Joseph Torigian

I study the politics of authoritarian regimes with a specific focus on elite power struggles, civil-military relations, and grand strategy. My philosophy as a scholar is to select topics based on the widest gap between the under-utilization of available documents and their theoretical and empirical importance, extract broader lessons, and use those lessons to help us to understand two nations of crucial geopolitical importance – Russia and China. My research agenda draws upon comparative politics, international relations, security studies, and history to ask big questions about the long-term political trajectories of these two states. In particular, I am interested in how leaders in those countries create security against threats from within the elite, their own people, and other states.