Cops, Colonels, and Spies

This course is class-restricted to juniors and seniors. This course develops a comparative analytical framework to understand the role of organized state coercion in domestic politics, protest politics and regime change. Cases are drawn from across different regions and regime-types, with an emphasis on the communist and post-communist regimes of Eastern Europe. The analytical themes covered include: Origins of modern police forces; campaigns of Dirty War in authoritarian and democratic regimes; espionage during the Cold War; policing protest politics; and the role of coercion in cases of regime change.