Security sector reform (SSR) is central to the democratic transitions currently unfolding across the globe, as a diverse range of countries grapple with how to transform militias, tribal forces, and dominant military, police, and intelligence agencies into democratically controlled and...

Although it is conventional wisdom that innovation requires free mind, diversity, or creativity all of which are closely associated with political and organizational decentralization, it is in fact more politically centralized countries in East Asia that successfully capitalized on innovation to...

„China ist Boomland, längst einer der Motoren der Weltwirtschaft. Innenpolitisch blieb das Land autoritär, außenpolitisch zurückhaltend. Doch unter Xi Jinping, dem mächtigsten Staats- und Parteichef seit Mao, erfindet sich der autoritäre Staat neu, in offener Konkurrenz zum Westen. Kai...

"Since 1945, the liberal-democratic model of capitalism spread across the globe, ultimately prevailing over communism. Over the past two decades, a new statist-authoritarian model has begun diffusing across East Asia. Rather than rejecting capitalism, authoritarian leaders harness it to uphold...

Over the past thirty years, Morocco’s cities have transformed dramatically. To take just one example, Casablanca’s medina is now obscured behind skyscrapers that are funded by global capital and encouraged by Morocco’s monarchy, which hopes to transform this city into a regional leader of...

Despite a long-standing controversy about aid-effectiveness in general and the impact of aid-dependency on governance in particular, little is known on the effect of donors policies on civic agency for democratization in aid dependent autocratic regimes. In this study it is argued that the...

Authoritarian neoliberalism : towards a new research agenda / Cemal Burak Tansel -- Authoritarian neoliberalism and the disciplining of labour / Mònica Clua-Losada and Olatz Ribera-Almandoz -- Commodified pacification : police, commercial security and the state / Kendra Briken and Volker Eick...

The aim of this study is to discover the role played by regimes of exception (RoEs) in contemporary Bolivian politics. RoEs have been seldom studied by political scientists, despite constituting a key legacy of authoritarian regimes that have survived the transitions to democracy in Latin...

Previous research, which has focused mostly on pre-1990 dynamics, has shown that sanctions have a negative impact on the level of democracy in targeted authoritarian countries. Given this finding, it is puzzling that democratization has become the most common goal of sanctions issued against...

Associationalism under authoritarian rule is not automatically a good thing. The empirical findings laid out in this article indicate that authoritarian dispositions and practices are prevalent in all types of Vietnamese civic organizations, at least as far as internal decisionmaking processes...

There is ample evidence for a "democracy premium". Laws that have been implemented via election lead to a more cooperative behavior compared to a top-down approach. This has been observed using field data and laboratory experiments. We present evidence from Chinese students and workers who...

Authoritarian regimes use multiple forms of international cooperation to sustain their rule. In scholarly research, however, the study of these phenomena has been marginal and still lacks conceptual clarity. This paper takes stock of these shortcomings and embarks on a review of the existing...