Since the 1970s systematic research on authoritarianism within comparative politics has been developed. Within this field, authoritarianism has been understood as a modern type of political regime that contains personal dictatorships, military governments, and hegemonic parties. After the third wave of democracy, which started by the end of last century, different research agendas were outlined that included the relationship between the type of authoritarianism and the paths to democracy, the conditions of regime change, the risks of breakdown in newly established democracies, and the possibilities of democratic consolidation. More recently, debates on authoritarianism have been revitalized by the Arab Spring and the new conflicts opened up by regime breakdown and by a new research agenda on the persistence of authoritarian forms of power at the subnational level in new democracies, in particular in Latin America.