Introduction

In 2002, an article by Thomas Carothers appeared in the Journal of Democracy, identifying two major tendencies within the third wave of democratic transitions. As most transition countries, Carothers observed, are neither dictatorial nor heading for democracy, ‘feckless pluralism’ describes those states where democracy remains ‘shallow and troubled’; while ‘dominant-power politics’ relates to states where, despite the presence of democratic institutions, one political group dominates power, undermining any sense of power contestation and alternation (Carothers 2002: 9–14). This reality, seen in many democratic transitions in the third wave, has, in part, provided the impetus for new studies of authoritarianism in the twenty-first century in nearly every corner of the world (Angrist 2006; Brownlee 2007; Bunce et al. 2009; Ezrow and Frantz 2011; King 2010; Levitsky 2003; Levitsky and Way 2010; McCoy and Myers 2006; Ottaway 2003; Rodan 2004; Schedler 2002, 2006a; Way 2006; Zakaria 2004).