User:Wmair00/Hybrid regime

Regimes that may rhetorically accept liberal democracy, adopt some formal democratic institutions, while expressing authoritarian, illiberal traits, limiting the spheres of civil and political sphere are considered hybrid regimes. Hybrid regimes are sometimes considered to be transitional, a part of democratisation due to the presence of both democratic and authoritarian traits.

History
Following the third wave of democratisation, which ended in the 1990s, challenged previous assumptions and theories of the relationship between democracy, development and modernisation. During this time the regimes that emerged in places such as Latin America, Eastern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa where different qualitatively from each other as well as from established Western democracies. These were hybrid regimes, seen as a middle ground between liberal democracies and closed authoritarian regimes. At the time these regimes were seen as transitional, on the one hand, a necessary step in democratisation, moving from authoritarianism to a consolidated democracy. On the other hand, they were seen as unstable, that they would transition back into authoritarian states. There was variation in terms of democratic development between the different hybrid regimes, some underwent institutional changes, establishing elections for example. Some countries underwent formal institutional changes while others were informal. Over time, research found that hybrid regimes can be quite durable, this is due to the ambiguous nature of the regime.

Hybrid regimes exemplify the fact that democratic transitions are not linear, incremental changes are to be expected. The phases of change can be stable, durable, but ambiguous and uncertain.

Academic Debate
The ambiguity of the system led to the academic debate surrounding the conceptualisation of the term hybrid regime. There was disagreement surrounding the idea of whether or not hybrid regimes should be looked at and evaluated based on the assumption that it was a middle ground, a transitional period or a regime type of its own. Looking at hybrid regimes merely as a diminished sub-types of either democracy or authoritarian regimes, or a residual category was seen as limiting. It limited the way in which hybrid regimes could be categorised, conceptualised and evaluated. The sub-types such as "illiberal democracy", "delegative democracy" and "competitive authoritarianism" are seen as more specific models, while the term hybrid regime allows for more general categorisation. Electoral competitiveness was agreed upon as a necessary dimension upon which a regime could be classified. An agreement over the classification of hybrid regimes also allowed considerations of other dimensions and criteria with which regimes could be classified. The assumptions on hybrid regimes where scholarly rooted in the transitions paradigm.

Characteristics
Despite the academic debate, there was a consensus surrounding the idea that looking at political actors, leadership should be an important aspect when evaluating hybrid regimes. There is considerable variation among hybrid regimes, but some general traits may be observed. Civil society and culture, elections, political participation and trust in institutions are necessary criteria to look at when identifying and evaluating hybrid regimes.

Hybrid regimes are often characterised by unaccountable, "delegative" leadership, where decision-making is concentrated at the top and is not dispersed widely. Different political parties may be allowed to participate in government, but real, executive decision-making power lies with the ruling party or ruling actor. The decision making process will not be accessible to all and is not transparent.

Level of trust in institutions are often low in hybrid regimes. The formal democratic institutions that may be put in place lack credibility, this can be due to the lack of transparency in the decision-making process. Lack of trust can also be found in non-governmental institutions, such as CSOs. The lack of trust also translates into a low level of participation, both formally with elections as well as non-institutional participation such as demonstrations. If there is low or no trust that participation will yield results, this results in a poor civic culture.

Elections and electoral competitiveness is an important characteristic when trying to identify regime type. In hybrid regimes elections may be held recurrently, they may allow contestation, entrance into the political sphere, but they are rarely free and fair elections. There is a more specific term for this phenomenon "electoral authoritarianism". The holding of elections does not signify that a country is a democracy, authoritarian regimes can manipulate elections for legitimation and gaining more power, electoral competitiveness is a scale along which countries should be evaluated. Elections are included in criteria for democratic indexes such as the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). This index has a hybrid regime categorisation which as of 2019 considers 36 countries to be a part of this classification, with varying degrees of variety between along a set of criteria including the holding of free and fair elections.