AUTHORITARIANISM 101: Syllabus Development
Thinking chronologically, thematically, or both?
Précis/TL;DR: in which we continue our newsletter series on the study of authoritarianism - and how to teach it engagingly. This is the second 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.
Continuing Our Series
As my good 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. This coming spring semester (2025), I’m signed up to teach a course called “Dictatorships in Europe & Russia,” which is a shorthand for my initial pitch of “Authoritarianism in Europe, Russia, and Eurasia.” It will be on the wide diversity of authoritarian rule found in that part of the world over the last two hundred years.
I haven’t taught this course before, which means I’m building out the class from scratch in my free time. I’m using our Political Order(s) newsletter as a way to both put ideas on paper and solicit suggestions. You can find my initial entry in this series, explaining the overall idea, inspiration, and intentions here:
Happily, I’ve already gotten some good feedback from fellow profs (and my father - also a former prof), including some reading recommendations and class exercise ideas. If you haven’t sent me ideas or your own syllabus, please do so. My email is open and you can always comment via Substack!
In any case, this newsletter entry is a little bit more tentative. That is, I don’t actually have my answer to the question settled yet. That question refers to the overall structure of the course material and its presentation. Before I can finalize what assignments we’ll have, I need to know how I want things to run for our ~16 weeks worth of 2 1/2 hour once-per-week evening lectures.
This uncertainty is an opportunity, as this is a greenfield course. And not only that, but the topic is one that allows for quite a bit of professorial freedom - but that means making some big choices on approach, organization, and framing.
For example, in my current Russian Politics course, we start with a big-bang intro to all of Russian history from the Baptism of Rus (988) to the fall of the Soviet Union (1991). This is to make sure we have a baseline, given there are no requirements for students signing up to be familiar with Russia or even know where it is on a map.
Then we take approximately two thirds of the class going through a chronological political history of Russia - 1990s, then 2000s, then 2010s, then 2020s. Then we conclude with five thematic lectures: ideology; empire and the near-abroad; foreign policy; the Russo-Ukrainian War; and wartime Russian domestic politics.
That’s just one model. Other comparative politics classes might not have a temporal component at all. Rather they may be fully thematic, running through various governance features (parliamentarism, presidentialism, electoral systems), regime types (democracy, authoritarianism), political economy (developed economies, developing economies), international elements (foreign policy, intergovernmental organizations), and issue-areas (conflict and war, corruption and neopatrimonialism, populism), etc.
The point being there are usually different ways to slice the pedagogical cake in a social science course.
With a little brainstorming, I’ve come up with four relative emphases that could structure this new course sequentially. I intend to incorporate all of these elements, but they suggest potentially distinct pathways for how we go about doing so.
Four Primary Ways to Structure the Course
The four ways correspond to distinct ways of looking at authoritarianism in Europe and Eurasia: as a chronological history; as an exercise in classifying regime type and governance; as a question of shifting ideas and ideologies; and as a tale of regional differences. Again, all of these will be present in the course overall, but emphasizing one (or a combination) especially will inform how each individual class fits together.
Historical eras of authoritarianism
There’s an obvious way to structure the course that would rely on a chronology of variations on authoritarian rule from the 1800s onward. That is, what is ‘non-democracy’ from Napoleon I to Kaiser Wilhelm to Mussolini to Brezhnev to Vladimir Putin. There are some easy periodizations - the 19th century, the Interwar period, the Cold War, and the post-Cold War world. Emphasizing this would place time variation at the center, and so we’d basically be doing a tour of history over the span of our roughly 16 classes. This, in my view, would also be a good entrée into an assignment of having students do book reports and/or in-class presentations on specific historical regimes or dictators which could be spread throughout the year.
Regime type & governing institutions
If there’s a history-forward approach, there’s also a concept-forward one: regime type and governance. We’ve talked about this before (and one day that essay will become an actual paper), but the idea of categorizing or classifying political regime is an evergreen point of interest for political science - as it was for the Classical thinkers over two thousand years ago. This approach would highlight differences between monarchies, juntas, party-states, electoralist regimes and other ways to divvy up the European/Russian experience of authoritarian governance. Putting this at the forefront would mean going through different types in turn, emphasizing concepts, social science ways of thinking, and how governance/decision-making works through authoritarian institutions. One interesting exercise could be having students build their own typologies of authoritarian government and see how they compare with other standard measures - or alternatively doing a big classification exercise to nail down one specific country at one time.
