ECPR Digital Authoritarianism Research Network <https://ecpr.eu/group/digital-authoritarianism> launches the online lecture series "The Many Faces of Digital Authoritarianism". We cordially invite you for the first lecture by Professor Oliver Schlumberger with the title "The Digital Transformation of Authoritarianism". You can find below the abstract and bio of Prof. Schlumberger. The lecture will be held online via Zoom on *February 4, Tuesday between 15:00 - 16:30 CET. * Topic: ECPR Digital Authoritarianism RN Lecture Series- Prof. Oliver Schlumberger Time: Feb 4, 2025 03:00 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna Join Zoom Meeting https://uni-leipzig.zoom-x.de/j/68151846834?pwd=Htw9oEeZ2u9ivsddMfX2vZO64RSY... Meeting ID: 681 5184 6834 Passcode: 411770 Kind regards, ECPR Digital Authoritarianism RN Steering Committee https://x.com/digitalaut_ECPR https://bsky.app/profile/digitalaut-ecpr.bsky.social -------------------------------------- "The Digital Transformation of Authoritarianism" This talk provides an overview of various dimensions in which digitization causes, has caused, or will cause politically significant transformations of the mode of governance in authoritarian regimes. Such dimensions include the regimes themselves and the elites who run them; state-society relations that we see changing profoundly, including the chances of anti-systemic (i.e. democratic) oppositional actors; state-business relations in both the domestic and global realm; as well as an international dimension in which many of the domestic transformative aspects find their counterpart beyond the borders of the respective country. Maybe most importantly, however - and not restricted to authoritarian regimes, but much more pronounced than in democracies - we should pay attention to the immaterial, cognitive dimension where we see a contemporaneousness of multiple aspects coincide that together amount to a crisis of what is known, of what is believed, and of what is believed to be known. The overall purpose of the intervention is thus not a presentation of empirical research results, but rather to inspire future research in a relatively new, but potentially vast, field of research.“ Bio: Oliver Schlumberger is professor of Comparative Politics at Eberhard-Karls University of Tübingen. Having studied at Tübingen, Geneva and Damascus, his main research interests are authoritarianism; systemic political change (autocratization and democratization) and, lately, the transformations of politics through digitization. His latest publications on the relationship between digitization and politics are: „How authoritarianism transforms: A Framework for the Study of Digital Dictatorship“ (McMeehan-Prize for the best article; jointly with M. Edel; A. Maati; and K. Saglam, 2024, in* Government & Opposition*) and „Information, Doubt and Democracy: How Digitization Spurs Democratic Decay“ (jointly with A. Maati; K. Saglam; Ch. Sirikupt; and M. Edel, 2023, in *Democratization*).