AUTHORITARIANISM 101: A New Course
Teaching dictatorships next semester...
Précis/TL;DR: in which we begin a newsletter series on the study of authoritarianism - and how to teach it engagingly. This represents the first of an occasional set of posts that will feed into a course I am teaching in the Spring 2025 semester on “Dictators in Europe & Russia.” A short list of new publications rounds out the post as always.
Setting the Stage
As informed readers know, I am an adjunct professor in the Political Science department at George Washington University in addition to my full-time job as an analyst with CNA’s Russia Studies Program. My official, slightly unusual title is “Professorial Lecturer in Political Science” and I’ve been teaching a course for undergraduates on Russian Politics since Fall 2022. This will be the fourth time I’ve taught the course (I took off Spring 2024 for work reasons) and it’s been a well-reviewed hit with students so far.
Teaching Russian Politics has been a rewarding endeavor. I admit to enjoying teaching for itself, and am pleased that I’m able to keep one foot in the academic door while working in the more applied national security research community. It has also been an opportunity to continue working on Russia in a broad sense, as I have to make decisions on how to approach various questions related to the Russian economy, foreign policy, society, culture, and overall political history in addition to my scholarly focuses on the politics of its authoritarian regime, Russian (and Ukrainian) political-military affairs, and related strategic elite decision-making issues.
Given the demands of the class, I have had sharpen my thinking on a variety of topics well beyond my Ph.D dissertation or my day-to-day work. The course has therefore been a useful forcing function for me. I probably have a book’s worth of material on ‘what Russian politics is like and why.’ Or even more engagingly, ‘why Putin won, why he continues to rule, and why it makes a lot of sense.’ But that’s a future project.
This summer, however, I was asked if I wanted to offer a different course on a political science subject for the department to ensure that they are appealing to student interest in European/Eurasian politics generally. As an adjunct, I have no interest in teaching something generic or further afield from my core research areas, given the workload required to build out a new course and this being very much so a second job undertaken for personal (and CV) reasons. So I’ve been thinking about this as an opportunity to focus on an area I’ve already done a lot of work in. And as preparation for a future book on the subject.
After some back and forth, I decided to pitch a class on “Authoritarianism in Europe, Russia, & Eurasia” for upper-level undergrads, which the department accepted. I’m all set up to start it next semester under the amusing short title of “Dictators in Europe & Russia.” If you are a current GW student, you should register for it.
But as most of this newsletter’s readers will not be in a place to do so, I thought I’d use this platform as a way to both share what (and how) I’ll be doing, as well as solicit feedback and suggestions while I develop the course. This is the first newsletter entry on this project, which will continue through the course’s January 2025 start and then continue on in parallel.
Lessons from Teaching Russian Politics
Although my course on Russian Politics is only focused on one authoritarian regime, it happens to be a big, paradigm-influencing one. About five classes in, after surveying all of Russian (and Soviet and Tsarist) political history and running through the chaos of the 1990s, we get to what I call “The Putin Lecture.” This covers the late 1990s through to the mid-2000s, and reviews Vladimir Putin’s meteoric rise to power, his successful consolidation of the Russian political system, and the creation of a durable authoritarian political order.
Modern Russia is not a case of successful democratization, nor is it good fodder for a happy account of democracy and its 21st century health, but rather a tale of authoritarian victory and indeed a case-study in lessons on how to build an effective one. While showing the slide below, I inform my students that if they ever get the opportunity to build an authoritarian regime at some point in the coming decades, they could do worse than follow Mr. Putin (and his advisors).
This is both a tongue-in-cheek joke to rib my wide-eyed students and a perfectly serious statement. Authoritarian Russia has proved to be quite resilient, even as it has evolved considerably since Putin first gained the presidency in 2000. Russia is a paradigmatic case of electoral authoritarianism, and understanding Russia’s political trajectory provides helpful insights into a variety of other electoralist regimes, including other exemplars ranging from Venezuela and Turkey, Serbia, and Hungary, and those further afield.
My intention is for the Spring course “Dictators” to be a version of this lesson, writ-large and with greater comparative and temporal scope. And in my typically semi-provocative vein I intend on a course that is not only analytical and descriptive, but dives deep into the various forms and ways in which states in Europe and Eurasia have built and sustained successful (and failed, of course) authoritarian regimes from the 1800s to the present day.
In fact, I’m currently toying with the idea of the final assignment being nothing less than students developing a ‘how-to’ manual for both creating, and maintaining, non-democratic rule in a country of their choice. That should be a sufficiently spicy and experimental hook for an interesting class, I think.
Course-Building and the Way Forward
I’ll be using subsequent iterations of this newsletter’s AUTHORITARIANISM 101 series to help spur my own thinking on how to build this course and solicit suggestions from dear readers like yourself. Next up, I will provide my working lecture list.
At present and as a preview, I’m thinking of breaking it into segments on how to conceptually understand democracy and authoritarianism, 19th century forms of non-democracy (monarchy, Caesarism, and ‘liberal’ authoritarianism especially), the 20th century ‘isms’ (communism, fascism, nationalism), and the current era of electoral authoritarianism, ‘democratic backsliding,’ new visions of authoritarian theory, and prospects for the future. But you’ll get a more detailed list soon, so TBD.
