Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) announced last spring the beginning of a partnership between Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and the quarterly political science publication, “Journal of Democracy.” Though the journal will continue to be published by John Hopkins University Press, the new partnership marks the end of the U.S. Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy’s (NED) ownership of the journal.

NED, the Journal’s founding sponsor, has faced significant challenges in the last few years. The nonprofit came under attack from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in 2025. DOGE cut off the NED’s access to the foundation’s endowment before a judge issued an injunction to restore access to funds. Though the NED’s funding was interrupted, the Journal continued publication through Johns Hopkins University Press, its longstanding publisher. 

CDDRL’s director, political science professor Kathryn Stoner, said the “Journal of Democracy” has officially left the NED and is now an independent organization. According to Stoner, the CDDRL now has institutionally dominant representation on the editorial board, even as the journal maintains its longstanding editorial independence. 

The change is a welcome one for co-editor Will Dobson, who told The Daily that it was “in the Journal’s best interest to be an independent entity.” Dobson wrote that the Journal “sought an institutional partner to help bolster the Journal’s work” and that a collaboration with CDDRL was a “natural partnership.” Since its foundation in 1990 the “Journal of Democracy” has been associated with Stanford scholars, including founding co-editor and political science professor Larry Diamond, who also previously served as director of CDDRL.

As part of the partnership, Dobson noted that the Journal will hire two editorial interns from Stanford’s student body each quarter. Stoner told The Daily that CDDRL will continue to provide expert advice to the Journal’s editors, and that the center will now contract with the Journal’s 501(c)(3) to produce issues. 

An editor’s note from the Journal’s most recent issue explained that the NED’s commitment to the journal “never wavered” and that the Journal was the NED’s “cerebral partner.” The note also touched on the changing circumstances that have come to bear on democracy studies, writing that “democracy, and the norms that sustain it, are being sorely tested.”