‘Isms’ & ideology
A different way to hack at authoritarian experiences is to focus on ideology, instead of type or history. There’s clear inter-relation here, but a focus on ideology and various ‘isms’ would allow us to really dig into legitimating ideas, justifications, and how ideology interacts with authoritarian rule and structure. This would emphasize thinking about long-lost authoritarianisms in Europe (monarchism, ‘liberal’ oligarchy, modernizing Caesarism), the old classic ones (fascism, communism), and current points of interest (neo-imperialism, nationalism, illiberalism, Eurasianism, technocracy). This focus would also make it easy to bring in the idea of ‘authoritarian theory’ here - i.e., explicit arguments in favor of authoritarian rule as something more than an emergency justification, but as superior to democracy.
Regional variation
Finally, we should be reminded that the class is pitched for “Europe, Russia, and Eurasia,” after all. Many students may read the title and understandably think we’ll be doing lots of comparisons between Europe (whatever that may mean exactly) and Russia. A more differentiated approach to emphasizing region would be to break the course into geographic groups: the experiences of authoritarianism in Western Europe, post-communist Eastern Europe and the Balkans, Russia itself, and the post-Soviet successor states. Class structure might be built around a set of ‘critical cases’ that we dive into depth with: say, for example Napoleon III’s regime, Fascist Italy, Ataturk’s Turkey, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Fanquist Spain, Milosevic’s Serbia, Putin’s Russia, etc. One idea here could be that students would be assigned regions and asked to create pattern maps or repeating themes at the regional and local level.
I have my own biases on which of these make the most sense to actually teach to. But I also decided to ask Twitter what sounded best. This is what I got:
A very low-engagement post, but it actually sort of fits with my own thinking after laying out these options. I spend a lot of time thinking about authoritarianism through the lens of regime type, because that’s what we do as scholars. But frankly it sounds a little boring when presented that way. And purely doing theme will mean we’ll be running back and forth across the continent and time periods. Probably not a good way to structure a whole course around, and potentially confusing.
Rather, the ideological side of things (socialism! communism! fascism! nationalism!) is obviously much sexier. And the regional distinctions make a lot of sense - you may have signed up for the class because you’re interested in Russia, but someone else might be interested in Germany, and another Spain, and so on. And although it did not win in my poll, I think the time dimension is important - not least because it gives us a clear and natural guiding light on when exactly we should touch on different major authoritarian regimes and why.
Given all of this, I think we can fruitfully combine these elements into something structurally sound and interesting. We’ll still spend a few weeks getting the conceptual stuff out of the way (definitions and definitional fights, big theoretical questions, introduce the idea of types), I think. But then the key conceit will be moving through time, not least because that’s a very easy heuristic.
Within the time dimension we break it down by ideas/ideologies, with reference to regional differences when possible. I think that squares the circle a bit, and gives ideas and different characterizations of authoritarian rule (but less abstract than regime type) primary billing in each class session.
Below is a draft schedule with this general philosophy in mind. I could absolutely be persuaded otherwise, however. The obvious other alternative would be to run it like other graduate-level classes I’ve seen, with a focus on definitions and concepts, then moving to institutions (elections, parties, legislatures, courts, security services, etc) and then rise/breakdown stuff to conclude. So I’m open to change!
In any case, do let me know what you think. There is a poll below after the outline.
A Eras-Focused Draft Class Outline
DICTATORS IN EUROPE & RUSSIA, PROF. WALLER, SPRING 2025
Week 1 – Syllabus Day/Introducing the Course
It is cruel not to have a syllabus day come first, especially as this will be a relatively unusual course for many students.
Week 2 – Democratic Regimes & Political Order
Since ‘authoritarianism’ has come to mean any political regime that is not an electoral democracy… we probably should talk about democracy in a fairly deep way. This also gives us a baseline comparison and will be useful to judge how the students think about regime and governance in the first place.
Week 3 – Authoritarian Regimes, Conceptually & Theoretically
This is the most social-science-y class and where I’ll introduce regime type concepts, the spectra of democracy-autocracy, and give a quick look into what questions we usually ask about authoritarian regimes (their rise, fall, and survival mostly).
