Historically Europe experienced contradictions in the character and evolution of its political regimes.  Within individual countries elements of democracy coexisted with elements of authoritarianism; processes of democratization coincided with processes of autocratization.  This panel investigates these contradictions and draws lessons for contemporary regime change and democracy promotion.  Panelist Thomas Ertman shows how the combination of democratic and authoritarian elements in 19^th century Spain sowed the seeds of future dictatorship and civil unrest.  Kelly M. McMann examines how pockets of non-democracy existed within England and France even after the national governments adopted democratic practices.  She examines how these countries overcame subnational unevenness in democracy with the hope of finding clues to how to eliminate the problem in other regions of the world today.  Amel Ahmed’s paper uses evidence from first-wave democratizer to reconceptualize the idea of “backsliding”: she shows how nondemocratic measures often contribute to democracy in the long-term and how her ideas apply to contemporary regime change.  Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning further refine the idea of democratic regression by using a new dataset to examine degrees of democratic regression, to systematically test existing explanations, and to uncover new ones.  The authors begin with evidence from interwar Europe and then draw comparisons with other regions of the world.