Etienne Hanelt
Biography
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 has passed his viva in March 2025.
He worked 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 Judicial Resilience 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.
Publications
Journal Article
Hanelt E and Vincze A, ‘Managing Courts in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes: Co-Optation, Repression and Resistance in Hungary’ (2025) 18(3) Zeitschrift Fur Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft 381
View
Hanelt E, ‘Getting Article 7 done: coalition-building against Hungary in the European Parliament’ (2024) Journal of European Integration 1175
View
Hanelt E, ‘From development to democracy: the transformations of modern Asia’ (2023) 30(3) Democratization 543
View
Hanelt E, ‘Book Review: Benjamin Bricker, Visions of Judicial Review: A Comparative Examination of Courts and Policy in Democracies’ (2021) 19(3) Political Studies Review np21
View
Hanelt E, ‘Commissioned Book Review: Wojciech Sadurski, Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown (Oxford Comparative Constitutionalism)’ (2020) 18(4) Political Studies Review np11
View
Working Paper
Hanelt E and Vincze A, ‘A Hybrid Judiciary in a Hybrid Regime: A Case Study on Hungary’
Preprint
Brandau A-M and others, ‘Wir starten das Justiz-Projekt’
View
Brandau A-M and others, ‘We Are Launching the Judicial Resilience Project’
View