I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University. My research focuses on the international causes and consequences of democratic backsliding, international organizations, and the effects of international policy requirements on domestic democratic institutions.
My current book project develops a novel, international-level theory of democratic backsliding. Research on democratic backsliding has proliferated, but to-date has largely focused on domestic-level factors. These domestic determinants are undoubtedly critical, but the global scale of the current democratic recession and extensive research showing a strong and positive relationship between international integration and democracy suggest that structural, international factors are an integral part of the story as well. I show that increased delegation of policy authority to international organizations in the post-Cold War era has made backsliding more likely by fundamentally altering, and in many ways undermining, domestic representative institutions that are critical for long-term democratic success. I was recently awarded a Strategy and Policy Fellowship from the Smith Richardson Foundation to support this project.
Related research has been published or is forthcoming in World Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, the Review of International Organizations (x2), Governance, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, the Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism, and a forthcoming Handbook of Democratization and De-Democratization published by De Gruyter.
Prior to coming to Arizona State, I completed my Ph.D. in Political Science at the Ohio State University and I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance (NCGG) at Princeton University. I also previously worked at the United States Agency for International Development’s Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Center. I earned my B.A. in International Studies from Rhodes College and am originally from Memphis, Tennessee.
Anna M. Meyerrose 