Professor Tomás (Tom) Daly is an academic and consultant in the area of democracy-building, public law, and human rights.

 
 
“How can we address democratic regression and crisis worldwide, repair the damage caused by anti-democratic governments, and build more resilient democracies for the future? These are the questions that get me up in the morning, keep me awake at night, and drive both my academic research and policy engagement.

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biography

  • Tom is a Professor and Director of Research Impact at Melbourne Law School, Director of the Electoral Regulation Research Network (ERRN), Co-Convenor of the Constitution Transformation Network (Melbourne Law School), and Associate Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law.

    Tom’s research focuses on three transnational challenges for democracy: democratic regression across world regions; the evolving roles of national and transnational democratic guardians; and enhancing democratic resilience through constitutional and institutional design. His multidisciplinary work seeks to forge connections between the Global North and Global South, blending normative theory, conceptual development, and comparative methodology, including unorthodox transnational comparison and cross-regional comparison.

    Tom has written widely on democratic crisis and democracy-building, including a monograph, The Alchemists: Questioning Our Faith in Courts as Democracy-Builders (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and recent articles on democratic decay as a field, democratic crisis in states including Brazil and Poland, and focus on democratic actors like courts, political parties, and citizens. His most recent focus on constitutional repair after democratic backsliding includes a new article (July 2025) in the American Journal of Comparative Law: ‘Constitutional Repair: A Comparative Theory’.

    An Irish citizen, he was educated in Ireland, France, Italy and the UK. His policy and consultant work has addressed a wide range of states and world regions. Highlights include leading a €3m judicial ethics project for the Council of Europe in Turkey, designing a pan-continental African Judicial Network for the African Union, and authoring a landmark report for International IDEA on countering democratic backsliding in Asia.

  • My interest in democratic crisis has been strongly influenced by my wide-ranging experience in the public sector, academia, and as a consultant. My first inklings of what is called 'democratic decay' here were during my time representing the Supreme Court of Ireland on the Venice Commission's body for constitutional courts (the Joint Council on Constitutional Justice) from 2008-2011. The system of dealing with research requests from participating courts began to hint at some potentially serious problems during this time. This worsened during my time as consultant editor of the Venice Commission's Bulletin on Constitutional Case-Law (which provides case-law summaries from 61 states) from 2011-2018.

    My awareness of the issue also grew as I wrote my first book on courts as 'democracy-builders', which focused on Brazil as a central case-study from a broad comparative and global perspective  encompassing Latin America, Europe and Africa. I can now discern democratic decay as a clear thread in the book — although it was not written from this angle. Since 2015, as well as actively researching the area, my awareness of the problem has been enhanced by managing a major €3m Council of Europe project on strengthening judicial ethics in Turkey,  designing an African Judicial Network for the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, which sharpened my knowledge of the state of democratic governance across the African Union, and my work with the Constitution Transformation Network at Melbourne Law School, which has enhanced my existing knowledge of democratic governance across the Asia-Pacific region developed through working on legal and constitutional reform projects in states including Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

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CONTACT

You can contact me about this research hub, or about democratic crisis and renewal more generally, by e-mailing me at democraticdecay@gmail.com.

 
 

ACADEMIC RESEARCH

I have been researching the subject of democratic crisis and resilience for over a decade. You can find a range of publications below. Watch this space for new additions.

POLICY & OUTREACH WORK

My policy work involves engagement with national governments and a variety of state institutions, NGOs, and international organisations (e.g. UN, Council of Europe, International IDEA). I have also engaged in extensive outreach at the state and local levels.

    • Designing Resilient Institutions: Countering Democratic Backsliding in Asia. International IDEA, April 2025.

    • ‘A Highly Important, if Incomplete, Corrective’

      In Richard Youngs (ed), Post–Cold War Democratic Declines: The Third Wave of Autocratization (Carnegie Europe, 27 June 2019)

    • ‘Democratic Decay in 2016’

      International IDEA Annual Review of Constitution-Building Processes: 2016 (International IDEA, 2017)

    • DALY, T.G., An African Judicial Network: Building Community, Delivering Justice. African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 31 October 2017.168 pages.

      DALY, T.G., A Constitutional Court for Sri Lanka? Perceptions, Potential, and Pitfalls. Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), 18 April 2017. 33 pages.

      DALY, T.G. and LOCK, T., Brexit and the British Bill of Rights. Edinburgh Law School and Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, February 2017. 42 pages.

      DALY, T.G., The Judiciary and Constitutional Transitions. International IDEA, September 2016. 70% contribution: peer co-author. 32 pages.

      BACHMAIER WINTER, L. and DALY, T.G., Comparative Review: Lay Adjudication Systems in Member States of the Council of Europe.. Council of Europe Georgia Programme 2010-2013.

    • DALY, T.G., Beyond Representation in Pandemic Responses—Independent and International Institutions. Melbourne Forum on Constitution-Building in Asia and the Pacific, Policy Brief No.8, September 2021. 12 pages.

    • DALY, T.G., How do Distanced and Online Campaigning Affect Political Freedoms? Policy Brief, International IDEA, May 2021.8 pages.

    • DALY, T.G., Elections During Crisis: Global Lessons from the Asia-Pacific. Policy Brief No.10, Governing During Crises series, School of Government, 17 March 2021. 13 pages.

    • DALY, T.G., Prioritising Parliament: Roadmaps to Reviving Australia’s Parliaments. Policy Brief No.3, Governing During Crises series, School of Government, 1 August 2020. 10 pages.

    • DALY, T.G., Securing Democracy: Australia’s Pandemic Response in Global Context. Policy Brief No.1, Governing During Crises series, School of Government, 3 June 2020. 10 pages.

    • DALY, T.G., Building Democracy Back Better. Invited submission to the Australian Senate inquiry into national identity, nationalism, and democracy Covid-19 Discussion Paper, 30 August 2020.

    • DALY, T.G., Toward Democratic Renewal. Invited submission to the Australian Senate inquiry into national identity, nationalism, and democracy Principal Discussion Paper, 30 September 2019.

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teaching

I have designed (or co-designed) a range of subjects focused on democratic rule, including: