“In recent years, we have witnessed an alarming increase in the cult of personality surrounding leaders in various dictatorships across the globe. Yet we still know only little about how personality cults are formed and evolve, and how they shape internal developments and foreign policies of autocracies,” says Jakob Tolstrup, Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus BSS.

He has recently been awarded DKK 6 million by the VELUX FOUNDATION for a basic research project on the subject.

Jakob Tolstrup will employ entirely new methodological tools to deliver the first systematic study of the role of personality cults in modern dictatorships.

Together with international colleagues, he will examine how personality cults emerge and develop over time in authoritarian regimes, and what role such personal veneration plays in the domestic and foreign policy decisions of dictators.

The project will investigate the dynamics of personality cults both at the micro-level among political elites and leaders in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China, and at the macro-level through comparative analysis across all dictatorships since the end of the Cold War.

In this way, the project aims to generate greater knowledge about a central yet often only superficially addressed aspect of those dictatorships which are increasingly threatening the liberal world order and the international standing of democracy.