The course provides an in-depth introduction to theories of the origins of democracy and dictatorship. In the first part of the course, we examine and compare theories rooted in economic development, voluntarism, institutional design, and historical institutionalism. The latter half of the course applies these different approaches to debates over the origins of Nazi rule in Germany in the 1930s, military dictatorship in Chile in the 1970s, and non-democratic rule in contemporary Russia.