Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes

Valerie Bunce, Karrie Koesel, Jessica Weiss

The revival of authoritarianism is one of the most important forces reshaping world politics today. However, not all authoritarians are the same. To examine both resurgence and variation in authoritarian rule, Karrie J. Koesel, Valerie J. Bunce, and Jessica Chen Weiss gather a leading cast of scholars to compare the most powerful autocracies in global politics today: Russia and China. The essays in Citizens and the State in Authoritarian Regimes focus on three issues that currently animate debates about these two countries and, more generally, authoritarian political systems. First, how do authoritarian regimes differ from one another, and how do these differences affect regime-society relations? Second, what do citizens think about the authoritarian governments that rule them, and what do they want from their governments? Third, what strategies do authoritarian leaders use to keep...