This introduction examines the decline of academic freedom globally, highlighting its ties to democratic backsliding, indicating urgent concerns.
This article introduces the IRSR Special Issue on Democratic Backsliding and Academic Freedom by further exploring how the two concepts are interrelated and contingent on one another. We do so by (1) providing some empirical background on the decline of academic freedom in countries around the world; by (2) introducing what we understand as the autocratic playbook toward academic freedom; and by (3) situating all the contributions to this special issue within this framework.
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Hinze et al. (2026) studied this question.
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