Monika Nalepa - "After Authoritarianism" - Milan Svolik

Monika Nalepa will discuss After Authoritarianism: Transitional Justice and Democratic Stability. She will be joined in conversation by Milan Svolik and introduced by Jenny Trinitapoli, Director of the Center for International Social Science Research. 

Presented in partnership with the Center for International Social Science Research (CISSR)

This event will be held in person at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. At this time, masks are required for in the store events and strongly encouraged at outdoor events.

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About the book: Transitional justice – the act of reckoning with a former authoritarian regime after it has ceased to exist – has direct implications for democratic processes. Mechanisms of transitional justice have the power to influence who decides to go into politics, can shape politicians’ behavior while in office, and can affect how politicians delegate policy decisions. However, these mechanisms are not all alike: some, known as transparency mechanisms, uncover authoritarian collaborators who did their work in secret while others, known as purges, fire open collaborators of the old regime. After Authoritarianism analyzes this distinction in order to uncover the contrasting effects these mechanisms have on sustaining and shaping the qualities of democratic processes. Using a highly disaggregated global transitional justice dataset, the book shows that mechanisms of transitional justice are far from being the epilogue of an outgoing authoritarian regime, and instead represent the crucial first chapter in a country’s democratic story.

About the author: Monika Nalepa (PhD, Columbia University) is professor of political science at the University of Chicago. With a focus on post-communist Europe, her research interests include transitional justice, parties and legislatures, and game-theoretic approaches to comparative politics. Her first book, Skeletons in the Closet: Transitional Justice in Post-Communist Europe was published in the Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics Series and received the Best Book award from the Comparative Democratization section of the APSA and the Leon Epstein Outstanding Book Award from the Political Organizations and Parties section of the APSA. Monika Nalepa is the Director of the Transitional Justice and Democratic Stability Lab, which produces the Global Transitional Justice Dataset.

About the interlocutor: Milan Svolik is Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His research and teaching focus on comparative politics, political economy, and formal political theory. Svolik has authored and co-authored articles on the politics of authoritarian regimes, democratization, and democratic backsliding. He is the author of The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge University Press, 2012), which received the best book award from the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association. In addition to continuing work on the politics of authoritarianism and democratization, Professor Svolik’s current research includes projects on democratic backsliding, support for democracy, and electoral manipulation. His latest book project examines why ordinary people support politicians who undermine democracy.