Lucan Alan Way

Lucan Ahmad Way received his BA from Harvard College and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Way’s research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union and the developing world. His most recent book, Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats and the Rise of Competitive Politics (Johns Hopkins, 2015), examines the sources political competition in the former Soviet Union. His book, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Steven Levitsky), was published in 2010 by Cambridge University Press. Way’s work on competitive authoritarianism has been cited thousands of times and helped stimulate new and wide-ranging research into the dynamics of hybrid democratic-authoritarian rule. Way has also published articles in Comparative Politics, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Democracy, Perspectives on Politics, Politics & Society, Slavic Review, Studies in Comparative and International Development, World Politics, as well as in a number of area studies journals and edited volumes. He has written about political transitions and dictatorship for the Washington Post and Foreign Affairs.

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