The subfield
The subfield regime dynamics and contentious politics deals with how political regimes (democracy and autocracy) emerge, function, change, and break down. While democracy is the peaceful competition for political power, autocracy represents political competition through either outright violence or a threat of violence. Regime change processes include democratization, autocratization, and transitions from one autocratic regime to another.
Studies of how regimes function cover the politics of both authoritarian and democratic regimes and address various institutional developments within political regimes and changes in political elites as well as state-building and other changes to state capacity. This part of the subfield also covers key obstacles to democracy, such as corruption as well as the effects of political regimes, for example, on economic development, redistribution, and environmental and climate change.
Topics within contentious politics include all types of extra-institutional conflict and organized violence within states, including civil wars and other armed intrastate conflict, insurgencies, coups, strikes, violent and non-violent protests, revolutions, and state repression.
Teaching
The subfield group’s members teach across all political science discipline programmes in the department — at bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD levels. They also contribute to the specialized master’s programme Peace and Conflict Studies (PECOS) and to the Honours Bachelor’s Program in Social Sciences, the cross-disciplinary bachelor’s programme in Development studies and in Philosophy, politics and economy (FPØ. In all the political science programs, students can pursue specializations in the group’s subject areas. The members of the group are particularly relevant as supervisors for master's theses and PhD theses with topics concerning regime dynamics and contentious politics.
Research
Regime dynamics and contentious politics encompasses multiple research areas within political science and has strong links to the field of comparative political behaviour, organizations and institutions, political economy and conflict studies. The members' research activities are primarily carried out in affiliated research centres, research groups, and project teams.
Research groups
- Comparative Institutions and Regimes (CIR)
- Policy, Bureaucracy, and Organization (PBO)
- Political data science (PODS)
Collaboration
Researchers from other relevant research institutions in the Oslo area, such as The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs (NUPI), and CICERO Center for International Climate Research, also contribute to the teaching – and especially in the supervision of the bachelor's and master's thesis – in regime dynamics and contentious politics. Students are also offered scholarships and writing stays at some of these institutions.
