6th ECPR General Conference, Reykjavik, 25-27 August 2011

Deadline for panel proposals: Wednesday, 1 September 2010

Recent years have seen a resurgence of academic interest in authoritarian regimes (AR). Particular attention has been paid to the (ambiguous) role that institutions such as parties, legislatures, elections play in terms of sustaining authoritarian rule. New typologies of AR have been developed and the links between different types of such regimes and their durability have been analysed. Game-theoretical and other models have been used to illuminate the political economy and internal dynamics of dictatorships.
While in the United States the comparative study of AR been dominated in recent years by large-N regression-based analyses, in Europe a more qualitatively oriented approach is emerging, which promises a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of authoritarian regime survival and demise.

Still, a number of theoretical and empirical challenges remain to be tackled. The section aims at bringing together European (and other) political scientists studying AR in order to address some of these challenges. The individual panels of the section  could  focus on current and recurring theoretical and conceptual issues in the study of AR, the relative dearth of knowledge about the internal dynamics of military regimes, the often neglected (or simply disregarded) legitimacy dimension of authoritarian regime survival, the assumption that civil society organizations in AR foster democratization, the diverging politico-economic paths of AR, and the varying role of law and judiciaries in such regimes.

Individual panels  could also put the spotlight on regions exhibiting a high density of AR. Wherever relevant, special attention  should  be paid to internal and external dimensions of the issues under review.

Section organizers: Patrick Köllner (GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies), Steffen Kailitz (Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism, Dresden) and Christian Göbel (Lund University)

submit a panel proposal at: http://www.ecprnet.eu/conferences/general_conference/Reykjavik/propose_a_panel.asp