Zhaohan Zhang is a Ph.D. candidate at the School of International and Public Affairs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He received his M.A. in International Relations from Durham University in 2022. His research interests lie in Democratic Decline & Resilience, especially focusing on political polarization, populism and party politics. Before engaging in this area, his interested was in Chinese Nationalism, which is still a part of his academical interest. Zhang’s resent research focuses on the divergence of democracy in Eastern-European post communist countries, trying to explain why the neighbouring countries who started democratization at same era ends up in different paths. Currently he is seeking for potential answers from their history of democratic transition, he is usually described as a follower of historical institutionalism & culturalism.