This seminar critically explores the uses and limits of the vocabulary we use to describe contemporary political orders: what do concepts like “democracy” and “authoritarianism” illuminate, what do they obscure, and what alternative vocabularies might we consider for thinking and talking about varieties of political regimes? What about political orders that seem to combine elements of different regime types? Contemporary electoral democracies sometimes can seem to veer toward authoritarianism, even as repressive regimes encourage government responsiveness. What are the social, political, and economic conditions that give rise to such apparent ambiguity, and how can our conceptual language accommodate it? How can we parse economic as well as political shifts? Twentieth-century concepts like "fascism" are still relevant in the practice of politics, but are they still helpful for its analysis? Finally, how can we think about political regime type in relation to wars of imperial expansion? This course will address these questions using a range of historical and contemporary case studies.