Description
The contemporary world is getting increasingly authoritarian. According to V-Dem, 71% of the world's population currently lives under authoritarian political regimes. There are officially more autocracies than democracies in the world. The short-lived triumph of liberal democratic ideologies in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War seems to be over.
This provides political scientists with a challenge to better understand the existing authoritarian spectrum, its roots, normative foundations and diversity of autocratic political regimes.
In this paper, Dr Aijan Sharshenova, a leading visiting researcher at the Social Sciences Research Centre, Riga Stradins University, will discuss what autocratic diffusion is and how autocracies learn from each. Aijan will dive into specific ways that authoritarian regimes of wider Eurasia adopt each other’s normative and legislative toolkits, know-how in oppression and persecution of independent media and civil society and reinforce each other’s normative discourses. Her research is an ongoing academic and policy endeavour to dissect autocratic alliances, authoritarian learning and know-how, and how it might shape the dominant political systems of the future world.
This paper is currently being prepared for a special issue publication. The first draft will be ready in November 2025.
