Teaching autocracy to undergraduate versus graduate students

Jacob Nyrup

Chapter 4 in Teaching Autocracy and Autocratic Politics, 2026, pp 68-86 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Teaching about autocratic politics is prioritized less than teaching about democratic politics at most, if not all, political science departments. As a result, students are less familiar with autocratic politics, and we should take this as our point of departure when designing courses in autocratic politics. In this chapter, I first discuss how to teach autocratic politics to undergraduate students, and then I discuss how to teach autocratic politics to graduate students. Lastly, I discuss differences and similarities in approaches when teaching autocratic politics at different levels and argue that the teacher should take a more authoritative role and focus on a fixed curriculum when teaching undergraduate students. In contrast, we should be more flexible when teaching graduate students and encourage them to use the course as a starting point for conducting their own research.

Keywords: Autocracy; Teaching; Undergraduate; Graduate; Student Focused Learning; Curriculum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035353453
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