News from the CEU Democracy Institute

This 19th edition of the Democracy Bulletin, the quarterly newsletter of the CEU Democracy Institute (DI), spotlights our accomplishments and publications from the past months, including takeaways from major conferences, important new reports, and updates about our programs.

If you don’t want to miss any of our news items, events, publications, podcasts or videos, then please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky, and LinkedIn.

HIGHLIGHTS

AUTHLIB Project Concludes with Successful Final Conference

In January, we hosted the closing conference of the Neo-authoritarianisms in Europe and the liberal democratic response (AUTHLIB) project, which showcased the project's results. The conference brought together leading scholars and policymakers to discuss the social roots, discourses, and policy implications of illiberalism, as well as strategies to defend democratic values. Watch the video recordings, or read some reflections on the conference here.

From Policy to Reality: Synthesis Report on National Roma Strategies’ Implementation

We released a report synthesizing Member States’ civil society assessments of how national Roma strategies materialize in reality. The report provides a comprehensive, evidence-based assessment of National Roma Strategic Frameworks’ implementation and constitutes a major output of the Roma Civil Monitor initiative, implemented by a DI-led consortium between 2021 and 2025.

New Report Assesses the EU's Rule of Law Performance

The second edition of the report produced by our Rule of Law Clinic, entitled Rule of Law beyond the EU Member States: Assessing the Union’s Performance 2025, offers a synthetic assessment of the EU’s performance across several fields: justice system; anti-corruption measures; media freedom; the internal market; and institutional checks and balances.

REAL DEAL Protocol: Guidance and Toolkit Published

One of the key deliverables of our REAL DEAL project on citizen deliberation, The REAL DEAL Protocol: Guidance and Toolkit, has been published. The project explored new pathways to enhance citizens’ participation around the European Green Deal with a team of 16 partners from academia, civil society organizations and practitioners, from a wide range of disciplines, including environmental rights, ethics, gender studies, geography, urban planning, and sustainability studies.

A New Generation of Public Leaders: CEU Democracy Institute Leadership Academy Concluded 2025 Program

Our Leadership Academy (DILA) successfully concluded its 2025 program, graduating a cohort of 19 exceptional public leaders from across Central Europe. This diverse group of municipal leaders, civil society activists, political party representatives, and policy experts completed an intensive three-month journey designed to strengthen democratic resilience in the region.

Laszlo Bruszt Awarded Dr. Elemer Hantos Prize

Laszlo Bruszt, the founding co-Director of the DI, has been selected to receive the Dr. Elemer Hantos Prize 2025 for his extensive work to promote economic cooperation in Central Europe. The prize is awarded by the Central Europe Foundation of Zurich, Switzerland, for efforts to advance economic collaboration in the region.

Zsuzsanna Szelenyi on BBC World Questions

Zsuzsanna Szelenyi, Program Director of the CEU Democracy Institute Leadership Academy, was one of the panelists of the BBC World Questions program focusing on the political situation in Hungary.

Conference on Media Freedom in Hungary Draws Large Audience, Sparking Dynamic Discussion

With Connect Europe, we co-organized a highly successful conference on media freedom in Hungary, featuring top Hungarian media experts and journalists, including DI Researcher Balint Mikola. The panels focused on the political pressure faced by Hungarian media outlets, and the recent European Media Freedom Act and its potential impact.

Conference Discusses Democratic Perspectives in Poland and Hungary

The Waclaw Felczak Institute and our Leadership Academy co-organized a conference analyzing the current state of democracy and re-democratization efforts in Poland and Hungary. The panels examined the democratic challenges in Central Europe and discussed how Polish and Hungarian societies respond to the political changes.

CCINDLE Event: Feminisms and Democracy

Our Inequalities and Democracy Workgroup hosted a major “research meets civil society” event, titled “Feminisms and Democracy.” The event brought together Hungarian partners from three Horizon Europe ‘sister’ projects funded under the call “Feminisms for a New Age of Democracy:” CCINDLE (CEU DI), UNTWIST (ELTE TK), and PushbackLash (ELTE PPK, ELTE TáTK). It attracted more than 50 feminist activists, researchers, and politicians, who discussed strategies and the future of feminism in autocratizing Hungary.

Book Launch: New Volume Rethinks Relationship Between Utopia and Democracy

Our Democracy in History Workgroup launched Utopia and Democracy. Theories, Practices, Fictions, edited by Zsolt Cziganyik and Iva Dimovska. Based on our research project “Democracy in East Central European Utopianism,” the book provides a comprehensive review of the relationship between utopia and democracy, challenging the tendency in Western scholarship to assume that an ideal society is inherently democratic.

RESEARCH

DE- AND RE-DEMOCRATIZATION

New Convener for Rooftop Seminar Series

The Rooftop Seminar, previously coordinated by Andreas Schedler, is now convened by Alexander Bor. The bi-weekly event series remains a vibrant forum for debates on democratic crisis, authoritarianism, polarization, populism, and public attitudes toward democracy.

Democratic Expeditions Workshop Awarded

The third Democratic Expeditions Workshop, co-organized by the workgroup, the CEU Department of Political Science, and the Regional Office of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on Democracy of the Future in Vienna, was awarded to Zsófia Bocskay and Simge Andi. It will examine how AI can strengthen democratic politics by improving information access, fair political competition, and citizen participation, while also posing new risks to democratic communication and trust.

DEMOCRACY IN HISTORY

New Series Launched with Colloquium on New Imperial History

The new series of the workgroup aims to start establishing connections and foster collaboration between group members and other scholars who are based in Budapest. The first research colloquium of the series on "New Imperial History" addressed the successes and pitfalls of various recent trends in the historical study of empires as applied to the Habsburg Empire.

