Political Participation and Regime Stability: A Framework for Analyzing Hybrid Regimes

Abstract

In past decades a number of countries that have moved away from outright authoritarianism have not transformed into democracies, but rather into regimes that combine democratic and non-democratic characteristics, sometimes labeled hybrid regimes. This article develops a framework for analyzing hybrid regimes. Empirically, the article examines three cases, Tanzania, Russia, and Venezuela, looking specifically at electoral participation and support for the opposition, as well as the potential for political change, i.e. public discontent and conditions for mobilization. The article demonstrates that the stability of hybrid regimes is related to the incumbents' ability to circumvent the opposition, but also to the lack of interplay between citizens and opposition parties.

What Do We Know about Hybrid Regimes after Two Decades of Scholarship?

“…For example, the trichotomous scheme advocated by Mainwaring, Brinks and Perez-Linan (2001) organized regimes into democracy, semi-democracy and authoritarianism. Other labels for this intermediate regime type included mixed (Bunce & Wolchik, 2008) or simply hybrid (Ekman, 2009;Karl, 1995). Although this approach allowed for greater differentiation, its analytical utility is limited.…”

“…For example, J. Ekman (2009), instead of focusing on horizontal accountability among political elites, examines vertical accountability between the ruler and ruled. He measures the participation of citizens using three variables: confidence in political parties, turnout and confidence in elections and public support for democracy.…”

How to silence the lambs? Constructing authoritarian governance in post-transitional Hungary

“…Political scientists have studied the plastic democracy-authoritarian dimension for many years, developing concepts such as 'hybrid regimes', 'competitive authoritarianism', 'semi-democracy' and 'transition democracies' (Ekman 2009;Levitsky and Way 2010). They are all ways of denoting the failure of transformation in all but the most Western societies in Central and Eastern Europe.…”

The Diversity of Political Regimes

“…Still, the label hybrid regime -meaning competitive or electoral authoritarianism -seems to have stuck, as it is short, simple and snappy. In recent years, we have seen work on hybrid regimes in Southeast Asia (Case 2005;Wang 2009;Alexander 2008), in the Middle East (Ryan and Schwedler 2004), in the Caucasus (Wheatley and Zürcher 2008), and in Africa and South America (Ekman 2009). In 2006-2007, the Intelligence Unit of the Economist included 'hybrid' regimes as one of the categories in its worldwide Index of Democracy.…”

“…In 2006-2007, the Intelligence Unit of the Economist included 'hybrid' regimes as one of the categories in its worldwide Index of Democracy. Furthermore, we have seen more general attempts to map out hybrid regimes in the world (Wigell 2008;Boogards 2009;Ekman 2009). As for monographs, Schedler (2006) and Levitsky and Way (2010) are among the best currently on the market.…”