"This important book helps to advance a paradigm shift in comparative politics that restores the study of varieties of autocracy to their rightful place - that is, alongside, but separate from, the study of emerging and consolidated democracies. Strongly recommended for all scholars of comparative politics." - Michael Bratton, Michigan State University"

Today, electoral authoritarianism represents the most common form of political regime in the developing world - and the one we know least about. Filling in the lacuna, this new book presents cutting-edge research on the internal dynamics of electoral authoritarian regimes. Each concise, jargon-free chapter addresses a specific empirical puzzle on the basis of careful cross-national comparison. The result is a systematic, clearly structured study of the interaction between rulers and opposition parties in the central arena of struggle under electoral authoritarianism, the electoral battlefield.