Exploring Freedom House’s Role in US Democracy Promotion since 2007

Explore how Freedom House has shaped U.S. democracy promotion—and how the 2025 foreign aid freeze transformed its work. Abstract: Freedom House is an American non-governmental organization active in international democracy promotion through research, advocacy and programs. While it is best known for its assessments of political rights and civil liberties, this dissertation examines how Freedom House operates as an organization involved in US democracy promotion. More specifically, the dissertation focuses on how Freedom House develops and coordinates its research, advocacy and programs, how its work in Washington connects to its activities abroad, and how public institutions and other non-governmental actors participate in these activities. The 2025 freeze on US foreign aid, which led Freedom House to end many of its programs, offers a recent case for examining how a major policy shift can affect the organization’s work. The study covers the period from 2007 to the present, beginning where existing archival research on Freedom House ends and tracing the organization under successive tenures of its presidents. It draws on archival and documentary research, alongside semi-structured interviews with current and former staff, board members and external partners. A prosopographical analysis of professional trajectories within Freedom House complements these sources. The dissertation contributes to research on NGO–state relations and the evolution of US democracy promotion abroad. Through the case of Freedom House, it examines how relationships among actors with potentially different priorities have evolved since the US foreign aid freeze, and what these changes may reveal about broader transformations in US democracy promotion. Presentor: Théo Folio is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Bordeaux, France, under the supervision of Professor Nicolas Monceau. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Paris-Panthéon-Assas University and a research-track Master's degree in Political Science from Sciences Po Grenoble. He previously worked at France’s Institute for Higher National Defence Studies (IHEDN). He is currently a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication at George Washington University for the Fall 2026 semester.