Practitioner-driven.
The urgency of the moment demands a shift toward solution-oriented research. DAL works closely with movement leaders, policymakers and democracy practitioners to co-create a research agenda grounded in the challenges they face on the ground.
Four questions
The Lab organizes its work around four questions about how democracies erode and how that erosion is resisted.
Pathways of democratic erosion
We examine the sequence in which autocrats move — media capture, judicial removal, electoral manipulation — and how that order shapes the opportunities for reversal. The Lab builds typologies of erosion sequences and identifies the turning points that matter.
Practitioners and their dilemmas
We catalogue the recurring dilemmas of those who defend democracies — boycott or participate, build coalitions or hold the line, protest or press institutions — and investigate which factors predict effectiveness: interpersonal networks, resources, tactics.
Diaspora networks and transnational influence
We map how diaspora communities shape democratic struggles at home through resource flows, narratives, lobbying and sanctions diplomacy, and identify the conditions under which that engagement helps or hinders recovery.
Citizen preferences and democratic trade-offs
We study what sustains attachment to democratic norms when institutional performance disappoints, and which trade-offs — security, economic growth, identity — tempt citizens toward illiberal alternatives.
How we work
Four instruments, combined so that academic rigour meets the timelines that practitioners actually work to.
Expert consultation
Structured consultations with area specialists and scholars to ground the agenda in what is actually contested.
Democracy practitioners survey
A survey instrument that captures the capabilities and constraints of the people doing the work.
Experiments
Experimental designs — including ballot-choice experiments — on electoral motivations and normative preferences.
Time-critical empirical analysis
Rapid analysis for the moments when a democratic crisis is unfolding and the evidence is needed in days, not years.
The case for democracy
There are scholarly debates about democracy’s effects, and sound social-scientific evidence on some outcomes though not all of them. These are the areas where the evidence has been assembled.
Mitigating corruption
While regime type alone may not guarantee lower corruption, democratic institutions shape how corruption operates and mitigate its damaging effects. Democratic mechanisms prove more effective when accompanied by credible oversight, enforcement and active citizen participation.
Providing healthier and longer lives
Democratic governance independently improves health outcomes through distinct political mechanisms. Democracies consistently outperform autocracies on infant mortality, life expectancy and disease control — particularly for conditions that require sustained policy commitment and equitable service delivery.
Promoting and sustaining peace
Democracies rarely, if ever, go to war with one another. The most sophisticated statistical analysis supports the conclusion that democratic governance is a primary determinant of peaceful relations between similarly democratic states, though the specific mechanisms remain unsettled.
Advancing gender equality
Strong democracies foster women's rights and empowerment, yet authoritarian regimes increasingly adopt gender reforms for legitimacy without democratizing. Democratic effects materialize through accumulated democratic experience rather than regime transitions alone.
Advancing economic growth and development
Democracies generally do not possess an intrinsic economic advantage over autocracies, but they tend to sustain less volatile growth. Stronger institutions of accountability and protections for economic rights have the potential to foster long-term GDP gains.
Boosting redistribution
Democracy can reduce political inequality and expand public goods, but it does not inherently lead to wealth equality. Outcomes depend on political will, institutional design, elite influence and societal cleavages — and rising inequality may itself erode support for democracy.
Advancing infrastructure and public goods
Democracies are often thought to provide more public investment, since citizens can demand it at the ballot box. Yet a growing concern is their declining ability to deliver complex public projects relative to autocracies, which strains the social contract.
Protecting rights and freedoms
Democracy protects fundamental rights through institutional frameworks, the separation of powers and constitutional control mechanisms.