MAIN RESEARCH FIELD

I work on dictatorships, their emergence, decline, survival mechanisms and methods of cooperation.

I study them individually – by analyzing regimes actors and their interrelations – and the effects of their behavior on the states they govern and/or how they manipulate their (regional) international environment. In particular, I look at repression (or alternative forms to channel dissent), coup d’états and coup-proofing, gatekeeping (linkage-leverage theories) and succession.

In my work I also search for larger patterns to survey and understand the current and past states of authoritarianism across the globe, going beyond the usual democracy-autocracy dichotomy, and thus accounting for authoritarian diversity by applying various classifications of regime types. I study and compare regime types across regions and why they cluster. Moreover, I work on theoretical discussions of regime typologies,, definitions and their respective (qualitative) methods of analysis.

I am always on the lookout for new insights on dictatorship research, especially region-specific knowledge derived from Area Studies, that pushes the boundaries of what we know about authoritarian and democratization processes in one region, and that can be applied to other world regions.

(I will update this page with an overview of current research projects soon)