On 12-13 October 2023, the cluster of excellence 'Contestations of the Liberal Script' is organizing a conference dealing with methodological challenges of studying cases, which pose significant problems for social scientists - authoritarian regimes, countries experiencing major political and economic turmoil, and similar hard-to-study cases. The conference takes an explicitly comparative perspective, looking at China, the post-Soviet Eurasia, Southern Asia and Africa. The program of the conference can be found below.