Roberto Stefan Foa

Publications

Journal articles, book chapters, policy and centre reports, and essays for a broader public. Recent work has focused on democratic legitimacy, populism and the political economy of populist rule, and the use of higher-frequency data to study public opinion and economic conditions.

Recent · 2024 – 2025
2025
A Rally for Democracy? Authoritarian Resurgence, Ukraine, and Global Democratic Allegiance
with Xavier Romero-Vidal · Perspectives on Politics, July 2025.
2025
Democratic Norm Erosion and Partisanship in the United States
with Yascha Mounk · Democratization, March 2025.
2024
When Populists Rise, Economies Usually Fall
with Rachel Kleinfeld · Harvard Business Review, October 2024.
2025
News Cycles and Satisfaction with Democracy: How the Pandemic Short-Circuited Media Polarisation
with Omar Hammoud-Gallego & Xavier Romero-Vidal · British Journal of Political Science, 2025.
2024
Cross-National Surveys of Public Opinion
Oxford Bibliographies, September 2024.
Centre & Institute Reports
2023
Piercing the Fog of War: Measuring Russian Public Opinion via Online Search Data
with Roula Nezi · Bennett Institute for Public Policy, May 2023.
2022
A World Divided: Russia, China and the West
with Margot Mollat, Han Isha, Xavier Romero-Vidal, David Evans & Andrew Klassen · Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy, September 2022.
2022
The Great Reset: Public Opinion, Populism and the Pandemic
with Xavier Romero-Vidal, Andrew J. Klassen, Joaquin Fuenzalida Concha, Marian Quednau & Lisa S. Fenner · Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy, January 2022.
2020
Youth and Satisfaction with Democracy: Reversing the Democratic Disconnect?
with Andrew Klassen, Daniella Wenger, Alex Rand & Micheal Slade · Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy, October 2020.
2020
The Global Satisfaction with Democracy Report 2020
with Andrew Klassen, Micheal Slade, Alex Rand & Rosie Collins · Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy, January 2020. Inaugural report launching the Centre.
2020
Covid-19 and Subjective Wellbeing: Separating the Effects of Lockdowns from the Pandemic
with Sam Gilbert & Mark Fabian · Bennett Institute for Public Policy, July 2020.
Journal Articles
2023
Existential Insecurity and Deference to Authority: The Pandemic as a Natural Experiment
with Christian Welzel · Frontiers in Political Science, May 2023.
2022
Subjective Well-being During the 2020–21 Global Coronavirus Pandemic: Evidence from High-Frequency Time-Series Data
with Mark Fabian & Sam Gilbert · PLOS One, February 2022.
2022
Decentralization, Historical State Capacity and Public Goods Provision in Post-Soviet Russia
World Development, February 2022.
2022
Why the Future Cannot Be Predicted
with Yascha Mounk & Andrew Klassen · Journal of Democracy, 33(1), January 2022.
2021
America After Trump: From "Clean" to "Dirty" Democracy?
with Yascha Mounk · Policy Studies, 42(5), June 2021.
2021
Why Strongmen Win in Weak States
Journal of Democracy, 32(1), January 2021.
2019
Frontier Settlement and the Spatial Variation of Civic Institutions
with Anna Nemirovskaya · Political Geography, September 2019.
2019
Youth and the Populist Wave
with Yascha Mounk · Philosophy and Social Criticism, September 2019.
2019
Democratic Deconsolidation in Developed Democracies, 1995–2018
with Yascha Mounk · Harvard Center for European Studies, working paper, May 2019.
2018
Modernization and Authoritarianism
Journal of Democracy, 29(3), July 2018.
2018
The End of the Democratic Century: Autocracy's Global Ascendance
with Yascha Mounk · Foreign Affairs, 97(3), May/June 2018.
2017
The Weakness of Postcommunist Civil Society Reassessed
with Grzegorz Ekiert · European Journal of Political Research, 56(2), 2017.
2017
The Signs of Deconsolidation
with Yascha Mounk · Journal of Democracy, 28(1), January 2017.
2016
The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect
with Yascha Mounk · Journal of Democracy, 27(3), July 2016. Widely-cited essay on democratic backsliding.
Public Essays & Book Chapters
2024
The Far-Right Movements and the International Liberal Order
CIDOB International Yearbook, September 2024.
2019
The Economic Geography of Populism
Foreign Policy, September 2019.
2019
The Autocrat's New Tool Kit
with Yascha Mounk · Wall Street Journal, March 2019.
2015
Creating an Inclusive Society: Evidence from Social Indicators and Trends
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2015.
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Religion and Values in a Globalized Era
with Ronald Inglehart · In S. Sassen, P. Singer, R. S. Foa, W. Broecker et al., The Multiple Faces of Globalization. Madrid: BBVA.
Earlier Work
2012
Methodology of the Indices of Social Development
with Jeffery Tanner · The World Bank, 2012.
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See the complete publications list on Google Scholar
Includes further working papers, media contributions, and technical reports across the World Values Survey, YouGov-Cambridge and Sephira programmes.
For requests for citations, offprints or embargoed drafts, please write to roberto.foa@mykolab.com.