Giovanni Capoccia is Professor of Comparative Politics in
the Department of Politics and
International Relations at the University of
Oxford, where he is a Fellow of Corpus
Christi College.
His current research focuses on democratic self-defense
against illiberal and anti-democratic forces. He also has a strong interest in
political institutions, democratization, transitional justice, and historical
approaches to the study of politics—fields in which he has published
extensively. His writing primarily examines the politics of advanced
democracies, particularly in Europe.
His co-directed project, Back from the Brink: Countering
Illiberalism in Liberal Democracies, lays the groundwork for a research
agenda on how illiberal forces can be countered in liberal democracies. The
results of the project will be published in a collective volume. The analysis
of democratic self-defense has been a longstanding theme in his research. His
work on democratic crises in interwar Europe has been published in several international
journals and in a research monograph titled Defending
Democracy: Responses to Extremism in Interwar Europe (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2005; paperback 2007). The book received the APSA Award for
the Best Book in European Politics. In his current work, he is developing
several themes within the research program outlined in Back from the Brink.
He has been the recipient of the American Political Science
Association’s Best Book in European Politics Award, the Sage Award for the Best
Paper in Comparative Politics, the Mary Parker Follett Award in Politics and
History, the Award for the Best Paper in Comparative Democratization, the
Alexander George Award for the Best Article in Qualitative and Multi-Method
Research, and the Sage Award for the Best Paper in Qualitative and Multi-Method
Research. He has been the Rita E. Hauser Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard
University, and has held visiting positions at the Max-Planck Institute for
Comparative Law in Heidelberg, the Center
for European Studies at Harvard, the Institute for
Political Science at the University of Heidelberg, and the Center for European
Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po Paris. His research has
also been supported by the British Academy (Senior Research Fellowship), the
Leverhulme Trust (Major Research Fellowship), the Nuffield Foundation, the Deutscher
Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), the Italian Consiglio Nazionale
delle Ricerche (CNR), and various other national and international funding
agencies.
Twitter/X: @gcapoccia1
Bluesky: @gcapoccia.bsky.social