Erica Frantz 

Erica Frantz is an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University and a Charles F. Kettering Foundation research fellow. She is an expert on authoritarian politics, democratic backsliding, and the dynamics of political change. Frantz has published eight books on these themes, including The Origins of Elected Strongmen (Oxford University Press 2024), coauthored with Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Joseph Wright, and Authoritarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know® (Oxford University Press 2018). Her publications also include a wide array of academic journal articles, policy reports, and op-ed pieces. In addition, she is a collaborator on the award-winning Autocratic Regime Data Set. In 2020, Frantz won the Outstanding Teacher Award from the College of Social Science at Michigan State University. Prior to joining academia, she was a political analyst for a Washington, DC, think tank, where she worked on evidence-based foreign policy approaches.