PSCI 450 - Kings, Generals and Tyrants: Politics of Authoritarianism

What is the difference between non-democracies like China, hybrid regimes like Russia, one-party states like Singapore, patrimonial and personalist states in Africa or military dictatorships in Latin America? This course examines the dictator's playbook and how political power is structured in authoritarian regimes in a quest to attain absolute power and keeping it for as long as possible. Students will learn how to draw the main argument from a text, formulate critical responses to existing claims, and analytically interpret political contexts of authoritarian regimes as written in current scholarship, and visually presented in film.