University of Cambridge · Since 2020
A record of the research centre I co-founded and co-directed with David Runciman at Cambridge's Bennett Institute for Public Policy: its four flagship reports, launches, videos, press releases, media coverage and the people who made it.
The Centre for the Future of Democracy was launched in January 2020 to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by democratic politics over the coming century. I co-founded the Centre with Professor David Runciman at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, and we directed it together.
The Centre's central asset is the Global Satisfaction with Democracy dataset, built with Andrew Klassen and the HUMAN Surveys project. It harmonises decades of cross-national survey data. At launch it covered more than 25 survey programmes and four million respondents in 154 countries. By 2022 it had grown to around 20 million respondents across 75 sources and 182 countries, which made it possible to track public attitudes to democracy across almost the whole world, in close to real time.
From that dataset the Centre published four flagship reports. They covered record dissatisfaction with democracy (2020), the generational "democratic disconnect" (2020), populism and the pandemic (2022) and the geopolitical divide that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine (2022). Each was released with a University of Cambridge press release, and the coverage ran from the BBC, CNN, Reuters and the Financial Times to Der Spiegel, Folha de S.Paulo and BBC Mandarin. The Centre's research strands also covered the spatial divide in democratic politics, democracy and climate change (with Cambridge Zero and CSaP) and technology and democracy (with CRASSH and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence).
From 2021 the Centre carried out commissioned research on global democratic attitudes for the UK Cabinet Office, and its third report was funded by Luminate, the global philanthropic organisation. Its work was presented to the US State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy, the OECD, the Summit for Democracy and the Council of Europe's World Forum for Democracy.
After the four flagship reports, the Centre's research programme continued into peer-reviewed scholarship and policy engagement. Papers in the British Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics and Democratization followed, along with new work tracking Russian public opinion through online data, briefings to the Council of Europe, and talks in Strasbourg, Montréal and Barcelona. The academic publications and chronology below set this out.
Chronology
Flagship reports
Each report is available below as a copy of the original published PDF, with links to the Cambridge repository and archived publication pages where they exist.
Report I · January 2020
Dissatisfaction with democracy around the world had reached its highest level on record, at 57.5%. It had risen especially sharply in large democracies such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil.
Report II · October 2020
The generation gap in satisfaction with democracy between "baby boomers" and "millennials" had widened to an all-time high. Millennials were the first generation in living memory in which a majority were dissatisfied with democracy in their twenties and thirties.
Report III · January 2022
The first global overview of how Covid-19 changed political beliefs. Support for populist parties and leaders fell during the pandemic, with populist leaders' approval down 10 points on average, while some "illiberal" attitudes gained ground and faith in democracy stayed low.
Report IV · October 2022
Public opinion has split into two blocs: liberal democracies aligned with the United States, and a "Eurasian" bloc of illiberal societies favouring China and Russia. Among the 1.2 billion people in the world's liberal democracies, 75% view China negatively and 87% view Russia negatively. In the remaining 136 countries, 70% feel positively towards China and 66% towards Russia.
Academic publications
Beyond the flagship reports, the Centre's data and team produced peer-reviewed research on satisfaction with democracy, populism, media and geopolitics. Below are the key publications by Centre members during and after their time with the Centre.
Launches & events
The Centre opened with a public event on the evening of Wednesday 29 January 2020 in the Riley Auditorium at Clare College. I presented the Global Satisfaction with Democracy 2020 report, prepared with Andrew Klassen, under the title "Is democracy in a global malaise?". Professors David Runciman and Helen Thompson of Talking Politics responded. The University's press release, "Global dissatisfaction with democracy at a record high", went out the same morning, and the findings were covered in the UK and abroad within the day.
A second launch event followed on 12 February 2020 in the Babbage Lecture Theatre: Michael Ignatieff in conversation with David Runciman on what threatens democracy and what might revive it. It was billed as "one of a series to launch" the Centre and run with the Cambridge Literary Festival and Talking Politics.
Later launches
Videos
The Centre's videos were first published on the Bennett Institute's YouTube channel and have since been removed. They are republished here from the original files, and on the Centre's YouTube channel.
The second report's findings on the generational gap in satisfaction with democracy. Original listing (archived)
Launch film for the third report, narrated by David Runciman. Original listing (archived)
Chaired by David Runciman with Lucia Rubinelli and Roberto Foa. At 02:30 Runciman introduces Foa as Co-Director of the Centre for the Future of Democracy. Hosted by Cambridge Development & Alumni Relations.
Press releases
The University's Office of External Affairs and Communications issued a media release for each report, all written by Fred Lewsey. The embargoed versions sent to journalists are reproduced here where I hold copies, with contact details removed.
Media coverage
A selection of press, broadcast and online coverage, grouped by report. Some articles are paywalled, and links to sites that no longer exist point to Internet Archive copies.
UK & US press
Broadcast
International
English-language press
European & Latin American press
Interviews, podcasts & talks
Podcasts & broadcast
Talks & policy engagement
People
The Centre combined a small core of researchers with a rotating group of Cambridge master's and doctoral students, many of them credited as co-authors of the reports. The chart shows when each person worked with the Centre, by half-year.
Training & internships
Training students was central to how the Centre worked. Much of its research was carried out with students from the Bennett Institute's MPhil in Public Policy (MPP) and with Cambridge doctoral students. Many of them were credited as co-authors of the flagship reports, often their first publications.
The first MPP cohort joined in 2019–20, at first as volunteers and later, for some, on paid contracts, and helped produce the Centre's first two reports. MPP students later joined through the programme's professional work placement, in which students spend part of the Easter term working on a live policy problem for a host organisation. In Easter 2022 the Centre hosted two placement students. They analysed international perceptions of Russia using the Centre's harmonised datasets, briefed the Cabinet Office in April 2022 and co-authored the fourth flagship report, A World Divided. Alongside them, the Centre employed doctoral students as paid research assistants.
"For several years he has also offered students an Easter work placement with the Centre for the Future of Democracy."Professor Michael Kenny, Director, Bennett Institute, 2023
MPhil in Public Policy students
Doctoral research assistants
Undergraduate research assistants
Role & references
I co-founded the Centre with David Runciman and have served as its Co-Director since its launch in January 2020, leading the research team and serving as lead author of all four flagship reports. The University's own public materials describe the role, and colleagues and referees have described it too.
"…led by inaugural Directors David Runciman and Roberto Stefan Foa."University of Cambridge job advertisement, 2021
"…said Dr Roberto Foa, Co-Director of the CFD and the report's lead author."University of Cambridge, 18 January 2022
"…along with Professor David Runciman, he is the Director of the new Centre for the Future of Democracy."Professor Jude Browne, Head of POLIS, 2021
"Within the Bennett Institute, Roberto has been building the Centre for the Future of Democracy…"Professor Diane Coyle, 2021
"…involved in developing and leading the Centre for the Future of Democracy… his efforts ensured that it quickly gained a considerable profile."Professor Michael Kenny, Director, Bennett Institute, 2023
Public record
Letters & references from within Cambridge
Archived pages
Snapshots of the Centre's own pages on the Bennett Institute website, preserved by the Internet Archive.