This article develops a framework for conceptualising authoritarian governance and rule in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. After introducing the national and academic context, which go a significant way towards understanding the paucity of comparative political work on Laos, we propose an approach to studying postsocialist authoritarian and single-party rule that highlights the key political-institutional, cultural-historical and spatial-environmental sources of party-state power and authority.

• ភាសាអង់គ្លេស