Hoover Institution held on March 12, 2026, Hannah S. Chapman, the Theodore Romanoff Associate Professor of Russian Studies and an Associate Professor of International and Area Studies at the University, presented a new project exploring how crises affect authoritarian regimes’ ability to gather information from their citizens. This question connects to the well-known dictator’s dilemma, which describes the challenge authoritarian leaders face in obtaining accurate information from society while maintaining political control. Chapman’s project explores how this dilemma plays out during crises, when governments may simultaneously need more information from society while also increasing repression.

Chapman studies this question in the context of Russia, specifically focusing on the presidential appeals system in which citizens can submit appeals to the Presidential Administration via online platforms, written letters, or in person. These appeals typically address everyday governance issues such as infrastructure problems, utilities, social benefits, healthcare access, or bureaucratic disputes. Importantly, appeals are not anonymous and require individuals to submit identifying information, meaning citizens must voluntarily engage with the state to raise concerns. While these systems provide the government with valuable information about societal problems, moments of crisis raise the question of whether citizens will continue to use them as repression increases. 

To explain variation in citizen appeals during crises, Chapman introduces a theory of crisis based on two key factors that shape citizen behavior. Crisis immediacy, which refers to how directly and rapidly a crisis affects people’s everyday lives, and the government’s repressive response, meaning whether the state increases repression during the crisis. Together, these two factors shape whether citizens are willing to voluntarily engage with the state despite heightened repression and risk. To evaluate these expectations, Chapman analyzes a dataset of monthly reports produced by the Russian Presidential Administration that summarize citizen appeals. The dataset includes approximately 1.7 million appeals between 2017 and 2023, covering hundreds of categories of complaints. Using these reports, the project examines four major crises in Russia during this period: the 2018 pension reform, the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the partial military mobilization announced in September 2022. 

Each crisis demonstrates how immediacy and repression shape citizen behavior. The 2018 pension reform represents a low-immediacy, low-repression crisis. Although the policy change was unpopular, its effects were expected to unfold gradually, and protests were not heavily suppressed. As a result, appeals about pensions increased modestly while everyday appeals continued at normal levels. The COVID-19 pandemic represents a high-immediacy, low-repression crisis because lockdowns and economic disruptions immediately affected daily life, but restrictions were largely framed as public health measures rather than political repression. During this period, crisis-related appeals increased significantly while everyday appeals remained stable. 

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine represents a low-immediacy, high-repression crisis. Although repression increased dramatically through censorship laws and arrests for criticizing the war, the conflict initially felt distant from everyday life for many Russians. As a result, both crisis-related appeals and everyday appeals remained relatively low. Finally, the mobilization announced in September 2022 represents a high-immediacy, high-repression crisis. Because hundreds of thousands of Russians faced the immediate possibility of military conscription, crisis-related appeals increased dramatically, with approximately 42.3% of appeals related to military issues, even though everyday appeals remained suppressed. 

Chapman claims that in high-urgency crises, immediacy outweighs repression, creating an urgent incentive for citizens to seek help despite the risks. As a result, there is a spike in crisis-related appeals and a sharp decline in everyday complaints. As discussed, this is significant as systems designed to gather citizen feedback depend on citizens’ willingness to communicate with the state. Consequently, when repression increases, these channels become more fragile and less effective at capturing routine issues. As a result, authoritarian governments may lose important information about everyday problems when they most need accurate information to maintain stability.

On February 12, Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), the Europe Center, and the Hoover Institution hosted Lucan Way, Distinguished Professor of Democracy at the University of Toronto, for a seminar titled “Economic Dependence and Authoritarianism: Russia in Comparative Perspective.” The talk, part of the REDS (Rethinking European Development and Security) series, examined the structural relationship between state resource concentration and democratic outcomes, using Russia as a central case while situating it within broader comparative patterns.

Way’s core argument centered on a simple but powerful proposition: when economic resources are concentrated in the hands of the state, autocracy becomes more likely; when resources are dispersed outside the state, democracy becomes more feasible. The key mechanism linking economic structure to regime type is the strength — or weakness — of countervailing societal power. Resource concentration generates societal dependence on political leaders. Citizens dependent on public-sector employment or state benefits face high personal costs for political opposition, including loss of income or access to essential services. Similarly, business elites reliant on state licenses, contracts, or regulatory goodwill incur substantial risks if they challenge incumbents. The result is weak opposition, limited activist networks, minimal independent funding, and fragile civil society organizations.

Way situated this framework within three major literatures on authoritarianism. First, underdevelopment (Lipset 1959; Przeworski et al. 2000) remains strongly associated with autocracy: roughly 70 percent of poor countries were autocratic between 2000 and 2021. Second, oil wealth (Ross 2001; Bellin 2004) produces an even starker pattern: about 90 percent of petrostates were authoritarian in the same period. Third, statist or weak private-sector economies (Fish 2005; Greene 2007; Arriola 2013; Rosenfeld 2021) show similar tendencies, with roughly 80 percent of the most statist countries classified as autocratic. Despite their differences — very poor African states, wealthy Middle Eastern petrostates, and middle-income statist regimes — the underlying mechanism is the same: resource concentration fosters weak countervailing power.

