ABSTRACT

By the turn of the twenty-first century a new concept was gaining traction in accounting for disappointed expectations of the so-called ‘third wave’ of democratization: the hybrid regime. The now pervasive influence of the concept reflects diverse attempts to describe and explain the absence or partial nature of democratization in many countries around the world. It emphasizes not just the combining of elements of both democracy and authoritarianism, but also the possibility of qualitatively distinct regimes transcending existing categories.