Etienne Hanelt

Etienne is a political scientist and doctoral researcher in the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies and Wolfson College. Advised by Professor Fernanda Pirie (CSLS) and Professor Ezequiel González Ocantos (DPIR), Etienne's thesis explores the decision-making process in EU institutions in the rule of law crisis. His research interests are democratic backsliding (especially in Central Eastern Europe), European Union politics, and judicial politics. 

He works as a researcher at the Judicial Studies Institute, Masaryk University, on an ERC-funded project on ‘Informal Judicial Institutions: Invisible Determinants of Democratic Decay’. As part of Verfassungsblog's Thuringia-Project, he studies subnational authoritarianism and how to build resilience against authoritarian populist threats. Etienne is a fellow of the re:constitution 2024/25 programme (Exchange and Analysis on Democracy and the Rule of Law in Europe).

Etienne interviews elites and experts to trace political processes. He is also interested in computational social science methods and mixed method research designs.