Hybrid regime

Not to be confused with Anocracy or Mixed government.

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A hybrid regime is a type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one (or vice versa). Hybrid regimes are categorized as having a combination of autocratic features with democratic ones and can simultaneously hold political repressions and regular elections. According to some definitions and measures, hybrid regimes are commonly found in developing countries with abundant natural resources such as petro-states. Although these regimes experience civil unrest, they may be relatively stable and tenacious for decades at a time. There has been a rise in hybrid regimes since the end of the Cold War.

The term hybrid regime arises from a polymorphic view of political regimes that oppose the dichotomy of autocracy or democracy. Modern scholarly analysis of hybrid regimes focuses attention on the decorative nature of democratic institutions (elections do not lead to a change of power, different media broadcast the government point of view and the opposition in parliament votes the same way as the ruling party, among others), Some scholars also contend that hybrid regimes may imitate a full dictatorship.

Overall, there is no consensus among researchers about how hybrid regimes should be defined or measured. Accordingly, there is much disagreement about which countries are considered to be hybrid regimes, and any description of what typical hybrid regimes look like needs to be seen in the context of specific definitions and measures. Democratic backsliding is the primary cause of the growth of hybrid regime typologies.

Definition

Scholars vary on the definition of hybrid regimes based on their primary academic discipline. According to Christoph Mohamad-Klotzbach, "Some scholars argue that deficient democracies and deficient autocracies can be seen as examples of hybrid regimes, whereas others argue that hybrid regimes combine characteristics of both democratic and autocratic regimes." Scholars also debate if these regimes are in transition or are inherently a stable political system. In 1995, Terry Karl introduced the notion of "hybrid" regime, which was simply defined as "combining democratic and authoritarian elements". According to professor Matthijs Bogaards hybrid types are:

not diminished subtypes, since they do not lack the full development of a characteristic, but rather they exhibit a mixture of characteristics of both basic types, so that they simultaneously combine autocratic and democratic dimensions or institutions

Pippa Norris defined hybrid regimes as:

a system characterized by weak checks and balances on executive powers, flawed or even suspended elections, fragmented opposition forces, state restrictions on media freedoms, intellectuals, and civil society organizations, curbs on the independence of the judiciary and disregard for rule of law, the abuse of human rights by the security forces, and tolerance of authoritarian values.

Henry E. Hale defined hybrid regimes as:

a political regime that combines some democratic and some autocratic elements in a significant manner. It is not, however, a mere half-way category: hybrid regimes have their own distinct dynamics that do not simply amount to half of what we would see in a democracy plus half of what we would see in an autocracy.

Leonardo Morlino defined hybrid regimes as:

a set of institutions that have been persistent, be they stable or unstable, for about a decade, have been preceded by authoritarianism, a traditional regime (possibly with colonial characteristics), or even a minimal democracy and are characterized by the break-up of limited pluralism and forms of independent, autonomous participation, but the absence of at least one of the four aspects of a minimal democracy

Professor Jeffrey C. Isaac defined hybrid regimes as:

Hybrid regimes have the common feature that they all have competition, although the political elite in power deliberately rearranges state regulations and the political arena as to grant itself undue advantages

History

File:Countries democratizing or autocratizing substantially and significantly 2010–2020.svg

Countries autocratizing (red) or democratizing (blue) substantially and significantly (2010–2020). Countries in grey are substantially unchanged.

The third wave of democratization from the 1970s onward has led to the emergence of hybrid regimes that are neither fully democratic nor fully authoritarian. Neither the concept of illiberal democracy, nor the concept of electoral authoritarianism fully describes these hybrid regimes.

Since the end of the Cold War, such regimes have become the most common among undemocratic countries. At the end of the process of transformation of authoritarian regimes, limited elections appear in one way or another when liberalization occurs. Liberal democracy has always been assumed while in practice this process basically froze "halfway". In relation to regimes that were previously called "transitional" in the 1980s, the term hybrid regime began to be used and was strengthened according to Thomas Carothers:

the majority of “transitional countries” are neither completely dictatorial nor aspiring to democracy, and by and large they cannot be called transitional. They are located in the politically stable gray zone, changes in which may not take place for decades. Thus, he stated that hybrid regimes must be considered without the assumption that they will ultimately become democracies. These hybrid regimes were called semi-authoritarianism or electoral authoritarianism.

Hybrid regimes have evolved to lean more authoritarian while keeping some democratic traits. One of the main issues with authoritarian rule is the ability to control the threats from the masses, and democratic elements in hybrid regimes can reduce social tension between the masses and the elite. After the third wave of democratization, some regimes became stuck in the transition to democracy, causing the creation of weak democratic institutions. This results from a lack of institutional ownership during critical points in the transition period leading the regime into a gray zone between democracy and autocracy.

