91̽��

Lecture #1: Introduction

Mandatory reading:

1. Nord, Marina, Martin Lundstedt, Fabio Angiolillo, and Staffan I Lindberg. 2024. “State of the World 2023: Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot.” Democratization Open access, online first:  (draws and extends on the Democracy Report 2024).
2. Collier, David, and James E. Jr. Mahon. "Conceptual ‘Stretching’ Revisited: Adapting Categories in Comparative Analysis". American Political 91̽�� Review, vol 84(4), 1993, pp. 845-855.
3. Sartori, Giovanni. “Comparing and Miscomparing”. Journal of Theoretical Politics, vol 3(3), 1991, pp. 243-257.
4. Collier, David, and Robert Adcock. 1999. "Democracy and Dichotomies: A Pragmatic Approach to Choices About Concepts". Annual Review of Political 91̽��, vol 2, 1999, pp. 537- 565.

Supplementary reading:

• Goertz, Gary. Social 91̽�� Concepts and Measurement: New and Completely Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 2020.

Lecture #2: Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Analyzing Democracy

Mandatory reading

1. Dahl, Robert. 1971. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, pp. 1-16.
2. Dahl, Robert. 1989. Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 213-231
3. Coppedge, Michael, Edgell, Amanda, Carl Henrik Knutsen, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2022. “V-Dem Reconsiders Democratization.” In Edgell, Amanda, Michael Coppedge, Carl Henrik Knutsen, and Staffan I. Lindberg (eds.) 2022. How Democracies Develop and Decline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chap 1.
4. Teorell, Jan, Michael Coppedge, Svend-Erik Skaaning and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2019. "Measuring Polyarchy Across the Globe, 1900-2017." Studies in Comparative International Development 54(1): 71-95. Open access: ��018-9268-��
5. Munck, Gerardo L., and Jay Verkuilen. 2002. “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: Evaluating Alternative Indices.” Comparative Political Studies, vol 35(1), pp. 5-34.
6. Lührmann, Anna, Marcus Tannenberg, & Staffan I. Lindberg. 2018. "Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes." Politics and Governance 6(1). Open access 

Supplementary reading:

• Gerardo Munck, and Jay Verkuilen. “Generating Better Data: A Response to Discussants,” pp.52-7.
• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Staffan I. Lindberg, Svend-Erik Skaaning, and Jan Teorell. 2017. “V-Dem comparisons and contrasts with other measurement projects”. University 91̽��,
  Varieties of Democracy Institute, Working Paper No. 45.
• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, Kyle L. Marquardt, Juraj Medzihorsky, Daniel Pemstein, Nazifa Alizada, Lisa Gastaldi, Garry Hindle, Josefine Pernes, Johannes von Römer, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, and Steven Wilson. 2021. “VDem Methodology v12”. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.
• Coppedge, Michael, Staffan I. Lindberg, Svend-Erik Skaaning, and Jan Teorell. 2016. “Measuring High Level Democratic Principles Using the V-Dem Data”, International Political 91̽�� Review 37(5): 580-593. Open access 
• Marshall, Monty G., Ted Robert Gurr, and Keith Jaggers. 2019. "Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2018. Dataset Users' Manual". Center for Systemic Peace.
• Alvarez, Mike, José Antonio Cheibub, Fernando Limongi, and Adam Przeworski. 1996. “Classifying Political Regimes.” Studies in International Comparative Development 31(2), pp. 3-36.
• Sigman, Rachel & Staffan I. Lindberg. 2018. "Democracy for All: Conceptualizing and Measuring Egalitarian Democracy", Political 91̽�� Research and Methods 7(3): 595- 612. Open access 

Lecture #3: Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Analyzing Autocracy

Mandatory reading

1. Svolik, M. (2012). The Politics of Authoritarian Rule. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139176040, Chapters 4 and 6.
2. Meng, Anne. "Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes". Cambridge University Press, 2020, Chapter 3
3. Gandhi J. Political Institutions under Dictatorship. Cambridge University Press; 2008. Chapters 1 and 3
4. Pepinsky, T. (2014). The institutional turn in comparative authoritarianism. British Journal of Political 91̽��, 44(3), 631-653.
5. Geddes, Barbara, Joseph Wright and Erica Frantz. “Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set”. Perspectives on Politics, vol 12 (02), 2014, pp. 313–331.