Week 4 – Introducing Authoritarianism to Europe and Russia
This begins our passage through history. I’m envisioning a transition from our two weeks of conceptual discussion (what is authoritarianism, how does it work, how should we classify it, why do we care) and move into application. This class would function partially as a general background to Europe and Eurasian history, highlighting how we can apply our concepts and theories of authoritarianism to key historical polities - the Roman Empire, the layered sovereignties of Western European kingdoms and empires, the aristocratic republic of Poland-Lithuania, the despotic legacies of Byzantium, the Mongols, Muscovy, and the Ottomans, and so on. In some ways this may be the most unusual class, as it connects far distant regimes to modern concepts.
The Long 19th Century
Week 5 – Napoleonic Modernity Contra Absolute Monarchy
We move into modernity with the shock of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s eventual counter-revolutionary consolidation of power, which will inform the rest of the century and usher in an era of nationalist liberalism, liberal oligarchy, monarchical reaction, dynastic conservatism, and the first semi-democratic European regimes. This class emphasizes the uniqueness of the French Revolution as opening up a new era of democratic theory and the idea of republicanism, while also highlighting the persistent nature of monarchy and its ability to counter challenges, such as in Tsarist Russia.
Week 6 – Caesarism, Bureaucratic Despotism, Empire, & Modernization
We then highlight the tremendous innovation on authoritarian rule that occurs during the 19th century beyond the republican-monarchy division. Here we introduce the idea of electoralist authoritarianism and plebiscitary rule - where huge popular votes actually enshrine and legitimize authoritarian governance, most famously in France. We also discuss the modernization of old kingdoms and empires and how they developed political institutions (parliaments and elections) even while maintaining old monarchical privileges, such as in Austria or Germany. Here we bring in the idea of the state, and that a large permanent bureaucracy fundamentally changes the capacity of rulers to intervene in the lives of their subjects and citizens.
The Interwar Era
Week 7 The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy and the Mob
In the wake of the First World War’s destruction, a swathe of new states emerge East-Central Europe, while old monarchical regimes are toppled in favor of new republics. But nearly every republic that claimed it would be a democracy in 1919 ended up falling to authoritarian rule by the 1930s. Here we bring in the problem of unstable democracy, the insufficiencies of Interwar institutions, and the role of popular movements influencing state authority. Here we will focus on the 1920s in Europe proper.
Week 8 – Communism, Fascism, & National Socialism
This is ideology week for for the Interwar section, and we dive deep into the biggest ‘isms’ of the day. We will divide this class into two parts: communism and fascism (with the latter having its distinct Nazi break-off). We’ll dig into ideas as well as the ‘institutional-hierarchical’ governance structures that define all three of these particularly destructive regimes.
Week 9 – SPRING BREAK
Week 10 – Royal Dictatorships, Military Regimes, and National-Conservative Authoritarianism
This wraps up our Interwar Era period, and it moves out from ideology to discuss the many, many cases that don’t quite fit. These range from the Iberian dictatorships to Pilsudski’s Poland and Horthy’s Hungary, the curious Austrian Ständestaat, to the Baltic personalist and corporatist regimes, the Balkan kingdoms, and the odd Turkish case. It also allows us to catch our breaths and take stock of how authoritarianism in Europe, Russia, and Eurasia have shifted and changed over the preceding century.
The Cold War
Week 11 – Coups, Popular Fronts, & Totalitarian Party-States
This covers the period 1945 to roughly the 1960s, which saw the height of Stalinist totalitarianism, the victory of authoritarian communism across Eastern and East-Central Europe, the attempt at communist takeovers in Italy and France, the survival of Interwar-era regimes in parts of the Mediterranean, the strange halfway house of Finland, and the bitter division of left-authoritarian Europe into the USSR + Warsaw Pact bloc of state-socialist party-states and the divergent Yugoslav model.
