Welcome to my website!

What is Democracy? What do people think democracy is? Why do periods of democratization and globalization occur in waves and what drives them? What role does armed conflict play? How can we assess and strengthen democratic resilience?
Vanessa Boese Economics Berlin
Copyright: WZB/Bernhard Ludewig

My research focuses on finding answers to these questions. I am Principal Investigator and head of the research group "WAVES of Regime Transformation" at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany. In addition, I am research associate at the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

I am also leading the "What Is Democracy (To You)?" project, which explores how people in Germany think about democracy. More info on the project here.

News

In October 2025, the Tagesspiegel recognized me as one of the 100 most important figures in Berlin’s scientific community.
My project WAVES of Regime Transformation was awarded an ERC Starting Grant
Press Release by the WZB
Project Description
New Working Papers on the Economic Consequences of Autocratization

...on the economic effects of democratic backsliding in the USA
Boese-Schlosser, V.A.; Desbordes, R.; Eberhardt, M.; Larch, M. (2025) The economic consequences of democratic backsliding: Evidence from US States, Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy, Working Paper 027
- AI generated video on the paper (notebooklm) here

...on the Economic Consequences of the Current Wave of Autocratization
Boese-Schlosser, V.A. & Eberhardt, M. (2025), ‘DP20146 Democracy in Decline: The Economic Implications of Democratic Collapse‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 20146. CEPR Press, Paris & London.
New Methodological Research

... on Priming Effects in Survey Research
Boese-Schlosser, V.B., Klatt, N., Meißner, D., Ngiam, J., & Ziblatt, D. (2025) How Survey Design Influences People’s Understanding of Democracy, WZB TD Discussion Paper SP V 2025-504.
- AI generated video on the paper (notebooklm) here

...on demstock - an R package to generate democratic stock variables
Edgell, A.E., Wilson, M.C., & Boese-Schlosser, V.A. (2025) Introducing demstock: An R Package for Calculating Stock Variables Using the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Data, V-Dem Working Paper 153.
- The demstock R package is available on GitHub: https://github.com/vdeminstitute?tab=repositories

Recent Publications

Research Articles
Other Publications
Working Paper

Media Outreach

  • Wirtschaftsstarke Demokratien: Vertrauen in das bessere System lohnt sich. Tagesspiegel article on our democracy and growth study (3.11.2023, in German) available here
  • Interview with Neugier genügt/WDR (04.04.2023, in German) available here
  • Interview with fluter (05.08.2022, in German) available here: www.fluter.de/wie-demokratisch-ist-die-welt-podcast
  • Interview with Aus Kultur und Sozialwissenschaften/Deutschlandfunk (28.07.2022, in German) available here