Hanna Folsz

Welcome! I am an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. My research focuses on opposition parties and movements against democratic erosion, as well as sources of democratic resilience in East-Central Europe and Latin America. I received my PhD in Political Science from Stanford in June 2026, and I will join IE University as Assistant Professor of Political Science in Fall 2027.

My book project, supported by the APSA-NSF Dissertation Research Improvement Grant, develops a theory of the opposition trap to explain why established opposition parties routinely fail to mount successful electoral challenges in regimes undergoing democratic erosion despite often decades of past election successes, while new challengers more frequently defeat backsliders. I bring evidence from Hungary’s contemporary episode of democratic decline, combining large-N datasets, including large text corpora, and causal research designs, along with an original elite survey, mass surveys, and qualitative evidence.

My research has received numerous awards, including the APSA European Politics & Society Section’s Best Paper Award, the John Sullivan Award, and Honorable Mentions for the Best Paper Awards from the APSA Comparative Politics and Democracy & Autocracy sections.

I co-founded and continue to co-organize the Scholars Working on East European Politics Workshop. I am a postdoctoral affiliate of the Poverty, Violence, and Governance Lab at Stanford. I grew up in Budapest, Hungary, before moving to the UK for the first half of my studies. Beyond English and Hungarian, I speak Polish, Spanish, French, and German.

If you have any questions about my research, pursuing a PhD in political science, or anything else, please email me at hfolsz@fas.harvard.edu.