The resilience of authoritarian regimes in various world regions and the emerging model of illiberal capitalist autocracies (China, Russia) led to a growing scholarly attention on the du-rability of those regimes. Meanwhile, the mainstream of research literature rather focuses on the respective domestic dimension and neglects the international sphere. Yet, autocracies do not only seem to resist to the global spread of democracy but they do also display their own activities of autocracy promotion. This study argues that processes both of intended dissemi-nation as of diffusion of authoritarian norms, structures, processes, policy approaches or prac-tices apply in a regional setting. Hence, we assume that promotion of autocracy as well as diffusion effects can be attributed to authoritarian centers of gravity. Our research aims at identifying such centers of gravity and at shedding light on their strategies and modes of in-fluence towards neighboring countries. For this purpose, in a first step, the international di-mension of authoritarian learning and cooperation is conceptualized by trying to crystallize the patterns of interaction between regional authoritarian regimes. In a second step the design for the empirical analysis is presented, which comprehends the analysis of three world regions – the Middle East, Latin America and Central Asia – and a cross-area comparison.
