The Internet Was Supposed to Fix This. It Made It Worse.

This article presents a case study of resisting electoral manipulation in the United States between the 2020 and 2024 elections. This time was an interlude between two autocratization episodes, whi...

Elections can be manipulated in a variety of ways, both legal and illegal. Legal, or formal, electoral manipulation is common, while illegal manipulation is somewhat more variable. This variation h...

The past decade has witnessed a transformation in the study of authoritarian governance, with increasing attention paid to how digital technologies reshape strategies of regime survival. While init...

The article applies the concept of democratic resilience to recent political developments in Europe. In line with core definitions of the concept, we distinguish between ways in which European demo...

Contemporary authoritarian regimes increasingly rely on digital technologies in their information control strategies, such as censorship, surveillance, and propaganda. However, the digital transfor...

How do chief executives personalize power? In this paper we conceptualize the personalization of executive power based on observable processes initiated by the chief executive aiming to increase po...

This study investigates support for Mali’s military government two years after a coup overthrew the democratic order. It evaluates two common explanations for the popular enthusiasm that accompanie...

Is populism a threat to democracy or a force for democratisation? New research suggests populism can both revitalise politics and erode democratic institutions.

This paper examines the strategic adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) by authoritarian leaning regimes in the Middle East, focusing on Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). B...

This study examines the persuasive effects of illiberal narratives on citizens in democratic countries in the context of increasing influence operations by authoritarian states, focusing on Japan a...

Contemporary authoritarian regimes increasingly rely on digital technologies in their information control strategies, such as censorship, surveillance, and propaganda. However, the digital transfor...

Following the third wave of democratization, democracy and its proponents have recently experienced a shift towards autocratization. To date, however, little is known about the impact of this trend...

Social movement research indicates that protests can influence voting behaviour through several informational and psychological mechanisms. Yet, we know little about the individual variation in how...

This article examines mechanisms for the diffusion of digital authoritarian practices, focusing on China and two of its regional partners in South and West Asia: Iran and Pakistan. We investigate t...

This article examines the Xi Jinping regime’s strategic intent behind its activities that, in effect, facilitate the global autocratization trend. I argue that the Xi regime’s ideological policies ...

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Different approaches to democracy and populism lead to varied conclusions about their relationship. Some see populism as a threat to democracy, while others argue that it can contribute to democrat...

Research on the dangers of authoritarian populism for liberal democracy has almost exclusively focused on “populists in power” and those cases where dramatic changes have occurred. However, there i...

Between 1974 and 2005, a majority of states became democratic for the first time in history. However, a global democratic recession began in 2006 and has persisted – and deepened – over the past 14...

How does democratic progress affect the evolution of women’s issues? Although previous studies showed the significance of democratic transition in mainstreaming women’s issues, little is known abou...

This study addresses a gap in Intelligence Studies by conducting an empirical investigation into how various civil society actors perceive their role in promoting accountability within the intellig...

What key ideas animate contemporary political movements in Africa, and how do they challenge—or reproduce—dominant (neo)liberal conceptions of democracy, development, and international relations? T...

This article examines how scholars use the concept of “regime” in comparative politics to provide stronger conceptual foundations for the future development of regime studies. We analyse 196 articl...

This article examines how scholars use the concept of “regime” in comparative politics to provide stronger conceptual foundations for the future development of regime studies. We analyse 196 articl...

Published in Democratization (Ahead of Print, 2025)

There is a wide range of labels, such as electoral autocracy, hybrid regimes, or multiparty autocracy, and corresponding empirical measures to describe and measure political regimes that combine au...

There is a wide range of labels, such as electoral autocracy, hybrid regimes, or multiparty autocracy, and corresponding empirical measures to describe and measure political regimes that combine au...

This article investigates the political determinants of social spending in authoritarian regimes, focusing on health and education sectors. The theoretical argument builds on the assumption that di...

Why do authoritarian regimes maintain access to open U.S.-owned social media platforms like Twitter and how do pro-government supporters use them? While the literature on consultative authoritarian...

While scholars carefully study when revolutions succeed and how they are overturned, far less attention has been paid to the public’s experience of revolution and counterrevolution as well as their...

While research on autocratic legalism has shown that incumbents deploy various legal instruments to ensure their survival, the use of recall rules to subdue opposition forces has received little at...

Electoral shocks have spillover effects in democracies, as they can change citizens’ political attitudes and political behaviour across national borders. Yet, electoral shocks also exist in non-dem...