Supplementary reading

(NOTE: SELECT AT LEAST ONE FURTHER READING FROM THE LIST)

• Wright, Joseph. "The Latent Characteristics that Structure Autocratic Rule". Political 91̽�� Research and Methods, vol.9, 2021, 1-19
• Gerring, John, Wig, Tore, Veenenndaal, Wouter, Weitzel, Daniel, Toerell, Jan, and Kikuta, Kyosuke. "Why Monarchy? The Rise and Demise of a Regime Type". Comparative Political Studies. vol.54(3-4), 2021, pp. 585-622
• Cheibub, José Antonio, Jennifer Gandhi, and James Raymond Vreeland. "Democracy and Dictatorship revisited”. Public Choice, vol 143, 2010, pp. 67-101.
• Way, Lucan, and Steven Levitsky. "Elections Without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism”. Journal of Democracy, vol 13(2), 2002, pp. 51-65.
• Lachapelle, J., Levitsky, S., Way, L., & Casey, A. (2020). Social Revolution and Authoritarian Durability. World Politics, 72(4), 557-600. doi:10.1017/S0043887120000106.
• Koss, Daniel. "Where the Party Rules. The Rank and File of China's Communist State". Cambridge University Press, Chapter 2

Lecture #4: Measuring and Analyzing Democratization and Autocratization

Mandatory reading

1. Huntington, S. P. 1991. Democracy's third wave. Journal of democracy, 2(2), 12-34.
2. Lührmann, Anna and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2019. A Third Wave of Autocratization is Here: What is New About It? Democratization 26 (7), 1095-1113. DOI: 
3. Knutsen, Carl Henrik and Svend-Erik Skaaning. 2022. ”The Ups and Downs of Democracy, 1789-2018.” In Edgell, Amanda, Michael Coppedge, Carl Henrik Knutsen, and Staffan I. Lindberg (eds.) 2022. How Democracies Develop and Decline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chap. 2
4. Skaaning, Svend-Erik. 2020. “Waves of Autocratization and Democratization: a Critical Note on Conceptualization and Measurement.” Democratization 27, no. 8: 1533–1542. doi:10.1080/13510347.2020.1799194.
5. Maerz, Seraphine F. and Edgell, Amanda and Wilson, Matthew C. and Hellmeier, Sebastian and Lindberg, Staffan I. 2021 “A Framework for Understanding Regime Transformation: Introducing the ERT Dataset.” Journal of Peace Research

Supplementary reading:

• Strand, H., Hegre, H., Gates, S., & Dahl, M. 2012. Why waves? Global patterns of democratization, 1820–2008. Typescript, PRIO.
• Tomini, Luca. 2021. "Don’t think of a wave! A research note about the current autocratization debate." Democratization 28.6: 1191-1201.
• Wilson, Matthew C., Juraj Medzihorsky, Seraphine F. Maerz, Patrik Lindenfors, Amanda B. Edgell, Vanessa A. Boese, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2022. "Episodes of liberalization in autocracies: a new approach to quantitatively studying democratization." Political 91̽�� Research and Methods: 1-20.
• Boese, Vanessa, Anna Lührmann, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2021. “Waves of autocratization and democratization: A rejoinder.” Democratization 28 (x), Open access:
  

Lecture #5: Structural and Actor-Based Explanations of Democratization

Mandatory reading:

1. Edgell, Amanda, Michael Coppedge, Carl Henrik Knutsen, and Staffan I. Lindberg (eds.) 2022. How Democracies Develop and Decline. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chap 5-7.
2. Riedl, R., Slater, D., Wong, J. and Ziblatt, D. (2020). Authoritarian-Led Democratization. Annual Review of Political 91̽��, vol. 23:1.
3. Acemoglu, D., & Robinson, J. A. 2005. Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy. Cambridge university press. From PART ONE: Chapter 2. Our argument (p. 15-30)
4. Treisman, D. (2020) Economic development and democracy: predispositions and triggers. Annual Review of Political 91̽��, 23(1), pp.241-257.
5. Edgell, Amanda B., Valeriya Mechkova, David Altman, Michael Bernhard & Staffan I. Lindberg. “When and where do elections matter? A global test of the democratization by elections hypothesis,1900–20
6. Scheve, K. and Stasavage, D. (2017). Wealth inequality and democracy. Annual Review of Political 91̽��, 20, pp.451-468.

