The Democratic Threats and Resilience Project at Cornell University aims to cultivate new knowledge and collaborations that advance scientific understanding, scholarship, teaching, outreach, and engagement in ways that generate new insights into critical problems. We wish to provide a stronger evidentiary and theoretical basis for understanding democratic threats and resilience and to place Cornell University at the forefront of regime transition, democratization, and autocratization studies around the world.

The Democratic Threats and Resilience Postdoctoral Fellow will conduct research in the social sciences, including political science, history, sociology, economics, and/or computer science. The Fellow will be selected from a global pool of applicants based on their research’s promise for cultivating dialogue, nurturing collaboration across academic disciplines, and integrating, synthesizing, and building upon existing disciplinary contributions to regime transition research, broadly conceived. The candidates will also be evaluated based on how their research during the fellowship could benefit from and contribute to efforts by the Democratic Threats and Resilience Project to advance Cornell’s position as a global leader in the study of the factors that make democratic institutions vulnerable to internal or external subversion and, more importantly, the conditions under which they are resilient.

One fellowship will be conferred to a post-doctoral scholar who will be housed within the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. While in residence at Cornell, the Fellow will work to generate new knowledge that addresses key themes and concerns: these include but are not restricted to the socioeconomic inequalities and cultural conflicts that empower populist or anti-democratic challengers; the institutional features and political strategies that allow would-be autocratic leaders to capture and subvert regime institutions; the strategies that democratic rivals use to activate and defend checks and balances, and popular democratic support; and, expanding our knowledge of which “bottom-up” movements, civil society institutions, and individuals resist the rise of autocratic regimes. Successful applications will likely identify possible connections across disciplines.

The Fellow will assist the Democratic Threats and Resilience team with ongoing research projects, including attention to empirical indicators of democratic backsliding and autocratization, and factors driving partisan/identity cleavages to serve as inhibitors to regime cleavages that can mobilize pro-democracy coalitions.

Anticipated Division of Time

During semesters when they are not teaching, awardees will split their time roughly between their independent research, and the research of the Einaudi Center Democratic Threats and Resilience Project. When they are teaching, awardees will spend roughly 50% of their time on their independent research, 25% of their time on Democratic Threats and Resilience Project research, and 25% of their time teaching.

Awardees must have earned the doctoral degree within five years of beginning their fellowship. Candidates with more than five years of postdoctoral experience, and those who received their PhD from Cornell are not eligible. Awardees may not simultaneously hold any other paid or unpaid position during the term of the appointment. Prior to the start of their fellowship, candidates will be asked to provide confirmation that their doctoral degree has been conferred.

The scholar will be housed within the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. The scholar will seek supervision from the Director of the Einaudi Center and the Faculty Fellow of the Democratic Threats and Resilience Project.

Fellows will be asked to teach one class per academic year in a department closely related to their field of study.