Comparative democracy research focuses on regimes and regime change in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, on democratization processes and incomplete democracies. It revolves around elections and institutions. In the variant of autocracy research, manipulated elections and a lack of checks and balances are central. This book takes a critical look at the blind spots of this research, particularly regarding a reductive definition of democracy, the neglect of material politics, and the omission of the historically-sociological causes for the persistence of dictatorship as well as for stagnation and setbacks in the spread of democracy.