Roundtable: Promises and Pitfalls of Classifying Political Regimes

Abstract

Why do regime typologies produce contradictory classifications for identical cases? Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) codes contemporary China as closed autocracy, Geddes et al. classify it as party regime, while Varieties of Political Regimes (Va-PoReg) identifies it as communist ideocracy. These divergences reflect fundamentally different conceptual foundations, leading to divergent empirical findings on regime stability and change. As autocratization accelerates and authoritarian regimes demonstrate unexpected durability, regime classification has become central to explaining why organizationally similar regimes exhibit vastly different trajectories. This roundtable examines the theoretical commitments embedded in classification choices and their consequences for comparative research. Different analytical dimensions illuminate different causal pathways: frameworks emphasizing electoral competition and democratic quality excel at tracking autocratic erosion and hybrid regime formation, while typologies differentiating regimes by power structures and legitimation patterns explain authoritarian durability through mechanisms operating independently of democratic attributes. Each approach answers different questions, yet these trade-offs are rarely made explicit, resulting in systematic misunderstandings when researchers apply classification schemes to questions they were not designed to answer, thereby generating misleading causal inferences. The roundtable brings together scholars developing major classification infrastructures (Varieties of Democracy, Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy, Varieties of Political Regimes) with theorists examining conceptual foundations of the regime concept, autocratization, and democratic backsliding. By fostering systematic dialogue between diverse approaches, the session clarifies what different classification strategies can and cannot explain. Without greater conceptual transparency in regime classification, comparative research on authoritarian durability and breakdown risks talking past itself. The roundtable contributes to advancing standards for research that captures how regimes differ in ways critical for predicting durability, breakdown, and transformation.

Title	Details
Roundtable Speaker: Luca Tomini	View Paper Details
Roundtable Speaker: Marianne Kneuer	View Paper Details
Roundtable Speaker: Svend-Erik Skaaning	View Paper Details
Roundtable Speaker: Johannes Gerschewski	View Paper Details
Roundtable Speaker: Licia Cianetti	View Paper Details