The Rule of Law Crisis and Hybrid Threats Research Team, led by Professor Susana Sanz Caballero, continues to advance its research into the major challenges currently facing contemporary democracies and to disseminate the findings arising from its different lines of inquiry. This ongoing activity is reflected both in new academic publications and in the team’s growing academic and professional visibility.
Among its most recent research outputs is a publication by Susana Sanz Caballero, Principal Investigator of the research team, entitled “Manipulation of information as a hybrid threat: EU and the U.S. in comparative perspective”, published in European Political Science by Cambridge University Press.
The article examines information manipulation as a hybrid threat to democratic systems and compares the approaches adopted by the European Union and the United States. Although both face similar challenges—including disinformation, electoral interference and operations conducted by foreign and non-state actors—the two systems have developed significantly different approaches.
While the European Union has moved towards a predominantly regulatory model, articulated, among other instruments, through the Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the United States operates within a framework heavily shaped by the strong constitutional protection afforded to freedom of speech under the First Amendment. This difference affects the scope for public intervention against disinformation and reveals two distinct approaches to balancing freedom, security, the accountability of digital platforms and the protection of democratic systems.
The article further argues that the divergence between these two models may weaken democracies’ capacity to respond effectively to increasingly transnational threats, highlighting the need to strengthen coordination and democratic resilience against information manipulation.
Link to the article: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1682098326100411
This new research output coincides with a recent feature on the research team published in the journal of the Valencia Bar Association (ICAV). Opening with the question “How does a democracy disappear?”, the feature presents the key issues underpinning the team’s research and emphasises that democratic erosion may stem not only from external threats but also from the internal deterioration of institutions, the normalisation of public and private corruption, challenges to judicial independence, and attacks on media pluralism.
The feature highlights the research conducted under the leadership of Susana Sanz Caballero on phenomena such as the rise of populism, illiberal leadership, exclusionary nationalism, social polarisation and civic apathy, as well as the impact that different hybrid threats may have on the stability of contemporary democracies. These include cyberattacks, human trafficking, the instrumentalisation of law, economic coercion, disinformation, organised crime and covert psychological operations.
The ICAV publication also highlights the international scope of the project, which brings together 21 senior researchers and five doctoral researchers from research institutions across Spain, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Croatia, Hungary and Poland.
Among the team’s main initiatives are the Rule of Law Crisis in the EU blog and an interactive database devoted to analysing the media impact of news concerning the democratic crisis, alongside the organisation of international conferences, research seminars and workshops. Through these activities, the team seeks not only to identify the causes and manifestations of the deterioration of the Rule of Law, but also to examine possible legal and policy responses aimed at strengthening democratic resilience.
The feature also underscores the continuity of a research trajectory successively supported by the European Union’s Jean Monnet Programme, the Fundación Universitaria San Pablo CEU, the Generalitat Valenciana, and the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. This research agenda is currently being further developed, among other initiatives, through the AICO/2024/191 project (2025–2028).
The publication of “Manipulation of information as a hybrid threat: EU and the U.S. in comparative perspective”and the coverage of the research team’s work in the ICAV journal therefore represent two further examples of the team’s ongoing research and knowledge-transfer activities. Both underscore the continuing relevance of a question that lies at the heart of its research agenda: the vulnerability of democracies to emerging forms of threat and the need to strengthen the institutions, checks and balances, and mechanisms capable of safeguarding the Rule of Law.