Russia exemplifies this structural dynamic. While the 1990s appeared to feature strong countervailing forces, including powerful oligarchs credited with supporting Boris Yeltsin’s reelection, Way argued that these actors were in fact institutionally weak. Russia’s private sector relied heavily on state connections in a system with weak courts and manipulable regulatory frameworks. The imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky after he challenged Vladimir Putin underscored the vulnerability of even the wealthiest economic actors. The broader business community remained largely passive, reflecting structural dependence rather than autonomous strength.

Statism further entrenched authoritarian control. A state-dependent middle class and political parties reliant on Kremlin financing limited the development of robust opposition. In oil-rich systems, public-sector employment and distributive benefits deepen citizens' dependence, while governments remain fiscally insulated from private-sector pressures. In underdeveloped postcolonial contexts, even modestly financed states wield disproportionate leverage over fragile economies, facilitating cooptation and repression.
Preliminary statistical evidence using V-Dem measures of “resource concentration” supports these claims. State ownership or control over key sectors correlates strongly with authoritarianism, high pro-incumbent mobilization, low opposition mobilization, media control, and weak civil society. Way acknowledged complications, including endogeneity: autocrats often increase resource concentration through nationalization or expansion of public employment. Nevertheless, certain structural conditions — such as large oil reserves, extreme underdevelopment, or historically weak private sectors — make concentration more feasible ex ante.

In conclusion, Way emphasized that autocracy is not inevitable in such contexts. However, where countervailing societal power is weak, imposing authoritarian rule becomes far easier. Across diverse regimes, economic dependence constitutes a common mechanism of authoritarian control — whether through business capture of the state or state capture of business.

On August 15, President Donald Trump welcomed Vladimir Putin to the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska. It was the first time since their sideline meeting in 2019 at the G20 meeting in Osaka, Japan that the two leaders have met, and the first time Putin has traveled to the United States since the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2015.

While President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine met with President Trump in Washington, DC the following  week, some observers have expressed trepidation over the prospect of a deal being made between Russia and the United States without the input of Ukraine.

Writing for Brookings ahead of the summit, Steven Pifer, an affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and The Europe Center, and a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine warned:

“Putin will seek to trap Trump into endorsing a position that incorporates the major elements of long-standing Russian demands. If Trump agrees, he will suffer unflattering comparisons to Neville Chamberlain, who agreed to surrender a large part of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany in 1938. While the Czechoslovakian government concluded it had no choice and accepted the territorial loss, the Ukrainians will say no. They will not embrace their own capitulation.”

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fourth year, the resilience of international support is being tested. Public opinion in neighboring countries — many of which have absorbed refugees and face direct geopolitical pressure — has become a critical variable in sustaining aid and solidarity. In a REDS seminar talk, co-hosted by CDDRL and The Europe Center, Princeton Professor of Politics Grigore Pop-Eleches shared findings from a major research project examining what drives support for Ukraine — and whether empathy can help counter growing war fatigue.

The study draws on two waves of public opinion surveys conducted in eight countries bordering Ukraine and/or Russia: Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan. Over 1,000 people were surveyed in each country, with a randomly assigned half receiving a brief empathy prompt. This prompt asked them to reflect on the daily challenges Ukrainians face living in a war zone. The goal was to measure whether simply imagining life in Ukraine could increase support for the Ukrainian cause.

The presentation began by outlining the stakes. Support for Ukraine has implications beyond aid flows. It affects how elites justify their positions, how international coalitions hold, and how misinformation, especially from Russia, can shift public discourse. The researchers focused on whether empathy-based interventions could increase not only emotional identification with Ukrainians, but also concrete actions such as signing petitions, donating money, or supporting humanitarian and military aid.

The results were striking. The empathy prompt had a clear and consistent effect: participants who received it expressed more sympathy for Ukrainians, more concern for their well-being, and greater willingness to support aid, both humanitarian and military. Statistical tests showed that these effects were driven by increased emotional connection (not concerns about the security of their own country), highlighting the central role of affective empathy.

Importantly, the effects were not uniform. They were strongest in countries like Hungary and Lithuania, and among individuals with strong attachments to their own national group and among those who had not previously interacted with Ukrainian refugees. Conversely, those who identified closer with Russians or who regularly consumed Russian media showed weaker or even no response. This suggests that perspective-taking can be powerful — but only in the absence of competing narratives.

The presentation concluded with a discussion of the broader implications. Empathy may offer a low-cost, scalable way to strengthen international solidarity — but its success depends on timing, exposure, and context. In countries with few refugees or limited media exposure to Ukraine, empathy interventions can fill an important emotional gap. However, where pro-Russian sentiment or misinformation dominates, their effects are muted.

At a moment when global support for Ukraine hangs in the balance, this research offers an encouraging insight: even brief moments of reflection can move people toward solidarity — if the conditions are right.