Center for Emerging Democracies

The Center for Emerging Democracies promotes engaged public interdisciplinary scholarship to better understand the conditions and policies that foster worldwide transitions from autocratic rule and the deepening of democratic governance— in the past, present, and future. Emerging Democracies has been housed in the International Institute at the University of Michigan since 2008, making us one of the world’s longest-established centers for the study and advancement of democracy.

Mission

The Center for Emerging Democracies at the University of Michigan promotes scholarship to better understand the conditions and policies fostering transformations from authoritarian rule to democracy. Our mission will evolve as the world changes, but its core commitment to understanding the conditions for democracy and freedom in Europe, Eurasia, and beyond, will remain the guiding principle.

Intellectual Framework

The Center for Emerging Democracies supports the study of how democracies emerge and the conditions necessary for assuring and extending freedom.

We aim to support the study and practice of emerging democracies in three ways:

• a focus on both the conditions under which democracies emerge—and autocracies endure. This comparative perspective allows us to draw robust conclusions about regime transformations and stability.
• a multidisciplinary perspective that is sensitive to the historical, social, cultural, economic, and political contexts in which democracies emerge—or fail to arise. The analysis of any of these by itself is insufficient for the understanding of political stability and change.
• a focus on the practice of politics, and the dilemmas and challenges faced by political actors such as diplomats, state officials, or popular representatives. The perspectives of these participants are invaluable in drawing lessons about democratic governance for both academics and practitioners.

Through its work on transformations of authoritarian regimes and dictatorships into more open societies, the center will support the study of past, ongoing, and future efforts to assure and extend freedom and democracy.