doc. Dr. habil. MA PhDr. Petra Guasti, Ph.D.

Petra Guasti is Associate Professor of Democratic Theory at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. Her research examines how democracies reconfigure under pressure, focusing on political representation, populism, polarisation, illiberalism, and democratic resilience in Europe.

She holds a PhD from Charles University (2007) and the University of Bremen (2014). Between 2008 and 2021, she held research and teaching positions at the Universities of Würzburg, Mainz, Belfast, Frankfurt, and Jena. Between 2016 and 2021, she held senior academic positions at Goethe University Frankfurt. She completed her cumulative habilitation there in 2021 and a second habilitation at Charles University in 2024. Between 2018 and 2019, she was a Visiting Democracy Fellow at Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Guasti’s work analyses the reconfiguration of democratic politics in Europe, including technocratic populism, illiberal backlash, institutional capture, and democratic innovation as responses to polarisation. Her research has appeared in Democratic Theory, Democratization, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, East European Politics, East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, Politics and Governance, and European Political Science, among others.

She is co-editor, with Mattia Zulianello, of Capire il Populismo (Utet Università, 2024). Forthcoming in 2026 is Understanding Populism: Between Myth and Reality (Karolinum, with Mattia Zulianello). She is also co-editing Parliaments in Pandemic (Routledge, with Sven Siefken) and the Handbook of East European Politics (with Petr Kopecký and Adam Fagan), both currently in final preparation.

For over two decades, she has contributed to comparative democracy assessment as an expert for the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) and the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI). In 2024, she became SGI Regional Coordinator for Central Europe. Between 2020 and 2025, she served on the expert board of Nations in Transit (Freedom House).

Between 2022 and 2025, she was Co-Principal Investigator at SYRI (National Institute for Research on the Socio-Economic Impact of Diseases and Systemic Risks), where she led a 20-member team researching populism and polarisation and coordinated a mentoring programme for early-career researchers. She was also Co-PI of the Horizon Europe project AUTHLIB (concluded January 2026), leading the Charles University team and a work package on mini-publics as democratic interventions. Since 2024, she has been Co-PI of the Horizon Europe project INSPIRE, where she leads the Prague team and a work package on co-producing democratic innovation with public officials and citizens.

From 2009 to 2023, she convened the ECPR Standing Group on Central and Eastern European Politics. In 2024, she was elected to the Executive Committee of the European Consortium for Political Research.

Monographs

• Zulianello M., & Guasti P. (2024). Capire il Populismo. UTET Universita.
• Gagnon J., Abrams B., Asenbaum H., & Guasti P. (2025). The Sciences of the Democracies. UCL Press.

Chapters in monographs

• Guasti P., & Mansfeldová Z. (2021). Tschechien: Herausforderungen durch Polarisierung und Machtfusion. Demokratie im postkommunistischen EU-Raum: Erfolge, Defizite, Risiken (pp. 175-191).
• Guasti P., & Mansfeldova Z. (2023). Regularity and Instability: Coalition Governments in Czechia 2008-2022. Coalition Politics in Central Eastern Europe: Governing in Times of Crisis (pp. 68-93).
• Guasti P., Malý M., & Michal A. (2024). Crisi e populismo: il caso della Slovacchia. Capire il populismo (pp. 135-137).
• Guasti P. (2024). Populismo e tecnocrazia: opposti complementari. Capire il Populismo (pp. 53-57).
• Guasti P., Michal A., & Malý M. (2024). Risposte socialdemocratiche al populismo: un’analisi comparata. Capire il populismo (pp. 152-155).
• Guasti P., & Perottino M. (2024). Zeitgeist antiestablishment à la française. Capire il Populismo (pp. 132-134).
• Guasti P. (2026). Democratization. IPSA Companion to Political Science: A Practical Introduction to the 200 Most Important Concepts (pp. 1-4).
• Guasti P., & Geissel B. (2026). Political representation of denizens. Citizenship and Democratic Innovations in Europe (pp. 97-116).
• Bustikova L., & Guasti P. (2024). Migration and right-wing mobilization in the Czech Republic. Migration and Nationalism: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (pp. 197-222).

