2002/04/01 by Steven Levitsky, Lucan A. Way · 19 citations
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Political Conflict and Governance #International Development and Aid #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics
paper · doi:10.1353/jod.2002.0026
openalex publication_date 2002/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The post-Cold War world has been marked by the proliferation of hybrid political regimes. In different ways, and to varying degrees, polities across much of Africa (Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe), postcommunist Eurasia (Albania, Croatia, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine), Asia (Malaysia, Taiwan), and Latin America (Haiti, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru) combined democratic rules with authoritarian governance during the 1990s. Scholars often treated these regimes as incomplete or transitional forms of democracy. Yet in many cases these expectations (or hopes) proved overly optimistic. Particularly in Africa and the former Soviet Union, many regimes have either remained hybrid or moved in an authoritarian direction. It may therefore be time to stop thinking of these cases in terms of transitions to democracy and to begin thinking about the specific types of regimes they actually are.