Bryn Rosenfeld

While at the Center, Bryn Rosenfeld will work on a book examining how citizens in autocracies process information about risky political choices and behavior. The project draws on original survey and experimental data collected in Russia, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well as panel surveys spanning Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It explains how political rhetoric and events -- from repression to revelations of electoral fraud and corruption -- can increase, through common affective mechanisms, citizens’ tolerance for taking the risks that catalyze political change.

Rosenfeld is associate professor of government at Cornell University and a co-principal investigator of the Russian Election Study, the longest running election study in an autocratic country and the only election study covering an extended period of authoritarian consolidation. Her research interests include comparative political behavior, with a focus on regime preferences and voter behavior in nondemocracies, development and democratization, post-communism, and survey methodology. Rosenfeld is the author of The Autocratic Middle Class (Princeton University Press, 2021).

For more information, please visit: https://brynrosenfeld.com