Erica Frantz
Associate Professor of Comparative Politics
Authoritarian politics, aristocratic rule and policy, democratization, conflict
Get in touchBiography
Erica Frantz (Ph.D., UCLA, 2008) is an associate professor in Political Science at Michigan State University. From 2011 to 2015, she was an assistant professor in Political Science at Bridgewater State University, and from 2008 to 2011 she worked as an analyst at the Institute for Physical Sciences. Her research and teaching interests include authoritarian politics, democratization, conflict, and development. She is particularly interested in the security and policy implications of autocratic rule.
Read MoreEducation
UCLA: Ph.D., Political Science | 2008
Washington University: M.A., Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) | 2007
UC Santa Barbara: B.A., Political Science and English | 2000
Selected Press
People abroad are asking their militaries to save their democracies. It won’t work.
The Washington Post | 2018-04-13
The results of Egypt’s presidential election this month were about as surprising as the sunrise. President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who came to power in 2013 in a coup, won reelection with 97 percent of the vote. Of course, Egyptians didn’t really have other options: Since the coup, Sissi has embarked upon a brutal campaign of repression, and NPR reported that six potential opponents were detained or pressured by the government to withdraw their candidacies. Still, the upper middle class and the upper class in Egypt have largely welcomed Sissi as an antidote to a government backed by the poor and Islamists, according to H.A. Hellyer of the Atlantic Council.
Putin’s landslide election makes it seem like Russia is stable. Don’t be fooled.
Vox | 2018-03-19
Sunday’s election in Russia, a rigged affair that Vladimir Putin won handily, seems on its face a testament to the strength of his regime. Putin staged a simulacrum of democracy, handed himself another term in office, and faced little in the way of opposition throughout the whole process.
When dictators die, stability reigns
MSU Today | 2016-11-03
A dictator’s death rarely leads to regime change, according to a new study that comes as a fifth of the world’s authoritarian rulers are at least 70 years old and in various stages of declining health.