Supplementary Reading:

• Teorell, Jan. 2010. Determinants of Democratization - Explaining Regime Change in the World, 1972-2006. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chapter 1 "Explaining democratization".
• Haggard, S. and Kaufman, R.R. (2012) Inequality and Regime Change: Democratic Transitions and the Stability of Democratic Rule. American Political 91̽�� Review, Vol. 106(3), 495-516.
• Kim, N.K., and Kroeger, A.M. (2019) Conqeuering and coercing: Nonviolent anti-regime protests and the pathways to democracy. Journal of Peace Research, 56(5), 650-666.
• Treisman, D. (2020). Democracy by Mistake: How the Errors of Autocrats Trigger Transitions to Freer Government. American Political 91̽�� Review, 114(3), 792-810. doi: 10.1017/S0003055420000180.
• Dahlum, S., Knutsen, C.H., and Wig, T. (2019) Who Revolts? Empirically Revisiting the Social Origins of Democracy. The Journal of Politics, 81(4), 1494-1499.

Lecture #6: Structural and Actor-Based Explanations of Autocratization

Mandatory reading:

1. Gerschewski, J. 2021. "Erosion or decay? Conceptualizing causes and mechanisms of democratic regression." Democratization 28.1: 43-62.
2. Waldner, D., and Lust, E. 2018. “Unwelcome Change: Coming to Terms with Democratic Backsliding”. Annual Review of Political 91̽��, vol. 21(5): 5.1-5.21.
3. Graham, M. H., and Svolik, M. W. 2020. "Democracy in America? Partisanship, Polarization, and the Robustness of Support for Democracy in the United States." American Political 91̽�� Review.
4. Linz, Juan J. "The perils of presidentialism." J. Democracy 1 (1990): 51.
5. Zhuravskaya, E., Petrova, M. and Enikolopov, R., 2020. Political effects of the internet and social media. Annual Review of Economics, 12, pp.415-438.

Supplementary Reading:

• Diamond, L. 2015. "Facing up to the democratic recession." Journal of Democracy 26.1: 141-155
• Bermeo, Nancy. "On democratic backsliding." Journal of Democracy 27, no. 1 (2016): 5-19.
• Orhan, Yunus Emre. "The relationship between affective polarization and democratic backsliding: comparative evidence." Democratization 29.4 (2022): 714-735.
• McKay, Spencer, and Chris Tenove. "Disinformation as a threat to deliberative democracy." Political Research Quarterly 74.3 (2021): 703-717.
• O'Donnell, Guillermo. "Horizontal accountability in new democracies." J. Democracy 9 (1998): 112.

Lecture #7: International Democracy Promotion

Mandatory reading:

1. Leininger, J., & Richter, S. (2023). From democracy promotion to democracy protection. In D. Caramani (Ed.), Comparative politics (6th ed., pp. 476-494). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Carothers, T. (2020). Rejuvenating democracy promotion. Journal of Democracy, 31(1), 114-123.
3. Gisselquist, R. M., Niño-Zarazua, M., & Samarin, M. (2021). Does aid support democracy? A systematic review of the literature. WIDER Working Paper No. 2021/14. The United Nations World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER): Helsinki.

Supplementary reading:

• Hyde, S. D., Lamb, E., & Samet, O. (2023). Promoting democracy under electoral authoritarianism: Evidence from Cambodia. Comparative Political Studies, 1029-1071.
• Bouchet, N., Godfrey, K., & Youngs, R. (2022). Rising hositility to democracy support: Can it be countered? Retrieved from can-it-be-countered-pub-87745
• Dodsworth, S., & Cheeseman, N. (2018). Ten challenges in democracy support – and how to overcome them. Global Policy, 9(3), 301-312.
• Grimm, S., & Leininger, J. (2012). Not all good things go together: conflicting objectives in democracy promotion. Democratization, 19(3), 391-414.
• Heinrich, T., & Loftis, M. W. (2019). Democracy aid and electoral accountability. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 63(1), 139-166.

