Portents of Pluralism: How Hybrid Regimes Affect Democratic Transitions

2009/06/23 by Jason Brownlee · 369 citations
Social Sciences · #Authoritarianism #Democracy #Democratization #Development economics #Economic system #Economics #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Hegemony #Law #Pluralism (philosophy) #Political Conflict and Governance #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Power (physics) #Regime change #Religion and Society Interactions

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2009.00384.x

published in American Journal of Political Science 53(3), 515-532 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2009/06/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

The original studies of “competitive authoritarianism” and “hegemonic authoritarianism” inspected the occurrence of hybrid regimes during the 1990s but stopped short of testing their propensity for democratic change. This article assesses the causal effects of hybrid regimes, and the post–cold war period itself, on regime breakdown and democratization. Using a dataset of 158 regimes from 1975 to 2004, and a discrete measure for transitions to electoral democracy, I find that competitive authoritarian regimes are not especially prone to losing power but are significantly more likely to be followed by electoral democracy: vigorous electoral contestation does not independently subvert authoritarianism, yet it bodes well for democratic prospects once incumbents are overthrown.

Citations

• The Rise of Illiberal Democracy
• Linkage versus Leverage. Rethinking the International Dimension of Regime Change
• Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy
• Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats

Cited by

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• Autocratic Elections
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• State capacity and the resilience of electoral authoritarianism: Conceptualizing and measuring the institutional underpinnings of autocratic power
• Hybrid what? Partial consensus and persistent divergences in the analysis of hybrid regimes
• Electoral authoritarianism and political unrest
• How local is decentral politics? Variations in the supply of municipal policies
• Fifty years of the third wave(s): from democratization to autocratization
• Federated autocracy and the illusion of multiparty democracy in Nigeria: electoral authoritarianism in perspective
• Continuities and changes in electoral authoritarianism: evidence from Ethiopia
• Rebel Victory and Authoritarian (Dis)Order
• Legitimation, cooptation, and repression and the survival of electoral autocracies
• When the Great Power Gets a Vote: The Effects of Great Power Electoral Interventions on Election Results
• State capacity and the paradox of authoritarian elections
• Still Rooted in Maastricht: EU External Relations as a ‘Third-generation Hybrid’
• Sticks, Stones, and Molotov Cocktails: Unarmed Collective Violence and Democratization
• Local Elections in Authoritarian Regimes
• Electoral integrity and the repercussions of institutional manipulations: The 2019 general election in Thailand

Related

• The Surprising Instability of Competitive Authoritarianism
• What Do We Know about Hybrid Regimes after Two Decades of Scholarship?
• Electoral authoritarianism and political unrest
• Authoritarian-Led Democratization
• Defeating Dictators: Electoral Change and Stability in Competitive Authoritarian Regimes