Articles

• Guasti P., & Geissel B. (2021). Claims of Representation: Between Representation and Democratic Innovations. Frontiers in Political Science [online], neuveden(neuveden), 1-12.
• Guasti P. (2021). Mosaic of the contemporary populist radical right: A review essay. European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology [online], 8(3), 355-362.
• Guasti P. (2021). Democratic Erosion and Democratic Resilience in Central Europe during COVID-19. Mezinárodní vztahy, 56(4), 91-104. UT-WOS link
• Guasti P., & Bílek J. (2022). The demand side of vaccine politics and pandemic illiberalism. East European Politics, 38(4), 594-616. UT-WOS link
• Guasti P., & Bustikova L. (2022). Pandemic power grab. East European Politics, 38(4), 529-550. UT-WOS link
• Guasti P., & Bustikova L. (2023). Varieties of Illiberal Backlash in Central Europe. Problems of Post-Communism, 70(2), 130-142. UT-WOS link
• Guasti P., & Zulianello M. (2025). POPULISMO, OPINIONE PUBBLICA E MEDIA DIGITALI. Il Mulino, neuveden(4), 27-36.
• Enyedi Z., Guasti P., Schafer D., & Mikola B. (2025). Illiberal Politics in Europe: Ideology, Policies, and Impact. Politics and Governance, 13(2025), 1-10. UT-WOS link
• Siefken S., Guasti P., Patzelt W., Akirav O., Coghill K., & Haupt P. (2021). Parlamente in der Pandemie: Erste Erkenntnisse aus einem international vergleichenden Forschungsvorhaben. Zeitschrift für Parlamentsfragen, 52(4), 878-895.
• Perottino M., & Guasti P. (2020). Technocratic Populism a la Française? The Roots and Mechanisms of Emmanuel Macron's Success. Politics and Governance [online], 8(4), 545-555. UT-WOS link
• Gagnon J., Asenbaum H., Fleuss D., Bussu S., Guasti P., Dean R., Chalaye P., Alnemr N., Marquardt F., & Weiss A. (2021). The Marginalized Democracies of the World. Democratic Theory, 8(2), 1-18. UT-WOS link
• Karolewski P., Libin X., Patapan H., Halmai G., Kutay A., Guasti P., & Scheuerman W. (2023). Carl Schmitt and Democratic Backsliding. Contemporary Political Theory, 22(3), 406-437. UT-WOS link

Contributions in the conference proceedings

Winter Semester (ZS)

Úvod do politologie (Czech)

Democracy – Current Challenges and Innovations (English)

Demokratizace a autokratizace v komparativní perspektivě (Czech)

Militant Democracy (English, new in 2026/2027)

Summer Semester (LS)

Comparative Democratization (English)

Measuring Democracy and Democratic Quality (English)

Populism and Democracy (English)

Political Representation (English)

Political Polarization (English, planned from 2027)

democracy, democratization, democratic innovations, representation, populism, polarisation, militant democracy

Current and Recently Completed Projects

Intersectional Spaces of Participation: Inclusive, Resilient, Embedded (INSPIRE)
Horizon Europe (April 2024-2027)
Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI); leads the Prague team and a work package focused on co-producing democratic innovation with public officials and citizens.

Neo-Authoritarianisms in Europe and the Liberal Democratic Response (AUTHLIB)
Horizon Europe (2022 – January 2026)
Co-Principal Investigator; led the Charles University team and a work package on mini-publics as democratic interventions.

National Institute for Research on the Socio-Economic Impact of Systemic Risks (SYRI)
EXCELES Programme (2022–2025)
Co-Principal Investigator and Deputy Scientific Director; led a research team focusing on populism, polarization, and democratic resilience.

• Theorising democratic reconfiguration under contemporary crises, with a focus on populism, polarisation, and illiberal governance

• Comparative institutional analysis and democracy assessment within international evaluation frameworks (BTI, SGI, NIT, V-DEM)

• Design and testing of novel deliberative formats and minipublics for democratic renewal and depolarisation

• Strategic coordination of international research consortia and large-scale international collaborative projects

• Bridging research and practice through policy engagement and public scholarship

Petra Guasti’s research focuses on the reconfiguration of democracy amid contemporary crises. She examines how democratic institutions, norms, and forms of representation transform under the pressures of populism, polarisation, and illiberal tendencies, and how these processes reshape the quality and stability of democratic governance. She approaches Central and Eastern Europe as a laboratory of these dynamics — a region where patterns of democratic erosion, institutional adaptation, and renewal concentrate in ways that make broader global trends more analytically visible.

At the same time, she studies democratic innovations as instruments of redemocratisation. She designs and, together with her team, tests new deliberative formats — particularly with an emphasis on depolarisation, linking experts, civil society, and decision-making actors, and fostering youth participation in politics. Her work connects democratic theory, institutional design, and comparative empirical analysis, contributing to international debates on the future of liberal democracy.