ABSTRACT
This chapter offers theoretical and empirical insights into various ways of understanding, conceptualizing, and examining empirically authoritarian regimes and authoritarianism, civil society, civil society organizations (CSOs), and their relationships with the authoritarian state. To this end, the chapter first delves into various ways of understanding, defining, and classifying authoritarian regimes and authoritarianism. It then describes in detail the most important theoretical problems inherent in using a simplified, schematic, and realm-based understanding of civil society.
