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27.01.2026
04.02.2026 - Autocratization in the United States
An open seminar session and discussion with Professor Erica Frantz, Ph.D. (Michigan State University)
A year after the return of Mr. Trump into office as President of the United States, we take the opportunity to speak about the future of political rule and the political regime in the US. In that past year, what many feared has come true: After almost 250 years, Trump’s second term has seen the demise of the democratic regime in the US. While some scholars had already warned about “How Democracies Die” during his first term in office (2016-2020), this time there is a masterplan for the coming four years the effects of which we have already been witnessing. What is the state of American democracy right now? What could a long-term trajectory look like and what are the chances of democratic recovery?
Participants are warmly invited to discuss with our guests and receive a first-hand expert assessment from ‘within the lion’s den.’
Professor Erica Frantz …
…is an associate professor in political science at Michigan State University and has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tübingen’s Institute of Political Science 2022-2024. She figures prominently among no more than a handful of today’s globally leading experts on authoritarianism and dictatorship, and on processes of “autocratization”, i.e.: the breakdown of democracy and its transformation into an authoritarian regime. She has also been awarded, together with Barbara Geddes and Joseph Wright, the Lijphart-Przeworski-Verba Comparative Politics Dataset Award (2015). Among her many books, single and co-authored, are recently:
- The Origin of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy From Within (2024; Oxford UP)
- Democracies and Authoritarian Regimes (2019; Oxford UP)
- How Dictatorships Work: Power, Personalization and Collapse (2019; Cambridge UP)
- Authoritarianism: What Everybody Needs to Know (2018; Oxford UP).
Her work has also appeared in many of the leading scholarly journals of the discipline such as, i.a.: the Annual Review of Political Science; Perspectives on Politics; Democratization; Journal of Democracy; Comparative Political Studies (CPS); Research & Politics; Journal of Politics; International Studies Quarterly (ISQ); International Political Science Review (IPSR); or Electoral Studies - apart from a wealth of contributions to non-academic outlets such as Foreign Affairs, The Washington Quarterly, The Monkey Cage, and many others more.
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