Course Overview
Dictatorship is one of the oldest forms of governance in the world. In fact, theories of autocratic rule have long informed our understanding of power, violence, and inequality, in both dictatorships and democracies alike. But modern technologies have complicated the ways in which dictatorships operate and presented new opportunities to study these regimes from different vantage points.
This course considers digital dictatorship from two dimensions—as both a strategy of autocratic survival (digital tools of control) and as a method of empirical inquiry (digital data on autocratic politics).
Learning Objectives
- To develop theoretical understanding of dictatorship from a political science perspective
- To analyze questions about dictatorship using new sources of “big data”
- To produce an original research project that synthesizes political science theory with data science tools
About the Instructor
Fiona Shen-Bayh is an Assistant Professor of Government at William & Mary where she also serves as a faculty affiliate of the Global Research Institute and the Data Science program. Her research examines the institutional dimensions of autocracy, including the legal and judicial instruments of political control in sub-Saharan Africa.