Volume Developed from IUFU Course

In the book developed from discussions during the Invisible University for Ukraine (IUFU) course "War, Peace, and the Politics of Uncertainty," Tetiana Zemliakova, the Lead Researcher of the workgroup, and DI Research Affiliate Guillaume Lancereau examine the French Revolution and Maidan together.

ENVIRONMENT AND DEMOCRACY

Stephen Stec Invited to GLGI Academic Advisory Board

The Workgroup’s lead researcher, Stephen Stec, participated at the United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi, where he supported the work of the Scientific and Technological Community Major Group, especially on issues related to mining and metals, artificial intelligence, and solar radiation modification. As one of the results of this visit, he was invited to serve as a member of the GLGI Academic Advisory Board of the Green Law Global Initiative (GLGI).

Jozsef Slezak Contributes to UNEP GEO-7 Report "A Future We Choose"

Our Research Affiliate Jozsef Slezak has contributed to the seventh edition of the UN Environment Program's Global Environment Outlook. The report, "the most comprehensive scientific assessment of the global environment ever carried out," is the product of 287 multi-disciplinary scientists from 82 countries. CEU Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy Professors Laszlo Pinter and Ruben Mnatsakanian also were among the authors of the report.

INEQUALITIES

New Report on Link Between Anti-Gender Politics and Autocratization

The CCINDLE project launched its new report analyzing pathways between anti-gender politics and autocratization. Co-authored by Andrea Krizsan, Conny Roggeband, Julia Lilian Szabo, Elzbieta Korolczuk, Petra Meier, Mieke Verloo, and Elena Pavan, the report identifies gendered violence and interventions into knowledge production as key cause mechanisms that link anti-gender politics to autocratization.

EUI Interview with Gabor Petri to Mark International Day of Persons with Disabilities

Marking December 3, the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, our Post-doctoral Researcher Gabor Petri spoke to the European University Institute’s website about the evolving strategies of disability organizations and the absence of disability studies in mainstream political science.

RULE OF LAW

Rule of Law Clinic Mentioned in A Grand Chamber Case of ECtHR

In December, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights issued a judgment in Danileţ v Romania case, in which our Rule of Law Clinic submitted amicus curiae brief. The case concerned the freedom of expression of a judge, who had had a sanction imposed on him by the National Judicial and Legal Service Commission for posting two messages on his publicly accessible Facebook page. The Court ruled that where democracy or the rule of law was under serious threat, judges were entitled to speak out on matters of public interest.

Barbara Grabowska-Moroz in The Oxford Handbook of Polish Politics

The Director of the Rule of Law Clinic, Barbara Grabowska-Moroz, contributed to the Handbook with a chapter titled “Rule of Law and Democratic Backsliding in Poland: Stages, Methods, Outcomes,” which argues that “law was used to capture independent institutions and create a default political advantage by increasing unaccountability.”

PODCASTS

Vera Messing Discusses Hungary's "Community Identity Law"

Our Senior Visiting Researcher Vera Messing spoke with political scientist Peter Vermeersch about Hungary’s recent Law on Protecting Local Community Identity on the Studio Central and Eastern Europe podcast, produced by the Forum on Central and Eastern Europe at KU Leuven.

Borderless Knowledge Podcast on the Historical Antecedents of Illiberalism

In this episode of the Hungarian-language Borderless Knowledge podcast, our Post-doctoral Researcher Balint Mikola hosts historian Peter Csunderlik, our Research Affiliate.

Daniel Hegedus on Global Agora Podcast

Our Research Affiliate Daniel Hegedus spoke to Andrej Matisak on the Global Agora podcast about the political situation in Hungary ahead of the general elections.

The Battle over Truth: Science, Ideology, and Academic Resistance

This episode of Protecting Academia at Risk podcast series looks at what happens when the boundaries between science, politics, and ideology are deliberately blurred and who benefits from that blurring.

REVIEW OF DEMOCRACY

The Review of Democracy (RevDem) is our online journal to discuss, analyze, reflect on, and develop possible solutions to the challenges to democracy across the globe today. Check its most important publications from recent weeks:

2025 in Perspective: Democracy, Delivery, and the Crisis Within

In this exclusive end-of-year conversation, Nobel Prize-winning political economist Daron Acemoglu reflects on what 2025 revealed and failed to resolve about the state of democracy.

How to Resist Illiberalism: Reimagining Democracy in Latin America

Pedro Abramovay, Vice President of Programs at the Open Society Foundations, offers a wide-ranging analysis of the rise of illiberal forces in Latin America and the democratic vulnerabilities they exploit.

The Weakness of the Authoritarian Playbook

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 argues.

Delivering Democracies: What Democracy Does… And Does Not Do?

In this episode of the special series produced in partnership with the Journal of Democracy, Maya Tudor explores the factors behind the recent, alleged erosion of democratic ideals worldwide.

Flexible Illiberalism: How Democracy Survives Illiberally in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia shows how democracy’s openness can be weaponized. Aqida Salma argues that flexible illiberalism—the art of using democratic institutions to pursue illiberal ends—reveals how democracy endures not by collapsing, but by changing hands.

Populism vs. the Planet: How COP30 Fell Apart

Deborah Martinez analyzes the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30), which exposed how populism has reshaped global climate governance, replacing cooperation with confrontation, facts with opinions, and urgency with delay.

Learn more about the CEU Democracy Institute