Eyes Wide Shut: Democratic Reversals, Scientific Closure, and the Study of Politics in Eurasia*

Abstract

ObjectivesThe article examines the relationship between democratic reversals and scientific closure. It focuses on the effects that authoritarian and hybrid regimes are likely to have on the ways scholars study them and conduct their fieldwork.MethodThematic content analysis of articles on Eurasian politics published over a 10‐year period, with particular attention paid to reported methods and fieldwork.ResultsScientific closure had as much to do with research cycles in the discipline as with democratic reversals. Notions of the region as democratizing persisted into the 2000s as scholars recycled data and conceptual frames from the 1990s. Fieldwork‐driven research was more likely to detect autocratization.ConclusionWhile disciplinary consensus reframed the region as autocratizing, the field remains vulnerable to scientific closure. Aside from the challenges posed by autocracies for fieldwork, the new disciplinary consensus may deter qualitative fieldwork and innovation in studying authoritarianism in Eurasia.