Close Collaboration with Policymakers

August 4, 2025

Introduction[1]

The illiberal turn in the world is undeniable (Applebaum 2025; Enyedi et al. 2025; Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). The Variety of Democracy’s 2025 lists the following facts:

• The level of democracy for the average world citizen in 2025 is back to 1985.
• Nearly 3 out of 4 persons in the

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European University Institute, Florence, 9–10 June 2025
Session 1: The Global Assault on the Liberal World Order

Question 1: Is the decline of the liberal order an inevitable consequence of its own contradictions?

In the institutional systems of nation-states, the liberal political order is founded on the principle of limiting all forms of power and their diffusion of

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August 15, 2025[1]

Since the end of the Cold War, former communist, East European states were given the opportunity to become full members of a Western-led liberal international order (Ikenberry, 2018). A broad set of countries could pursue the goals of stability, peace, and economic growth by establishing or joining multilateral treaties and liberal organizations, with the benefit

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“Small” states historically have been central to upholding and legitimizing the liberal international order – often in the face of opposition of the world’s great powers. But they also reveal a longstanding paradox in this international order – no state engaged this order can be defined as wholly “liberal.”

Interrogating Terms
In our current moment – and with the

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Introduction

In his seminal book on varieties of international political orders, John Ikenberry construed that after 1945 a constitutional international order (hereafter: CIO) had been established, an order where “international institutions bind powerful and weaker states together, creating a difficult-to-change institutional framework within which their relations are carried out, and thereby establishing some limits on the arbitrary and indiscriminate exercise

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The challenge:

How to help students formulate possible policy responses to undermine Fidesz’s authoritarian  grip on power in Hungary (with lessons for other authoritarian contexts).

Background and policy setting:

In offering the course to 24 graduate students at Korbel, I had two main partners: József Péter Martin, executive director of Transparency International, Hungary, and Dóra Piroska, professor at

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Type of engagement

This reflection is relevant to people engaging with government officials, policymakers, practitioners, educators, and those who experienced atrocities.

The Challenge

• How to advocate for policy recommendations that, at face value, cause discomfort.

Background

Dr. Nyseth Nzitatira (aka Hollie Nyseth Brehm) obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Minnesota in 2014.

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Introductory Note: Jesse Driscoll is an associate professor of political science at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). He is an area specialist in Central Asia, the Causcasus, and the Russian-speaking world. In 2022, he took a year's leave from UCSD to serve in the Plans division of the Joint Staff (J5, Europe/NATO/Russia Division). The following narrative includes

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The challenges:

• Present recommendations on the U.S. role in Afghanistan along with empirically informed enumeration of various potential decisions and outcomes
• Bring a different range of voices and perspectives into the U.S. foreign policy debate on Afghanistan
• Grapple with what to do with knowledge production that is unused in policy creation

The background and policy

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The challenges:

• Balancing the desire to collaborate with / provide analytical support to a government agency on a matter of crucial national and human security importance, with the need to maintain institutional and analytical autonomy in our own academic-practitioner interactions.
• Managing expectations by practitioners / policymakers about what type of analysis could be reasonably and ethically produced

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