Benjamin Yoel

Benjamin Yoel is a fifth-year PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Michigan State University (MSU) and a predoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute. He serves as a Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research (IPPSR) and a data consultant for the Democratic Erosion Consortium, with additional affiliation as a visiting PhD student at the University of Chicago's Center on Democracy. His research centers on democratic erosion, authoritarian resilience, and political mobilization.

Benjamin Yoel's academic credentials include:

• B.A. in Government (specializing in conflict studies) from Reichman University, Israel (with honors)
• M.A. in Government (specializing in conflict studies) from Reichman University, Israel (with honors)
• M.A. in Political Science from Michigan State University

Yoel's research investigates the dynamics of democratic backsliding through multiple methodological lenses, including survey experiments on public support for opposition movements, quantitative text analysis of political discourse, and fieldwork in backsliding contexts. His dissertation examines how domestic and international factors interact to shape resistance outcomes, while secondary projects analyze women's cabinet representation in autocracies and cultural issue proliferation in declining democracies. This work bridges comparative politics, political methodology, and authoritarian studies with practical implications for democracy protection.

His 2021-2025 publications reveal a concentrated focus on democratic backsliding mechanisms, spanning American and comparative contexts. Key trends include methodological innovation in measuring erosion events, cross-national analysis of U.S. backsliding's global ripple effects, and data infrastructure development for congressional and state policy research. His output demonstrates consistent engagement with opposition strategy effectiveness, international democratic spillovers, and institutional vulnerabilities across diverse regime types.

Benjamin Yoel has received the following recognition:

• Predoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s SNF Agora Institute

Yoel's research program has secured competitive funding from the College of Social Science at MSU, the Institute for Liberty and Responsibility at Reichman University, the Institute for Humane Studies, and the Polarization Research Lab at Stanford University. His prior role as editorial assistant for the Journal of Politics (2022-2024) provided editorial expertise for top-tier political science research. Current collaborations include the Democratic Erosion Consortium's data initiatives and IPPSR's policy-oriented research projects.

Yoel maintains active affiliations with multiple research ecosystems: as a core contributor to the Democratic Erosion Consortium's data infrastructure, a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago's Center on Democracy, and a research fellow within MSU's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research. These positions facilitate cross-institutional work on democratic resilience, connecting academic research with policy applications through the SNF Agora Institute's predoctoral fellowship program.