In the meantime, I’m currently trying to put together a list of solid readings - books and articles - that I can mine for insights. I’d like an engaging list, so please comment or email me with any suggestions you have. I’ll certainly include Ed Luttwak’s excellent monograph Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook, excerpts from our new book Autocrats Can’t Always Get What They Want, Alastair Smith and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s The Dictator’s Handbook, Erica Frantz’ Authoritarianism: What Everyone Needs To Know, and a crop of more technical and detailed scholarly articles.
But that won’t be it, and I’m happy to take suggestions. If you have biographies, novels, bracing non-fiction reads, or excellent essays do send them my way. Anything from Napoleon I onward is fair game, as long as the geographic focus is in Europe or (northern) Eurasia. I’m also interested in less well-known work, such as von Haller’s old defense of personalist authoritarianism The Restoration of Political Science, Huntington and Moore’s excellent survey of 20th century one-party regimes Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society, and the somewhat crazed selection of postmodern (neo)reactionary arguments as well as excitingly dangerous new left-progressive variants. So do send ideas my way!
I’m also open to ideas for assignments or for course structure. This will be an experimental class, and likely a mix of lecture and discussion. We are set for long, two and a half hour blocs once per week, which sets some limitations on how to develop it. I also have no intention of imposing a high grading load (not just for students’ sake, but because I am certainly not compensated enough for anything unnecessarily intensive). Still, any innovative pedagogical thoughts are very welcome.
That’s it for now - expect a drip of AUTHORITARIANISM 101 newsletters from now on, intermixed with other standard content and essays on this platform. Onward!
Further Reading & Listening
There are a few new publications worth mentioning since our last newsletter:
First, a plug for my August article in Foreign Affairs on the resiliency of the modern Russian regime. I argue that the evidence since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War points to a consistent ability to adapt and maneuver despite considerable challenges. Read “Putin the Resilient” here.
Second, a new companion article in RIDDLE Russia on the institutions that undergird and complicate Russia’s wartime dictatorship and the future post-Putin succession. I provide an overview of the complicated and layered state institutions, political entities, and other politically-relevant bastions within Russia’s authoritarian regime. Read “The Institutional Ecosystem of Russia’s Personalist Dictatorship” here.
Third, a new CNA paper written by myself and my excellent colleague Dmitry Gorenburg on Russia’s General Staff. This project is a concise primer on the key command and operational-strategic institution in the Russian Armed Forces, and was sponsored by U.S. European Command’s Russia Strategic Initiative and given the green light for public release this month. Read “The Central Brain of the Russian Armed Forces: The Modern Russian General Staff in Institutional Context” here.
Fourth, a new academic article written with my friend and coauthor Dima Kortukov on developments in official ideology within Russia today and newly published in Communist and Post-Communist Studies. Read “The Foundations of Russian Statehood: The Pentabasis, National History, and Civic Values in Wartime Russia” here. Free versions of the PDF can be found here until October 17th (after that date just email me for a copy if you need one).
Fifth, we did a panel event on our new book at GWU earlier in September. Nathan Brown and I were there in person, with our coauthors Steven Schaaf and Samer Anabtawi zooming in. The inestimable Marlene Laruelle provided very kind discussant comments. See if you can’t catch my answer to a quirky audience question on Franco’s Spain and “hedonistic EDM hippies.” You can find it here on Youtube.
Finally, for those who missed recent previous newsletters. One on the first book review we’ve gotten:
And another on where to buy it:
An Outside Reading Corner
Oh, and as a final coda, I’m introducing a new section to this newsletter. Here I’ll highlight books I’m reading or excited about - and therefore recommend. Two entries for today.
First, I’d like to plug a new book out on Russia’s authoritarian constitutional order by my Australia-based colleague William Partlett titled Why the Russian Constitution Matters: The Constitutional Dark Arts. The blurb is as follows:
“This book tells the forgotten story of the ‘dark arts’ of constitutional law by explaining how Russian President Vladimir Putin used particular rules in the 1993 Russian Constitution to build and safeguard his personal power. These dark arts remind us that constitutions are not just democratic documents; they also can be used by politicians seeking to undermine their opposition and dominate politics. With democracy under pressure from authoritarianism around the world, this book demonstrates how and where to find the ‘devil’ in the details of constitutional law.”
You can find it here and can use a discount code (GLR BD8).
Second, I’d like to recommend an exciting new work on the history of global communism. The book is To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism by the excellent historian Sean McMeekin, who has previously written influential histories of the Russian Revolution and WWII. The blurb runs:
“In his sweeping history, Sean McMeekin investigates the evolution of Communism from the seductive ideal of a classless society into the ruling doctrine of tyrannical regimes. From Marx’s writings to the global resurgence of Communism in the twenty-first century, McMeekin argues that, despite the endurance of this political system, it remains deeply unpopular. Where it has arisen, it has always arisen by force.”
You can find it competitively priced here, and I’ll see if I can’t find a discount code somewhere for a future newsletter iteration.
- Julian