Hanna Folsz

Welcome! I am a 6th-year PhD Candidate in Political Science at Stanford University and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. My research applies modern tools of empirical social science to study opposition movements against authoritarian power grabs and sources of resilience against democratic backsliding in East-Central Europe and Latin America. My dissertation, supported by the APSA-NSF Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, develops a theory of opposition traps to explain why established opposition parties routinely fail to mount successful electoral challenges in autocratizing regimes despite often decades of past election successes, while new challengers more frequently defeat aspiring autocrats. I bring evidence from Hungary’s contemporary episode of democratic decline, combining large-N datasets, including large text corpora, and causal research designs, along with an original elite survey, mass surveys, and qualitative evidence.

I grew up in Budapest, Hungary, and moved to the UK for the first half of my studies. There, I completed a B.A. in Economics and Politics at Durham University and an MSc in Political Science and Political Economy at the London School of Economics. Beyond English and Hungarian, I speak Polish, Spanish, French, and German.

I co-organize EEPGW, the East European Politics Graduate Workshop. At Stanford, I am a member of PovGov (Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab) and DPL (Democracy and Polarization Lab).

If you have any questions about my research, pursuing a PhD in political science, or anything else, please email me at hfolsz@stanford.edu.