Aurel S. Croissant

Aurel Croissant (born 1969) is a German Professor of Political Science at Heidelberg University in Heidelberg, Germany, where he researches democracy, authoritarianism, civil-military relations, terrorism, political violence, and Asian politics. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Democratization.

Background Croissant received his MA in Political Science, Sociology and Public Law from the University of Mainz in 1996, and his Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in 2001, also from the University of Mainz. During his Master and Ph.D. program, he was an adjunct researcher and lecturer at the Universities of Mainz and Heidelberg.

Career After completing his Ph.D. in 2001, Croissant took a job at Heidelberg University as a Senior Lecturer, before accepting a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor for Comparative Politics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. In 2006, he became a Full Professor of Political Science at Heidelberg University, a position he holds today. From 2023 to 2025, he was appointed Frontier 10-10 Professor at Ewha Womans University, Seoul.

Since 2012, he has been Editor in Chief (with Jeffrey Haynes) of the journal Democratization and is on the editorial boards of the Asian Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Contemporary Southeast Asian Affairs.

He has been or is a Fellow of the East West Center Honolulu, the East Asia Foundation, the Taiwan Foundation, the National Endowment of Democracy, the Center for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation, and the Korea Foundation.

His research has appeared in more than 300 scholarly publications in German, English, Indonesian, Russian, and Spanish, His recent book publications include Dictators’ Endgames (Oxford: Oxford University Press with Tanja Eschenauer-Engler and David Kuehn, 2024), Research Handbook of Civil-Military Relations (Cheltenham and Northhampton: Edward Elgar, edited with David Kuehn and David Pion-Berlin, 2024), and The Routledge Handbook of Autocratization (London and New York: Routledge, edited with Luca Tomini, 2024).

Notable publications Croissant, A., T. Eschenauer-Engler, and D. Kuehn. Dictators’ Endgames. Oxford University Press. Kuehn, D., and A. Croissant. Routes to Reform. Civil-Military Relations and Democracy in the Third Wave. Oxford University Press. (Guiseppe Carforio ERGOMAS Award for the Best Book 2024, European Research Group on Military and Society, Ergomas) Croissant, A. and L. Tomini (eds.). The Routledge Handbook of Autocratization. New York and London: Routledge. Croissant, A., D. Kuehn, and D. Pion-Berlin (eds.) Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Civil-Military Relations. London: Edward Elgar. Croissant, A. and O. Hellmann (eds.). Stateness and Democracy in East Asia. New York: Cambridge University Press. Bruneau, T. C. and A. Croissant (eds.), Civil-Military Relations: Control and Effectiveness Across Regimes. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Croissant, A., D. Kuehn, P. Lorenz and P.W. Chambers, Civilian Control and Democracy in Asia, Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave. Croissant, A. & Lott, L., “Democratic Resilience in the Twenty-First Century. Search for an analytical framework and explorative analysis”, Political Studies, DOI: 10.1177/00323217251345779 Croissant, A. & Kuehn, D., “Soldiers and Autocratization: Explaining varieties of military roles in post-Cold War Asia”. Journal of Global Security Studies (DOI: 10.1093/jogss/ogae046) Bayer, M.; Croissant, A.; Izadi, R. and N. Scheeder. “Multidimensional Measures of Militarization (M3) - A Global Dataset”. Armed Forces & Society, DOI: 10.1177/0095327X231215295/ Croissant, A. Comparative Politics of Southeast Asia. An Introduction. Second, updated and extended edition. Springer Croissant, A. Civil-Military Relations in Southeast Asia. Cambridge University Press. Croissant, A., “Riding the Tiger. Civilian Control and the Military in Democratizing Korea”, Armed Forces & Society, 30(3), 357-382. Croissant, A., D. Kuehn, P.W. Chambers and S.O Wolf, “Conceptualizing Civil-military Relations in Emerging Democracies”, European Political Science, 10: 137-145.