re:constitution
2026/ 2027

Hannah Kiel

Spillover Authoritarianism in Europe: Transnational Reinforcement Dynamics of Authoritarian Legal Mobilization in Germany

A person with short hair wearing a navy blue jacket on top of a black top.
(c) Annette Koroll

Hannah Kiel is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Erfurt, specializing in the study of authoritarianism at the intersection of legal doctrine, psychosociology, and power theory. Hannah enjoys conducting basic research and grounding it in human rights practice. Key inspirational experiences in this regard include a PhD in Law at Freie Universität Berlin leading to the book “Arms Transfers to Non-State Actors. The Erosion of Norms in International Law” (Edward Elgar Publishing 2024), as well as research stays at the University of Melbourne and McGill University in Montreal. Hannah developed a practice informed approach to academia through work on strategic litigation with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), UN-level advocacy regarding the regulation of arms export regimes and gender-based violence, and
placements with the German Permanent Representative to International Organizations and the German Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. Looking ahead, Hannah is driven to strengthen the dialogue between research and human rights practice, contributing to transnational debates on democratic resilience and transforming them into concrete, inclusive human rights protections.

Spillover Authoritarianism in Europe: Transnational Reinforcement Dynamics of Authoritarian Legal Mobilization in Germany

Across Europe, authoritarian trends spill over into domestic contexts. The complex process of ideological transmission is fueled by circulating legal strategies targeting the universality of human rights and undermining democratic principles. National roadmaps of legal mobilization toward authoritarianism are paved in transnational settings, delivering ideological concepts, strategic legal templates, and cross-border
infrastructures as resources for domestic legal contestation. This project analyzes how transnational impulses reinforce legal mobilization capacities across jurisdictions: Which legally mediated pathways enable authoritarian thought to be transmitted, translated, and embedded into the domestic legal context? How are these legal dynamics intertwined with other instruments of authoritarian rule, such as emotional governance and discursive framing? The project conducts comparative case studies on contested legal arenas, including gender, LGBTQI+ rights, family, and reproductive autonomy, as they spill over from transnational realms into the German legal mobilization sphere. Shifting the focus from isolated domestic strategies to cross-jurisdictional reinforcement pathways, the project contributes to understanding the architecture of authoritarian legal contestation in Europe. Ultimately, it aims to equip European institutions with an analytical framework to identify and assess transnational reinforcement processes within rule-of-law and democratic monitoring.

Alle Fellows