Week 12 – Mature Party-States, Ideological Decline, & the Third Wave
This covers the period of roughly the 1960s to 1991, which saw the moderation of communist totalitarianism into a softer form of coercive authoritarian rule, the collapse of right-wing national dictatorships in Portugal, Spain, and Greece, the weakening of Marxist-Leninist ideological fervency, and the collapse of the entire authoritarian world with the end of communism starting with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Modern Era
Week 13 – Electoral Authoritarianism & the Fourth Wave
This will cover the major development of the post-Cold War era, the return of authoritarianism primarily in its electoral variety, covering countries such as Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Central Asia. One way of parsing this class would be dividing it into an ‘East-Central Europe’ section and a ‘post-Soviet’ section. I’m also open to expanding this into two classes and combining the next two together.
Week 14 – The New Caesarism, Neoreaction, Eurasianism, & Technocracy
This gets into the topic of modern authoritarian theory, autocratization ideas in Europe, the development of a ‘civilization-state’ form of authoritarianism in Russia and its current wartime dictatorship, and other such esoteric and fast-moving topics. It’ll also be our big critical theory class, bringing in alternative views on democracy itself in Europe and elsewhere, most notably with regard to technocratic impulses within EU supranationalism and critics of ‘neoliberal’ capitalism.
Week 15 – Authoritarianism in Europe & Eurasia’s Future
We conclude with a speculative class on the authoritarian future of the 21st century. It will also be a great time to bring in final student views on ‘how to build an authoritarian regime’ (I am strongly considering this to be a core assignment, perhaps involving a short paper).
Week 16 – Make-Up Day
Whatever we don’t get to!
This poll will run for one week. I ask that if you want me to throw something away please give a comment to this newsletter post (or email me) with your thoughts.
That’s all for me for now. Next up will be thinking through assignments and grading. But that’ll wait until later.
Further Reading
There are three new publications worth mentioning since our last newsletter:
First, I have a new book chapter on the illiberal ideology known as ‘Catholic Integralism’ in an edited volume titled Social Catholicism for the 21st Century? I introduce the varied integralist intellectual sphere in the English-speaking world and assess the degree to which these arguments - found increasingly in certain segments of the American right - are compatible with democracy. This is my fullest scholarly statement on integralism after a couple years of research on the subject, and was asked by the volume’s editor to write it after a previous essay of mine from a few years ago. Read “Integralism, Political Catholicism, and Democracy in the Modern West” here.
Second, another plug for my new 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, highlighting a new essay in Russia.Post with my coauthor Dima Kortukov on patriotic education, official ideology, and multimedia illiberalism in wartime Russia. It is an outgrowth of our academic article on the subject. Read “‘The DNA of Russia’: Ideology and Patriotic Education in Wartime Russia” here.
Finally, for those who missed recent previous newsletters, an essay on how not to analogize current politics to the European Interwar Era here:
An Outside Reading Corner
I’m introducing a new section to this newsletter. Here I’ll highlight books I’m reading or excited about, and therefore recommend. Just one entry today: American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order by my colleague Jerome Copulsky. Here is the blurb for the book, published at Yale University Press:
The conversation about the proper role of religion in American public life often revolves around what kind of polity the Founders of the United States envisioned. Advocates of a “Christian America” claim that the Framers intended a nation whose political values and institutions were shaped by Christianity; secularists argue that they designed an enlightened republic where church and state were kept separate. Both sides appeal to the Founding to justify their beliefs about the kind of nation the United States was meant to be or should become.
In this book, Jerome E. Copulsky complicates this ongoing public argument by examining a collection of thinkers who, on religious grounds, considered the nation’s political ideas illegitimate, its institutions flawed, and its church‑state arrangement defective. Beholden to visions of cosmic order and social hierarchy, rejecting the increasing pluralism and secularism of American society, they predicted the collapse of an unrighteous nation and the emergence of a new Christian commonwealth in its stead. By engaging their challenges and interpreting their visions we can better appreciate the perennial temptations of religious illiberalism—as well as the virtues and fragilities of America’s liberal democracy.
Jerome’s book is very good, especially as historical background if you have been following the various debates on religion and politics in current day America. He makes the argument that the US has always seen religious discontent with our general national settlement on religion, morality, and government, and that there are patterns across history that echo from the colonial period onward. And in many ways, these arguments are ultimately concerned with the national question of ‘who we are.’
I’ve been asked to write a review of it for an online publication, which will be out as soon as I can actually finish sending it to the editor. But in the meantime you can find the book here on Amazon if this is a topic you’re interested in.
-Julian