Date: 21 May 2026
Time: 15:00 (GMT+3 / Athens, Greece)

The fourth session of the new DemLab Webinar Series will be held on 21 May 2026 at 15:00 (GMT+3). We are pleased to welcome Erica Frantz from Michigan State University, who will present her research on ‘The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy from Within’.

Yannis Stavrakakis from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki will act as discussant.

The event is free and open to the academic community, but you need to register here: https://authgr.zoom.us/meeting/register/vuLVvK5dTqChazwxqmj5mw

Abstract: Today’s democracies are eroding at the hands of their elected leaders, who slowly undermine democracy from within. This presentation highlights the role of personalist political parties, or parties that exist primarily to further their leader’s career, as opposed to promoting a policy platform. Using original data capturing levels of personalism in the parties of democratically elected leaders from 1991 to 2020, it shows that ruling party personalism erodes horizontal and vertical constraints on a leader, ultimately degrading democracy.  In this sense, the rise of personalist parties around the globe is a key cause of contemporary democratic backsliding.

Bio: Erica Frantz is an associate professor of Political Science at Michigan State University and a Research Fellow at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation. She is an expert on authoritarian politics, democratic backsliding, and the dynamics of political change. Her recent publications include The Origins of Elected Strongmen (OUP, 2024, with A. Kendall-Taylor and J. Wright) and Authoritarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know! (OUP, 2018).

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