From February 22 to February 24, 2017, the first conference on „The Political Economy of Democracy and Dictatorship“ took place at the University of Münster.  It was jointly hosted by Thomas Apolte (University of Münster), Mario Gilli (Bocconi University Milan) and Yuan Li (University of Duisburg-Essen).  More than 70 scholars from the fields of economics and political sciences attended this truly interdisciplinary conference.

The conference addressed the origin and prospects of democracy and dictatorship, policy control and governance structures in comparative political systems and transition processes from dictatorship to democracy and vice versa. It provided a platform for animated discussion and reflection bringing together scholars from roughly 20 different countries. Parallel sessions were devoted to 18 specific topics including political outcomes in democracies and autocracies, accountability in autocracies and determinants of institutional quality among others.

Four inspiring keynote lectures completed the academic program. In that respect, we had the pleasure to host Toke Aidt (Cambridge University), Sabine Carey (Mannheim University), Barry Weingast (Stanford University) and Ronald Wintrobe (Western University) as our keynote speakers. The keynote lectures were open to the general public and many members of the university community made use of the opportunity to join the discussion.

Besides the academic program, many conference attendees got to know the city of Münster during a guided city tour and continued the day’s discussion during a conference dinner on Thursday evening.

We would like to thank everyone involved in the organization of the conference and we would like to thank all conference participants for their contributions the academic program.

Date: 22 - 24 February 2017

Location: University of Münster, Germany

Hosts:

Thomas Apolte, University of Münster, Germany

Mario Gilli, Bocconi University Milan, Italy

Yuan Li, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

An overview of the program can be found here.