Regime change toward democracy is often conceived of as coming in waves. A wave of cases increases the number of democratic polities but as the new wave ends and the recedes some of these cases fail to make it to full democracy or revert to a form of non-democracy. The last wave of democratization came after the collapse of the USSR. This wave 'came in' during the 1990s and early 2000s but since then the wave has retreated and there have been many cases of democratic backsliding and/or reversion to non-democratic politics. Understanding of what non-democratic politics consists of, how it works and does not work, and what its prospects might be are, however, unclear since there are a vast array of approaches - some new and some traditional - to what non-democracy is in use both within political science and in vernacular usage. This module will introduce students to these approaches and examine how, and to what end, they and can be applied. This will enable them to think more deeply and broadly about political change across the globe.

Are all unhappy families unique in their misery? The problems of studying non-democratic polities; Totalitarianism and single-party states; Military regimes; Personalist variations (Sultanism, patrimonialism and neo-patrimonialism); Limited access orders; Regime hybridity; Institutional approaches; Induces of democracy and classifications of non-democracy; Communism and fascism as non-democracy; Post-Cold War reverse wave cases; hybrids or LAOs; Regime longevity, collapse and prospects for democracy; New challenges of non-democracy: populism and nationalism.

On successful completion of this module, students will be able to: Demonstrate an understanding of the main terms used in political science to describe different forms of non-democratic polities historically and contemporaneously; Demonstrate an understanding of the principal problems in applying different terms describing non-democracy to both historic and contemporary forms of non-democratic polities; Demonstrate the capacity to analyze the life-cycles of non-democratic regimes across the globe and how these can be explained; Critically evaluate the ways in which indices of democracy classify non-democratic polities; Critically assess the benefits of case study, small-n and large-n comparisons of non-democratic polities.

On successful completion of this module, students will be able to: Develop an appreciation for how normative values inform discussions in both professional nd vernacular literatures on non-democratic politics; Develop an understanding of how political concepts and classifications guide political action, and of the utility or not of this for democratic societies; Show sensitivity to how the cultural and social norms of other societies can inform political choices and actions that depart from democratic norms.

On successful completion of this module, students will be able to: N/A

This module will be taught through lectures and tutorials (graduate attribute: articulate). The lectures will be used more heavily at the start of the module to give students concise introductions to the different issues that are involved in describing and studying non-democratic regimes. As the module progresses and we move from theoretical definitions and debates about different forms of non-democracy students will work in tutorials settings and individually to look at how political systems across the world are classified as non-democratic by indices of democracy and how well different classifications of non-democracy can be applied to cases and small sets of cases. These activities will teach them to be critical of different modes of analysis and description, to think more imaginatively about what the purposes of classification are, and hence about what the purpose of political analysis is more generally (graduate attributes: curious and agile). This will be done by exposing students to ongoing classification projects, such as V-Dem, and new ideas about non-democracy such as the ideas of North et al (which now inform development thinking) and the ideas of Geddes et al (which have foreign policy implications for things like the design of sanctions regimes). Students will also learn about older ideas about non-democracy since these are current in much media and political debate about states like Russia and China, and are used to describe political actors - sometimes fairly, sometimes not - who have challenged democratic norms in recent years (graduate attributes: curious and agile). Confronting these issues will make students reflexive consumers of media and professional discourses about global politics who are better able to see the consequences of political language and how it shapes their responses to future political problems.