ABSTRACT
A tougher test of deep popular commitment to democracy, however, is whether citizens both support democracy and reject a range of authoritarian alternatives. People measure this composite attitude with an index of demand for democracy. Regimes that lie elsewhere in the property space are hybrid regimes; that is, regardless of their formal characteristics, their citizens perceive neither democracy nor autocracy but something in between. Hybrid regimes may consolidate at intermediate levels, lending permanence to forms like electoral democracy, electoral autocracy, or other semi-formed systems. Selecting the countries that have undergone the most change, the authors distinguish autocratizing from democratizing regimes according to their movement away from or toward consolidated democracy. This chapter explains that Africa is characterized by a diversity of political regimes, and that most political regimes in Africa are unconsolidated hybrid systems. It also argues that some political regimes are consolidating, but not always as democracies.