These developments have caused some scholars to believe that hybrid regimes are not poorly functioning democracies, but rather new forms of authoritarian regimes. Defective democratic stability is an indicator to explain and measure these new forms of autocracies. Additionally, approval ratings of political leaders play an important role in these types of regimes, and democratic elements can drive up the ratings of a strongman leader creating a tool not utilized previously. Today, 'hybrid regime' is a term used to explain a growing field of political development where authoritarian leaders incorporate elements of democracy that stabilize their regimes.

Indicators

File:BTI 2022 DEM.jpg

Global trend report Bertelsmann Transformation Index 2022

According to Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, Larry Diamond and Thomas Carothers, signs of a hybrid regime include:

1. The presence of external attributes of democracy (elections, multi-party system, legal opposition).
2. A low degree of representation of the interests of citizens in the process of political decision-making (incapacity of associations of citizens, for example trade unions, or that they are in state control).
3. A low level of political participation.
4. The declarative nature of political rights and freedoms (formally there is in fact difficult implementation).
5. A low level of trust in political institutions by the citizenry.

Transition types

Further information: Democratic transition

Autocratization

File:Number of countries experiencing autocratization and democratization, 1900–2000.jpg

Since c. 2010, the number of countries autocratizing (blue) is higher than those democratizing (yellow).

Measurement

Main article: Democracy indices

Further information: Democratic backsliding by country

There are various democratic freedom indices produced by academic researchers, and intergovernmental non-governmental organizations that publish assessments of the worlds political systems, according to their own definitions, and many of them include measures of hybrid regimes. However, because these various indices use different definitions and methodologies, they often disagree on which countries should be classified as hybrid regimes.

Democracy Index

File:DemocracyIndexChart.jpg

Democracy index types

According to the Democracy Index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit there are 34 hybrid regimes, representing approximately 20% of countries, encompassing 17.2% to 20.5% of the world's population. The EIU Democracy Index is "based on ratings across 60 indicators, grouped into five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political culture." The Democracy Index defines hybrid regimes with the following characteristics:

• Electoral fraud or irregularities occur regularly
• Pressure is applied to political opposition
• Corruption is widespread and rule of law tends to be weak
• Media is pressured and harassed
• There are issues in the functioning of governance

File:Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index 2024.svg

The 2024 Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index

Full democracies

  9.00–10.00

  8.00–8.99

Flawed democracies

  7.00–7.99

  6.00–6.99

Hybrid regimes

  5.00–5.99

  4.00–4.99

Authoritarian regimes

  3.00–3.99

  2.00–2.99

  1.00–1.99

  0.00–0.99

As of 2024 the countries considered hybrid regimes by the "Democracy Index" are:

• Romania
• Papua New Guinea
• Senegal
• Paraguay
• Malawi
• Zambia
• Peru
• Fiji
• Bhutan
• Liberia
• Armenia
• Hong Kong
• Honduras
• Madagascar
• Mexico
• Georgia
• Ecuador
• Tanzania
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Kenya
• Morocco
• Ukraine
• Tunisia
• El Salvador
• Nepal
• Guatemala
• Uganda
• Gambia
• Bangladesh
• Benin
• Sierra Leone
• Bolivia
• Turkey
• Ivory Coast
• Nigeria
• Angola

Global State of Democracy Report

According to the "Global State of Democracy Report" by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), there are twenty hybrid regimes. "International IDEA compiles data from 12 different data sources, including expert surveys and observational data includes the extent to which voting rights are inclusive, political parties are free to form and campaign for office, elections are free, and political offices are filled through elections." IDEA defined hybrid regimes as:

Combination of the elements of authoritarianism with democracy ... These often adopt the formal characteristics of democracy (while allowing little real competition for power) with weak respect for basic political and civil rights

As of 2021 the countries considered hybrid regimes by the "Global State of Democracy Report" are:

• Angola
• Benin
• Côte d'Ivoire
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Ethiopia
• Gabon
• Jordan
• Kuwait
• Kyrgyzstan
• Libya
• Mauritania
• Morocco
• Mozambique
• Nigeria
• Serbia
• Singapore
• Tanzania
• Togo
• Tunisia
• Turkey

V-Dem Democracy Indices

File:V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index 2025 Robinson World.svg

Map of V-Dem Electoral Democracy Index in 2024

  0.900–1.000

  0.800–0.899

  0.700–0.799

  0.600–0.699

  0.500–0.599

  0.400–0.499

  0.300–0.399

  0.200–0.299

  0.100–0.199

  0.000–0.099

  No data

According to the V-Dem Democracy Indices compiled by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg there are 65 hybrid regimes. V-Dem's "Regimes of the World" indicators identify four political regimes: closed autocracies, electoral autocracies, electoral democracies, and liberal democracies. According to the V-Dem Institute:

In 2021, 70% of the world population – 5.4 billion people – live in closed or electoral autocracies.

