ABSTRACT
In recent years there have been increasing academic discussions and debates in the field of comparative political studies about “hybrid regimes”, which by definition combine both democratic and authoritarian elements (e.g. Diamond, 2002; Levitsky & Way, 2002; Schedler, 2002). This new wave of scholarly attention is attributable to the fact that the “third wave of democratization” as advocated by the renowned American political scientist Samuel Huntington in the 1990s has already come to a halt in recent years. Instead, there is unprecedented growth in the number of hybrid regimes in the world and experts predicted that these intermediate regimes will likely remain in the “political grey zone” between full democracies and outright authoritarianism over a long period of time (Diamond, 2002).
