Course 2023-2024 a.y.

The course focuses on democratization and authoritarian transitions, consolidation of democracy, democratic institutions, authoritarian survival, and consequences of regime type for a wide range of economic and political outcomes. The course is structured in 3 macro modules. The first two are each focused on a particular regime type and are divided roughly into two sections, while the third compares the two regime types:

1. Democratic regimes:
   • Democratic institutions and stability.
   • New challenges to democratic regimes.
2. Authoritarian regimes:
   • Authoritarian institutions.
   • Tactics of authoritarian survival.
3. Comparing Authoritarian and Democratic Regimes.

At the end of the course student will be able to...

• Identify the main factors that are responsible for democratic stability and for democratization.
• Recognize how a certain institutional arrangement within an authoritarian regime responds to the autocrat’s need to survive in office.
• Establish differences in institutional arrangement, incentives for leaders, and economic and political outcomes produced across different political regimes.

At the end of the course student will be able to...

• Use the theoretical and empirical insights presented during the course to assess the risk of democratic or authoritarian transition in a country, given a set of institutions and of social, political, and economic characteristics.
• Interpret the behavior of leaders in democratic and authoritarian regimes in the real world through the lenses of the key incentives these leaders face.

• Face-to-face lectures

• Lectures are structured according to the standard format: the instructor presents and elaborate on the material contained in the required readings, which the students have read before class, so as to enhance in-class discussions and students’ participation.
• Attendance: some of the assigned readings feature a high degree of sophistication in terms of methods of analysis. Therefore, students’ attendance is strongly recommended. In fact, although no formal prerequisites are required, the lectures provide students some necessary (yet informal) background that helps them gain a better understanding of those readings that include a technical component. 

With the purpose of measuring the acquisition of the above-mentioned learning outcomes, the student assessment is based on two main components, a partial written exam and a final written exam, each making up 50% of the final grade, and both based on a mix of multiple-choice and open questions.

• Multiple choice questions are designed to test the students’ knowledge of the basic fundamental concepts and notions about different political regimes, the source of their stability/frailty, and the various rationales behind their institutional makeup.
• Open-ended questions are aimed at evaluating the students’ ability to establish connections between findings reported in different readings and their ability to use these connections to evaluate the prospects of democratization or authoritarian transition of countries characterized by a particular set of institutions and of social, political, and economic conditions.

The partial exam focuses on the readings covered in the first part of the course, which mainly address questions on democratic institutions and stability, while the final written exam focuses on the readings covered in the second part of the course, which mainly address questions on authoritarian institutions and survival, and on the comparison between democracies and autocracies in terms of economic and political outcomes.

The required readings for this course are scientific articles and book chapters that represent the key and/or state of the art contributions to the different topics analyzed. A complete list of the required and suggested reading are provided at the beginning of the course and are available on Bboard.