A mere 13% of the world's population reside in liberal democracies, and 16% in electoral democracies.

Freedom House

File:European Union neighbour states by freedom.svg

Freedom House ratings for European Union and surrounding states, in 2019

  Free

  Partly free

  Not free

Freedom House measures the level of political and economic governance in 29 countries from Central Europe to Central Asia. Freedom House assign "scores to countries and territories across the globe on 10 indicators of political rights (e.g., whether there is a realistic opportunity for opposition parties to gain power through elections) and 15 indicators of civil liberties (e.g., whether there is a free and independent media)." Freedom House classifies transitional or hybrid regimes as:

Countries that are typically electoral democracies where democratic institutions are fragile, and substantial challenges to the protection of political rights and civil liberties exist

In 2024, Freedom House classified 11 of 29 countries analyzed as "Transitional or Hybrid Regimes":

• Armenia
• Georgia
• Albania
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Kosovo
• Ukraine
• Hungary
• Moldova
• Serbia
• North Macedonia
• Montenegro

Typology

Further information: List of countries by system of government and List of forms of government

File:Democracy claims.svg

Countries in green claim to be a type of democracy while countries in red do not. Only Afghanistan, Brunei, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the Vatican do not claim to be democratic.

According to Yale professor Juan José Linz, there are three main types of political systems today: democracies, totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes with many different terms that describe specific types of hybrid regimes.

Academics generally refer to a full dictatorship as either a form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism over a "hybrid system". Authoritarian governments that conduct elections are in many scholars view not hybrids, but are successful well-institutionalized stable authoritarian regimes. Democratic elements can simultaneously serve authoritarian purposes and contribute to democratization.

Electoral authoritarianism

Electoral authoritarianism means that democratic institutions are imitative and, due to numerous systematic violations of liberal democratic norms, in fact adhere to authoritarian methods. Electoral authoritarianism can be competitive and hegemonic, and the latter does not necessarily mean election irregularities. A. Schedler calls electoral authoritarianism a new form of authoritarian regime, not a hybrid regime or illiberal democracy. Moreover, a purely authoritarian regime does not need elections as a source of legitimacy while non-alternative elections, appointed at the request of the ruler, are not a sufficient condition for considering the regime conducting them to be hybrid.

Competitive authoritarian regimes

Competitive authoritarianism is a subtype of authoritarianism and of the wider hybrid regime type. This regime type was defined to encapsulate states that contain formal democratic institutions that rulers view as the principal means of obtaining and exercising legitimate political authority against a real opposition and other semblances of democratic political society, in which officials violate election freedom and fairness in order to retain power. The officials interfere with opposition organisations, failing to respect minimum conventional standards of democracy.

Three main instruments are used within competitive authoritarian regimes to maintain political power: the self-serving use of state institutions (regarding abuses of electoral and judicial institutions such as voter intimidation and voter fraud); the overuse of state resources (to gain influence and/or power over proportional representation media, and use legal resources to disturb constitutional change); and the disruption of civil liberties (such as freedom of speech/press and association). In the post-Soviet era, continuing into the 2010s, the number of competitive authoritarian regimes increased.

See also

• Authoritarian democracy
• Benevolent dictatorship
• Delegative democracy
• Democracy-Dictatorship Index
• Types of democracy

Sources

• Bonet, Lluis; Zamorano, Mariano Martín (2021). "Cultural policies in illiberal democracies: a conceptual framework based on the Polish and Hungarian governing experiences". International Journal of Cultural Policy. 27 (5): 559–573. doi:10.1080/10286632.2020.1806829.
• Christie, Kenneth (1998). "Illiberal Democracy, Modernisation and Southeast Asia". Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory (91): 102–118. ISSN 0040-5817. JSTOR 41802094.
• DeVotta, Neil (2010). "From civil war to soft authoritarianism: Sri Lanka in comparative perspective". Global Change, Peace & Security. 22 (3): 331–343. doi:10.1080/14781158.2010.510268.
• Kennedy, Kerry J, ed. (2021). "Is Democracy 'Dead'?". Civic Engagement in Changing Contexts. SpringerBriefs in Education. SpringerBriefs in Education. Singapore: Springer Publishing. pp. 57–68. doi:10.1007/978-981-16-7495-2_5. ISBN 978-981-16-7494-5. Retrieved April 13, 2025.
• Mounk, Yascha (2020-03-18). The People Vs. Democracy - Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-24502-0. Search this book on
• Nyyssönen, Heino; Metsälä, Jussi (24 September 2020). "Liberal Democracy and its Current Illiberal Critique: The Emperor's New Clothes?". Europe-Asia Studies. 73 (2): 273–290. doi:10.1080/09668136.2020.1815654. Thus, there is a real danger of ‘pseudo-democracy’, especially because elections can be manipulated and often are. In these cases, elections and other democratic institutions are simply adapted patterns of authoritarianism, not democracy in some imperfect form, having the dual purpose of legitimising the incumbent’s rule and guarding it from any danger of democratic change.
• Plattner, Marc F. (January 2019). "Illiberal Democracy and the Struggle on the Right". Journal of Democracy. 30 (1): 5–19. doi:10.1353/jod.2019.0000.
• Sajó, András (2021). Ruling by Cheating: Governance in Illiberal Democracy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-84463-5. Search this book on
• Sajó, András; Uitz, Renáta; Holmes, Stephen, eds. (2021). Routledge Handbook of Illiberalism (1 ed.). Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780367260569. ISBN 978-1-000-47945-4. Search this book on
• Schedler, Andreas (2006). Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition. Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN 978-1-58826-415-2. Search this book on
• Self, Darin (2022-09-26). "Illiberal Democracies and Democratic Backsliding". Oxford Bibliographies Online. doi:10.1093/obo/9780199756223-0352. ISBN 978-0-19-975622-3. Retrieved 2023-04-26.

