Svolik’s The Politics of Authoritarian Rule has a few ideas that serve as the main theories behind all of which appears in the book, the root of the book so to speak. At the onset of the book, Svolik seeks to examine the main problem of what makes authoritarian politics work as they do, how are they different from democracies, and this is a topic Svolik finds severely underexplored. Svolik points out that authoritarian politics works in a much different way, so using standards we have for examining much more well-studied non-authoritarian countries cannot be lazily applied to the examination of authoritarian politics. Also, Svolik finds a lack of empirical complexity and depth in this area of study that cannot explain the differences between authoritarian regimes themselves, a gap he wishes to fill. This book stems from the discussion of the two main conflicts that Svolik sees in authoritarian politics, that of authoritarian control, and that of authoritarian power-sharing. These concepts appear along with others throughout the book as Svolik analyzes how authoritarian politics really work on a more in-depth level. This main problem Svolik sets up is because he identifies the main problem with dictatorships is that they inherently lack any kind of independent authority that can enforce any agreements. This, along with the ever-present threat of violence always on the table, it makes authoritarian politics work much differently than democratic politics. This dismal environment of authoritarian politics makes the game fundamentally different for Svolik, and as such, requiring a deeper level of analysis than current literature had given it. These are thus the central theories underlying everything Svolik discusses in later parts.