Authoritarianism and Democratic Breakdown

According to Freedom House, nearly half of the countries of the world are "unfree."  The number of unfree and especially “partly free” states has been growing globally, which makes their study an urgent matter. To be sure, such countries vary widely in their makeup and institutions, from autocratic Russia and the Iranian theocracy and Gulf states to communist rule in China and the North Korean dynastic dictatorship.  But together they present major puzzles for scholars and policy makers.  In that pursuit, the Hoover Institution Workshop on Authoritarianism and Democratic Breakdown is led by Norman M. Naimark, Hoover senior fellow and Paul R. Gregory, Hoover research fellow.  Participants include advanced graduate students and early career faculty.

The workshop is open to all disciplines and geographic regions.  Since its founding in 2003 by Paul Gregory, the workshop has brought together more than a hundred scholars from a dozen countries, working on Russia/Soviet Union, China, and other authoritarian regimes. The workshop's output consists of numerous books and articles written by its participants, including scholarly monographs published or forthcoming in the Stanford-Hoover Series on Authoritarianism, the Yale-Hoover Series on Authoritarian Regimes, books at the Hoover Press and other publishers, and articles in scholarly journals, including the Hoover Digest.