Today’s guest post comes from Dr. Brooklyn Walker at Hutchinson Community College, Kansas!
In my introductory Comparative Politics class I want my students to relate how nondemocratic regimes maintain political control. Specifically, I do not want them to walk away from the class thinking that authoritarianism systems are a residual category or a black box. Instead, I want them to see authoritarian systems as regime types in which politics occur in (somewhat) predictable ways. This also includes them identifying specific strategies employed by elites desiring to establish more authoritarian control, a skill that could aid in identifying democratic backsliding. Lastly, my students should be able to point to real-world examples of these strategies.
I developed an activity called ‘The World’s Best (Worst) Dictator’, modeled after a hot air balloon debate format. Imagine a group of dictators is in a hot air balloon together and the balloon begins to lose altitude: Which dictator should be pitched overboard to lighten the weight? Students take on the role of a dictator, negotiating amongst themselves, making the case for why they are the best dictator while the others in the balloon failed. Two elements are necessary for this type of deep student discussion: (1) Students need to understand strategies of authoritarian control, and (2) they need to learn about the dictators in the balloon.
TV Mini Series Poster: How to Become a Tyrant (Source: IMDb)
To equip my students, I utilize the Netflix series ‘How to Become a Tyrant’. Over the course of six 30-minute episodes, ‘How to Become a Tyrant’ lays out a set of strategies, termed ‘The Playbook’, for acquiring and maintaining control of a country. Each episode features a different strategy and focuses on a different dictator. These strategies are:
- Seize Power–Adolf Hitler
- Crush Your Rivals–Saddam Hussein
- Reign Through Terror–Idi Amin
- Control the Truth–Joseph Stalin
- Create a New Society–Moammar Qaddafi
- Rule Forever–Kim dynasty
In addition to providing detailed examples from the featured dictator, each episode also highlights other examples of how the strategy was employed in different contexts (many of which reference the dictators featured in other episodes, thereby providing the students representing non-featured dictators with broader information about their actor). The entire series runs for approximately three hours. Although this is a significant investment of class time, the series is well-structured, easy to follow, and entertaining. And because we watch it in class, we briefly discuss each episode in class while the material is fresh.
At the beginning of the module, I ask students to select which of the six featured dictators they wanted to represent. Because my current class has six students, each dictator was represented by a single student in the most recent iteration of this exercise. I give a brief lecture to define authoritarian systems and describe a few regime types (monarchical/personalistic, military, and single-party), and then we watch the film series. For each episode, I provide students with a notetaking guide that features a column for notes about the playbook in general, a column for notes about how the featured dictator employed the strategy, and a column for notes about how other dictators employed the strategy.
After watching the series, we spend a day in the computer lab for research time. The students’ assignment is to identify examples of how their dictator employs each of the six strategies in ‘The Playbook’. They are also required to identify one example of how each of the other dictators failed. Instead of asking for a full paper, I ask that students submit their notes.
On the day of the in-class activity, students are arranged in a circle. I give them about 10 minutes to discuss amongst themselves who should be ejected from the hot air balloon for the dictator’s failure to follow The Playbook. Students are allowed to use notes and whatever other resources they have available. After the discussion, I hand out a ballot that asks students to rate, from 0-10, the dictators in the balloon. The rating was to be based on the dictator’s knowledge of The Playbook and the use of real-world examples to defend the dictator and attack other dictators. The two dictators receiving the lowest scores were ejected.
We repeat the discussion with the remaining four dictators, and after 10 minutes take another vote. Two dictators are again ejected from the balloon. In the final round, the two remaining dictators make their case and the audience can pepper them with questions. The class takes a final vote to determine who is the world’s best (worst) dictator.
My students had a positive reaction to this unit. Student responses to an end-of-unit survey are presented in Table 1. They could indicate their agreement with the statements on a scale of 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree), providing also written comments. They liked the video series (“The videos are informative and provided a welcome break from lectures”, “We learned many different strategies for keeping power, with copious examples”) and the research process (“I learned more about my dictator with this assignment, because of research and with comparing other dictators to mine”). But they also described the class activity as one that helped them expand their knowledge base and cement their learning (“The actual class discussion allows for getting others’ views and their research”, “I had not heard of several of the dictators before this assignment, so it was interesting learning about them”).
Table 1: Student Feedback
| Prompt | Average Score |
| The film series helped me identify how nondemocratic regimes maintain/lose political control. | 4.5 |
| The film series helped me learn about authoritarianism better than the textbook/lecture alone. | 4.67 |
| My research helped me understand how nondemocratic regimes maintain/lose political control. | 4.17 |
| The class activity helped me understand how nondemocratic regimes maintain/lose political control. | 4.17 |
| The class activity helped me learn about authoritarianism better than the textbook/lecture alone. | 4.5 |
My students proposed a few variations. They thought it might be interesting to apply strategies from ‘The Playbook’ to a non-featured dictator, suggesting China’s Mao Zedong specifically. They also suggested that each dictator should be allowed to give a three minute opening statement prior to the interactive part of the class activity.
Overall, these student reactions indicate that this activity succeeds in reinforcing my original learning objectives, though I’m also anxious to explore the variations proposed by my students.