Academic freedom and the onset of autocratization

Democracy is under threat across the globe and a third wave of autocratization manifests in democratic regression and authoritarian hardening. However, although universities have been important pro-democracy hotbeds, the nexus between academic freedom and autocratization has generated little scholarly attention. This article presents the first systematic investigation of the influence of academic freedom on the onset of autocratization. In particular, it reveals how academic freedom protects regimes from an onset of autocratization and argues that more academic freedom reduces the risk of autocratization by imprinting a pro-democracy bias on students and researchers. This article’s research design combines two studies. Study I tests whether graduates that were socialized under more academic freedom develop more democratic support, which I analyse using data from the World Values Surveys and linear fixed effects models. Study II tests whether more academic freedom reduces the onset probability of autocratization using V-Dem data and binomial-response GLMs. This article finds evidence that while high levels of academic freedom reduce the probability of an onset of autocratization, low levels also reduce the probability of an onset. Overall, the article highlights the crucial role of academic freedom for democracy, especially in times of severe threats to democracy.