Personalization in Authoritarian Regimes and Russia's War against Ukraine

The main focus of the talk was on internal regime dynamics in Russia (“regime personalization”) before and during the war.

Fabian Burkhardt is a comparative political scientist. His research interests are political institutions, such as executives and constitutions, in authoritarian regimes, with a regional focus on post-Soviet countries, in particular Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. At IOS in Regensburg, he conducts research on how digital transformation shapes post-Soviet authoritarian regimes. Since July 2020, he has been the co-editor of Russland- and Ukraine-Analysen, and of the Russian Analytical Digest since 2022. Burkhardt received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Bremen for the thesis “Presidential power and institutional change: A study on the presidency of the Russian Federation.” Before joining the IOS, he worked at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU Munich), the Higher School of Economics (HSE Moscow), and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP Berlin). His research has been published in journals such as Post-Soviet Affairs, Europe-Asia Studies, and Russian Politics.