Further reading

Contemporary analysts

• Herre, Bastian; Roser, Max (2013-03-15). "Democracy". Our World in Data. Archived from the original on 2022-11-18. Retrieved 2022-11-18.
• Balderacchi, Claudio (2022-04-14). "Overlooked forms of non-democracy? Insights from hybrid regimes". Third World Quarterly. 43 (6): 1441–1459. doi:10.1080/01436597.2022.2059460. ISSN 0143-6597.
• Ekman, Joakim (2009). "Political Participation and Regime Stability: A Framework for Analyzing Hybrid Regimes". International Political Science Review. Sage Publications, Ltd. 30 (1): 7–31. doi:10.1177/0192512108097054. ISSN 0192-5121. JSTOR 20445173.
• Lührmann, Anna; Tannenberg, Marcus; Lindberg, Staffan I. (2018-03-19). "Regimes of the World (RoW): Opening New Avenues for the Comparative Study of Political Regimes". Politics and Governance. 6 (1): 60–77. doi:10.17645/pag.v6i1.1214. ISSN 2183-2463. Archived from the original on 2022-11-18. Retrieved 2022-11-18.
• Skaaning, Svend-Erik (2021), "Social Sciences", Lexical Index of Electoral Democracy (LIED) dataset v6.0, Harvard Dataverse, doi:10.7910/DVN/WPKNIT
• Schedler, A. (2013). The Politics of Uncertainty: Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism. Oxford Studies in Democratization. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-166983-5. Archived from the original on 2023-04-04. Retrieved 2022-11-19. Search this book on
• "BTI 2022 Benin Country Report". BTI 2022. 2021-02-19. Archived from the original on 2022-11-18. Retrieved 2022-11-18.
• Beatriz Magaloni. 2010. "The Game of Electoral Fraud and the Ousting of Authoritarian Rule." Archived 2019-07-29 at the Wayback Machine American Journal of Political Science, 54 (3): 751-65.
• Weyland, Kurt. 2024. "Hybrid Regimes in Historical Perspective." in The Oxford Handbook of Authoritarian Politics. Oxford University Press.

Research history

The researchers conducted a comparative analysis of political regimes around the world (Samuel Finer 1970), in developing countries (Almond and Coleman, 1960 Archived 2023-04-04 at the Wayback Machine), among Latin America (Collier 1979) and West Africa regimes (Zolberg, 1966). Types of non-democratic regimes are described (Linz, 2000, originally published in 1975 and Perlmutter, 1981). Huntington and Moore (Huntington and Moore, 1970) discuss the one-party system issue Hermet (Guy Hermet, Rose, & Rouquie 1978) explores how elections are held in such authoritarian regimes, which are nominally democratic institutions.

"Hybrid regimes" (Diamond 2002), "competitive authoritarianism" (Levitsky and Way 2002 Archived 2019-08-08 at the Wayback Machine) and "electoral authoritarianism" (Schedler, 2006) as well as how officials who came to power in an undemocratic way form election rules (Lust-Okar and Jamal, 2002 Archived 2019-07-30 at the Wayback Machine), institutionalize electoral frauds (Lehoucq 2003 Archived 2022-03-13 at the Wayback Machine, Schedler 2002 Archived 2019-08-26 at the Wayback Machine) and manipulate the economy (L. Blaydes Archived 2023-04-04 at the Wayback Machine 2006, Magaloni 2006) in order to win the election and stay in power.

External links

• Hybrid Concepts and the Concept of Hybridity at European Consortium for Political Research
• Democracy data: how do researchers measure democracy? at Our World in Data

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