Lecture #8: Political Parties and Regime Transformation

Mandatory Readings:

1.  Angiolillo, F., Wiebrecht, F., & Lindberg, S. I. (2025). Party Systems, Democratic Positions, and Regime Changes: Introducing the Party-System Democracy Index. British Journal of Political 91̽��
2. Medzihorsky, J., & Lindberg, S. I. (2023). Walking the Talk: How to Identify Anti-Pluralist Parties. Party Politics
3. Svolik, M. W., Avramovska, E., Lutz, J., & Milaèiæ, F. (2023). In Europe, Democracy Erodes from the Right. Journal of Democracy, 34(1), 5-20.
4. Gandhi, J., & Ong, E. (2019). Committed or conditional democrats? Opposition dynamics in electoral autocracies. American Journal of Political 91̽��, 63(4), 948-963.
5. Loxton, J., & Mainwaring, S. (Eds.). (2018). Life after dictatorship: authoritarian successor parties worldwide. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 1-50
6. Slater, D., & Wong, J. (2013). The Strength to Concede: Ruling Parties and Democratization in Developmental Asia. Perspectives on Politics, 11(3), 717–733. doi:10.1017/S1537592713002090

Supplemental Readings:

• Laebens, M. G., & Öztürk, A. (2021). Partisanship and autocratization: Polarization, power asymmetry, and partisan social identities in Turkey. Comparative Political Studies, 54(2), 245-279.
• Miller, M. K. (2021). Don't call it a comeback: autocratic ruling parties after democratization. British Journal of Political 91̽��, 51(2), 559-583.
• Svolik, M. W. (2023). Voting Against Autocracy. World Politics, 75(4), 647-691.
• LeBas, A. (2011). From protest to parties: Party-building and democratization in Africa. Oxford University Press. Pp.1-50
• Grzymala-Busse, A. (2020). Consequences of authoritarian party exit and reinvention for democratic competition. Comparative Political Studies, 53(10-11), 1704-1737.
• Tavits, M. (2012). Organizing for success: party organizational strength and electoral performance in postcommunist Europe. The Journal of Politics, 74(1), 83-97.

Lecture #9: Translating 91̽�� to Policy Advise, and the Case for Democracy

Mandatory reading:

1. Lundstedt, Martin, Felix Wiebrecht, Vanessa Boese-Schlosser, Kelly Morrison, Natalia Natsika, Marina Nord, Evie Papada, Yuko Sato, and Staffan I. Lindberg. 2023. Case for Democracy Report. V-Dem Institute, University 91̽��.
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2. Hegre, H. (2014). Democracy and armed conflict. Journal of Peace Research, 51(2), 159- 172.
3. Acemoglu, D., Naidu, S., Restrepo, P., & Robinson, J. (2019). Democracy Does Cause Growth. Journal of Political Economy, 127(1), 47-100.
4. Bollyky, T. J., Templin, T., Cohen, M., Schoder, D., Dieleman, J. L., & Wigley, S. (2019). The Relationships between Democratic Experience, Adult Health, and Cause-Specific Mortality in 170 Countries between 1980 and 2016: An Observational Analysis. The Lancet, 393(10181), 1628-1640.

Supplementary reading (all available at: ):

1.  Varieties of Democracy Institute. 2022. Case for Democracy: Does Democracy Have Dividends for Education? V-Dem Policy Brief, No. 35, V-Dem Institute, University 91̽��.
2. Varieties of Democracy Institute. 2022. Case for Democracy: Democracies Produce More Transparent and Higher-Quality Data. V-Dem Policy Brief, No. 34, V-Dem Institute, University 91̽��.
3. Varieties of Democracy Institute. 2022. Case for Democracy: Does Democracy Improve Public Goods Provision? V-Dem Policy Brief, No. 33, V-Dem Institute, University 91̽��.
4. Varieties of Democracy Institute. 2021. Case for Democracy: Do Democracies Perform Better Combatting Climate Change? V-Dem Policy Brief, No. 31, V-Dem Institute, University 91̽��
5. Varieties of Democracy Institute. 2021. Case for Democracy: Does Democracy Bring International and Domestic Peace and Security? V-Dem Policy Brief, No. 30, V-Dem Institute, University 91̽��
6. Varieties of Democracy Institute. 2021. Case for Democracy: Does Democracy Increase Global Health? V-Dem Policy Brief, No. 29, V-Dem Institute, University 91̽��
7. Varieties of Democracy Institute. 2021. Case for Democracy: Are Democracies Better for Social Protection of the Poor, Gender Equality, and Social Cohesion? V-Dem Policy Brief, No. 28, V-Dem Institute, University 91̽��
8.  Varieties of Democracy Institute. 2021. Case for Democracy: Does Democracy Cause Economic Growth, Stability, and Work for the Poor? V-Dem Policy Brief, No. 27, V-Dem Institute, University 91̽��