Comparing Political Regimes provides a current and comprehensive empirical assessment of the world’s 195 sovereign states. Alan Siaroff analyses and classifies countries in terms of economic development, political evolution, and state strength, ultimately outlining and contrasting the aspects of four regime types:liberal democracies, electoral democracies, semi-open autocracies, and closed autocracies.

The fourth edition explains institutional differences within democracies and autocracies respectively, including how regimes evolve in key countries and how this change is incremental. An invaluable reference for students to refer to, this book provides a thorough foundational introduction to the comparative politics of countries and contains several unique figures and tables on the world’s sovereign states. This new edition modifies the conceptual focus regarding some features of democracy and democratic party systems, expands on variations in autocracies, and adds a new chapter on the historical evolution of democracy, including key thresholds of representative democracy and levels of participation and competition at various historical junctures for all countries.