Beyond Authoritarianism: The Conceptualization of Hybrid Regimes

St Comp Int Dev (2011) 46:270297 DOI 10.1007/s12116-011-9088-x

Leah Gilbert & Payam Mohseni

Published online: 28 July 2011# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract This paper appraises the state of the field on hybrid regimes by depicting the tensions and blurred boundaries of democracy and authoritarianism with adjectives. An alternative conceptualization and ordering of regimes are subsequently introduced using a configurative approach. Rather than place regimes on a linear continuum from authoritarianism to democracy, it highlights the multi-dimensional arrangements possible for the construction of regime types. The configurative approach also provides an analytically useful way to measure and integrate hybrid regimes into our classificatory schemes. As a result, it helps alleviate the conceptual confusion in the literature and contributes to a discussion of hybrid regimes beyond the framework of authoritarianism. The paper concludes by presenting a list of all hybrid regimes in the world between 1990 and 2009 identified with this method.

Keywords Authoritarianism . Hybrid regimes . Regime classification . Concept building and measurement

The boundary between democratic and nondemocratic is sometimes a blurred and imperfect one, and beyond it lies a much broader range of variation in political systems.

Diamond, Linz and Lipset (1988) Democracy in Developing Countries

The imperfect conceptual boundary between democratic and nondemocratic regimes has been the focus of much scholarly attention and debate at the turn of the

L. Gilbert (*)

Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected]

P. Mohseni

Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected]

Beyond Authoritarianism: The Conceptualization of Hybrid Regimes

St Comp Int Dev (2011) 46:270297 271271

twenty-first century. The third wave of democratization and the end of the cold war dramatically increased the global number of regimes that hold multiparty elections with the full adult franchise. Yet these democratic features have appeared alongside the persistence of authoritarian forms of rule in many countries, posing significant challenges for typological classification. As a result of this dilemma, scholars created a host of concepts to capture the mixed, or hybrid, nature of these regimes.1

The attachment of modifiers to established political regime types has become the dominant method employed by the field.2 In the 1990s, democracy served as the basis from which new terms were derived, producing a trend commonly referred to as democracy with adjectives (Collier...