The overarching objective of the SOCIAL is to contribute to global and national efforts in understanding and addressing the challenges associated with promoting democratization and good governance in authoritarian contexts. More specifically, SOCIAL is built around three interconnected goals: 1. To collect original empirical data and produce new theoretical and empirical insights on the interplay between law, society and governance in authoritarian regimes in the Central Asian context. The empirical findings will enable us to engage with and advance theoretical debates within (comparative) political regimes literature and authoritarian law/legality scholarship. 2. To create, develop and enhance the sustainability of doctoral training programmes focused on the study of authoritarian regimes. Our proposed programme will involve a variety of disciplines, sectors, fields and geographical regions. By doing this, we will equip doctoral candidates with a comprehensive understanding of the interplay between law, society, and governance in authoritarian regimes, which will be embedded in the novel theoretical and methodological approaches. 3. To engage with and contribute to the global democratization and good governance agenda by translating research findings into policy-relevant ways and providing strategic intelligence and policy insights for international organisations, development agencies, decision-makers, researchers and practitioners inside and outside the EU on ways to promote democratization and good governance in authoritarian contexts. These goals will be accomplished by designing and conducting interdisciplinary and multisectoral doctoral networks programme on the “sociology of authoritarian law” involving 17 doctoral candidates, each completing a PhD at one of the 14 leading universities in Europe and Canada that are part of the SOCIAL consortium.