Justin Daniels is a DPhil (PhD) student in International Relations at Somerville College and DPIR, where his research focuses on political communication and electoral campaigns in democracies as well as indoctrination and protest in authoritarian regimes. He is editor-in-chief of the Oxford Political Review and editorial assistant of the St Antony's Series at Palgrave Macmillan and of Perspectives on Politics. He also administers the Department's centralised marking scheme for core undergraduate politics papers.
His current research focuses on how politicians and voters conceptualize democracy and the impacts these meanings have on politics. The dissertation will examine the emergence, diffusion, and consequences for democracy of these narratives through survey experiments, interviews, and observational data analysis. This research is generously funded by the Economic and Social Research Council's Grand Union Doctoral Training Programme.
In 2025, Justin received an MPhil in Comparative Government at St Antony's College, Oxford. His thesis focused on how autocrats employ strategies of indoctrination following mass nonviolent protest. From 2020 to 2023, he was assistant editor of the Journal of Democracy. In 2020, he received an undergraduate degree with honours in democracy, development and the rule of law from Stanford University.
Publications
- “Democratization and Taxation in the Global South: An Introduction to the Symposium on Lucy Martin’s Strategic Taxation: Fiscal Capacity and Accountability in African States” (with Anne Wolf). 2025. Perspectives on Politics 23 (special issue no. 3): 1128–29.
- “Putin Has Assembled an Axis of Autocrats Against Ukraine.” 3 March 2023. Foreign Policy.
- “The Risks of Engagement with China’s Sister Cities” (with Ariane Gottlieb). 6 June 2023. Power 3.0 blog, NationalEndowment for Democracy.
- “Lessons from Sri Lanka’s Constitutional Reform,” Democracy & Society 19 (2021–22): 16–18.
- “Defining ‘Disinterest’: U.S. Influence and Impact on the Creation and Reform of the Congo, 1876–1913.” 2020.Undergraduate thesis. Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.