Fairview Satellite: Studying the Rise of Authoritarianism in Russia: What Putin's Playbook Stands to Teach the U.S. and Other Democracies
Over the past sixteen years, Freedom House has tracked a steady global decline in democracy. Join JES Scholar-in-Residence Dr. Lena Surzhko-Harned, as she uses Juan Linz's influential framework – Civil Society, Political Society, Economic Society, Rule of Law, and Functional Bureaucracy, which also underpins Freedom House's methodology – to analyze how these democratic pillars have been systematically dismantled in Putin's Russia. By tracing how the Russian state has undermined independent media, repressed civil society, captured economic elites, and weakened institutional checks, the talk draws clear parallels – and warnings – for the United States and other democracies. Putin's authoritarian playbook offers a powerful lens for understanding the vulnerabilities of democratic systems today.
Location: Lincoln Community Center Library – 1255 Manchester Road, Erie, PA 16505
Date/Time: Monday, September 22, 6-7:30PM
Admission: FREE
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Lena Surzhko Harned, Ph.D., is an associate teaching professor of Political Science. She is also the associate director and a faculty affiliate of the Public Policy Fund at Penn State Behrend. Her primary research interests are in the field of comparative politics.
She is an author of several papers dealing with issues of nationalism and ethnic conflict, identity politics, electoral politics, comparative democratization, and political behavior in the post-communist states of Eastern Europe.
Her co-authored book, Post-Soviet Legacies and Conflicting Values in Europe: Generation WhY, was published in 2017 and examines the intergenerational conflict and consequences in post-Soviet Ukraine and Russia.
