Ben Stanley, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at SWPS University’s Faculty of Social Sciences in Warsaw. Primarily, he is a researcher at the Center for the Study of Democracy, who also teaches at the Department of Social Studies.
Professor Stanley arrived in Poland shortly after obtaining his undergraduate degree in the UK. He intended to teach English in Poland for a few months and see a bit of the world. However, he ended up staying for three years and observing Poland’s transformation from a Communist state to a young democracy, finally free from Soviet rule. The longer he stayed, the more he got interested in the process of democratization and how citizens adapted to living in a very different political system.
Gradually, his interests evolved to include the way political parties and voters relate to each other, i.e. how political parties use ideological appeals to mobilize voters and how voters respond. He investigates the phenomenon of populism and attitudes towards democracy. His current project centers on answering the question why people declare a belief in the values and tenets of liberal democracy, such as political pluralism, constitutional courts, accountability of political elites, yet they behave like democratic hypocrites, which means they are willing to vote for parties that do not necessarily behave in accordance with those norms.
One of the key things that has sustained me throughout my academic career so far is knowing that I can decide, ultimately, to follow what is interesting to me; and knowing that I have that kind of autonomy and that kind of ability to decide the direction of the things that I want to study and questions that interest me. That, I think, is one of the most motivating things about being in academia.
Ben Stanley
Ph.D. / Associate Professor
Hear Professor Stanley speak about:
His research on liberal democracy, civic behaviors, and populism.
Professor Stanley talks about his evolving research interests in the discipline of political studies, which began with political theory and, thanks to the observation of the actual process of political system transformation in Poland, have moved towards investigating populism, democratic backsliding, and the gap between declared values and the actions voters take.
Read more about Professor Stanley's research
- Uninformed or informed populists? The relationship between political knowledge, socio-economic status and populist attitudes in Poland (2022)
Ben Stanley, Mikołaj Cześnik, Published in: East European Politics
- Forging, Bending, and Breaking: Enacting the “Illiberal Playbook” in Hungary and Poland (2021)
Andrea L. P. Pirro, Ben Stanley, Published in: Cambridge University Press
- Whose Poland is it to be? PiS and the struggle between monism and pluralism (2020)
Stanley Bill and Ben Stanley, Published in: East European Politics
- Marginalization, not mainstreaming: Explaining the failure of fringe parties in Poland (2019)
Ben Stanley, Radosław Markowski, Mikołaj Cześnik, Published in: Party Politics
- A New Populist Divide? Correspondences of Supply and Demand in the 2015 Polish Parliamentary Elections (2018)
Ben Stanley, Published in: East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures