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Democracy and Autocracy Newsletter

Democracy and Autocracy is the official newsletter of the American Political Science Association’s Democracy and Autocracy section (formerly known as the Comparative Democratization section). Previously published at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden under the name The Annals of Comparative Democratization, the newsletter moves to U-M under executive editors Dan Slater (WCED director, political science) and Rob Mickey (political science). 

Current and past issues of the newsletter can be found on the APSA Democracy and Autocracy section website.

The November 2023 issue of Democracy and Autocracy features essays from contributors to the forthcoming volume The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (University of Michigan Press, Emerging Democracies Series), co-edited by Larry Diamond (Stanford University), Šumit Ganguly (Indiana University), and Dinsha Mistree (Stanford University). Newsletter authors include Diamond, Ganguly, and Mistree; as well as Maya Tudor (University of Oxford); John Echeverri-Gent (University of Virginia); Aseema Sinha (Claremont McKenna College); Andrew Wyatt (University of Bristol); Kanta Murali (University of Toronto); and Eswaran Sridharan (University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India in Delhi). Mukulika Banerjee (London School of Economics and Political Science) and Sushmita Pati (National Law School of India University, Bengaluru) also exchange reviews of their recent books, Cultivating Democracy: Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India (Banerjee, Oxford University Press, 2021) and Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi (Pati, Cambridge University Press, 2022). Anindita Adhikari (U-M) and Nandini Dey (U-M) serve as guest editors.

Our center hosted a roundtable connected to this issue in September 2023, with Diamond, Ganguly, and Mistree presenting as panelists and Adhikari and Dey serving as respondents. Watch the recording here.  

The June 2023 issue of Democracy and Autocracy features memos from the "Why Democracies Develop and Decline" conference hosted by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame in March 2023. The conference used the newest Varieties of Democracy book, Why Democracies Develop and Decline (Michael Coppedge, Amanda Edgell, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2022), as a springboard for planning new research programs on democratization. Masaaki Higashijima (University of Tokyo) and Elvin Ong (National University of Singapore) also exchange reviews of each other's recent books, The Dictator’s Dilemma at the Ballot Box: Electoral Manipulations, Economic Maneuvering, and Political Order in Autocracies (Higashijima, University of Michigan Press, 2022) and Opposing Power: Building Opposition Alliances in Electoral Autocracies (Ong, University of Michigan Press, 2022). Katherine Bersch (Davidson College) and Michael Coppedge (University of Notre Dame) serve as guest editors.

Inspired by the 30th anniversary of Capitalist Development and Democracy by Evelyne Huber, John D. Stephens, and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, as well as the 80th anniversary of Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, the December 2022 issue of Democracy and Autocracy is dedicated to the theme “Capitalism and Democracy, Revisited.” Contributors include John Medearis (University of California, Riverside), Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Adam Dean (George Washington University), and Ricarda Hammer (WCED Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Michigan). Christopher Carothers (University of Pennsylvania) and Yoshinori Nishizaki (National University of Singapore) also exchange reviews of their recent books, Corruption Control in Authoritarian Regimes: Lessons from East Asia (Carothers, 2022) and Dynastic Democracy: Political Families in Thailand (Nishizaki, 2022). Brendan McElroy (University of Toronto) serves as guest editor.

The August 2022 issue of Democracy and Autocracy brings together scholars for an important discussion on “Challenging Autocracy and Impunity in Central America,” with case studies from El Salvador (Manuel Meléndez-Sánchez, Harvard University), Nicaragua (Antonio Monte Casablanca, Lateinamerikan Institute - Freie Universität Berlin), Honduras (Giorleny Altamirano Rayo, U.S. Department of Labor’s Chief Evaluation Office), and Guatemala (Giovanni Batz, University of California, Santa Barbara). Yanilda María González (Harvard University) and Eduardo Moncada (Barnard College, Columbia University) also exchange reviews of their recent books, Authoritarian Police in Democracy: Contested Security in Latin America (González, 2021) and Resisting Extortion: Victims, Criminals, and States in Latin America (Moncada, 2021). Luciana Chamorro (University of Michigan) and Kai M. Thaler (University of California, Santa Barbara) serve as guest editors.  

The March 2022 issue of Democracy and Autocracy broadly examines the effects of contemporary transnational linkages on authoritarian resilience and persistence. One of the core questions addressed is the ways in which new forms of international, particularly economic, linkages that authoritarian regimes have developed in the last few decades have changed the calculus of authoritarian power. Contributors include Faisal Z. Ahmed (Princeton University); Adeel Malik (University of Oxford); Alexander Cooley (Barnard College) and John Heathershaw (University of Exeter); Jody LaPorte (University of Oxford); Alexander Dukalskis (University College Dublin); Ronald J. Deibert (University of Toronto); Leonardo Arriola (UC Berkeley) and Fiona Shen-Bayh (College of William and Mary); and Casey Michel, Tom Mayne, and Tena Prelec (University of Oxford). Anne Pitcher (University of Michigan) and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (University of Oxford) serve as guest editors.

The December 2021 issue of Democracy and Autocracy features research from the editors and authors of the forthcoming volume in the WCED Book Series, Lobbying the Autocrat: The Dynamics of Policy Advocacy in Non-Democracies. Contributors include Max Grömping (Griffith University), Jessica C. Teets (Middlebury College), Marcel Hanegraaff (University of Amsterdam), Iskander De Bruycker (Maastricht University), Bilge Yabanci (Ca' Foscari University of Venice), Hui Li (The University of Hong Kong), Eleanor Bindman (Manchester Metropolitan University), and Tatsiana Chulitskaya (Vytautas Magnus University). Manfred Elfstrom (University of British Columbia, Okanagan) and David Szakonyi (George Washington University) also exchange reviews of their recent books, Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness (Elfstrom, 2021) and Politics for Profit: Business, Elections, and Policymaking in Russia (Szakonyi, 2020). Sasha de Vogel (postdoctoral fellow at NYU’s Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia) serves as guest editor.  

The September 2021 issue of Democracy and Autocracy brings together authors from the forthcoming volume in the WCED Book Series, Struggles for Political Change in the Arab World: Regimes, Oppositions, and External Actors, to explore "The International Aftermath of the Arab Spring." Contributors include Hesham Sallam (Stanford), Amr Hamzawy (Stanford), Toby Matthiesen (Stanford, Ca' Foscari University), Ayça Alemdaroğlu (Stanford), Gönül Tol (Middle East Institute), and Lisa Blaydes (Stanford). Dana El Kurd and Benjamin Schuetze also exchange reviews of their recent books, Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine (El Kurd, 2020) and Promoting Democracy, Reinforcing Authoritarianism: US and European Policy in Jordan (Schuetze, 2019). Former WCED Postdoctoral Fellow Jean Lachapelle (University of Oslo) serves as guest editor.  

The April 2021 issue of Democracy and Autocracy features a symposium dedicated to the theme “Constraining Presidents” with scholars specializing in both American and comparative politics. Contributors include José Antonio Cheibub (Texas A&M University), Kenneth Lowande (University of Michigan), and Julia Azari (Marquette University). Anne Meng (University of Virginia) and Ken Opalo (Georgetown University) add to the discussion through an exchange of reviews of their recent books on political institutions in authoritarian contexts, Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes (Meng, 2020) and Legislative Development in Africa: Politics and Postcolonial Legacies (Opalo, 2018). Rachel Beatty Riedl (Cornell University) then provides insightful commentary on the Meng-Opalo exchange. Allen Hicken (University of Michigan) serves as guest editor.

Most of this issue’s contributors participated in a WCED virtual roundtable focused on this topic on November 10, 2020. Video is available on YouTube.

The December 2020 issue of Democracy and Autocracy examines “Democratic Survival in the Muslim World” with cases from Mali (Jaimie Bleck, Marc-André Boisvert, Boukary Sangare), Malaysia (Lily Zubaidah Rahim), and Turkey (Şebnem Yardımcı-Geyikçi). Elizabeth Nugent (Yale University) and Avital Livny (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) add to the discussion through an engaging exchange of reviews of their recent books, After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transition (Nugent, 2020) and Trust and the Islamic Advantage: Religious-Based Movements in Turkey and the Muslim World (Livny, 2020). Pauline Jones (University of Michigan) and Hanisah Binte Abdullah Sani (National University of Singapore Overseas Postdoctoral Fellow) serve as guest editors and develop a new framework on how to assess democratic survival and resilience in the Muslim world.

Several newsletter authors participated in a WCED virtual roundtable dedicated to this topic on September 22, 2020. Video is available on YouTube.

WCED's second issue of Democracy and Autocracy, released in June 2020, addresses the topic, "Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability." As guest editor and WCED Postdoctoral Fellow Natalia Forrat writes, this issue "is an invitation to think about the possible effects of the current economic crisis on authoritarian regimes. The contributions are based on Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability, edited by Victor Shih and just published by the University of Michigan Press as part of the WCED Book Series. Its authors explore cases as diverse as Russia, Iran, Jordan, GDR, Bulgaria, and Cuba to consider the factors that conditioned the impact of past economic crises on authoritarian regimes and may affect the autocrats’ response to the current crisis."

WCED’s first issue, Volume 18(1), is dedicated to the question, “Is Democracy Promotion Dead?” It features articles written by three teams of scholars who authored reports for USAID’s “Theories of Democratic Change Research Initiative” from 2013-2018. The issue also includes a book author exchange, showcasing exciting new research by Jessica Trisko Darden (American University) and Inken von Borzyskowski (University College London). WCED Postdoctoral Fellow Matthew Cebul (Ph.D. Yale, 2019) serves as guest editor for Volume 18. 

The newsletter authors gathered at U-M on February 4, 2020 for a public roundtable discussion. Video is available on YouTube