Mapping and Organizing Research on Dictatorships: Open Access Repository
▶Summary
The MORDOR project was conceived as an urgent and timely response to the challenges posed by the global decline of democracy, which has been in retreat since 2010. This rollback has brought the sh...
▶Objectives
The MORDOR project’s ‘Encyclopedia Tyrannica: A Research Guide to Authoritarianism’ (ibidem Verlag, April 2025) seeks to revolutionize education on authoritarian regimes by offering an open-access, comprehensive resource that combines global coverage, non-Western perspectives, and a learner-centered approach. Targeting students, educators, and researchers alike, it provides literature reviews, methodological guidance, and future research avenues. For educators its didactic companion offers lesson plans and user guides to design courses and curricula. This unique resource will foster better course creation, encourage new research on understudied regions and niche topics, and reduce errors in classifications and methodologies for both newcomers and experts in the field. Second, the project aims to influence EU democracy-support policies through its Policy Paper. By integrating insights from area studies and comparative politics, the paper provides innovative recommendations challenging Western-centric frameworks and offering actionable strategies for more effective EU democracy support. The Paper is expected to make a systemic contribution to policy analysis and inform EU policy-making over the next 7-8 years.
▶Activities
Project outputs were tested during the 2022 Master Class in Ostrava, featuring over 20 lectures and workshops for 24 students, and the 2023 Master Class in Ljubljana (attended by 22 students), and non-Western perspectives were consulted with local and regional experts from associated partners, activists, politicians and other scholars from Argentina, Central Asia, Georgia, South Africa, South Korea and the Philippines. Project results were disseminated at an international conference in Ostrava in May 20224 and during direct consultations with EU policy-makers and policy analysts in Brussels, one ‘closed’ working dinner and through an open online discussion seminar, were our policy experts engaged with external democracy experts.