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1 Measuring Hybrid Regimes: An Alternative Measurement Method and Classification of Post-Soviet Regimes * Farid Guliyev † Abstract The hybrid regime framework provides a useful approach for analysis of (post-)Third wave political regimes, yet there has not been sufficient effort to develop adequate systematic measure of ‘mixed’ regimes. Several measures that exist suffer from various measurement validity problems. This article introduces an alternative method and demonstrates how it can be used to classify post-Soviet regimes in the 1991-2005 period. Future research can employ this new classification to explore the question of change and stability of hybrid regimes in post-communist Eurasia as well as to study causes and consequences of regime change and democratisation in comparative perspective. Keywords : hybrid regimes, electoral authoritarianism, political regimes, measurement, post-Soviet regimes * Working paper, last revised Feb 22, 2012. † School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Jacobs University Bremen, Campus Ring 1, 28759, Bremen, Germany [email:
[email protected]] 2 Introduction As the advancement of democracy seems to have halted throughout the world (Diamond 2008), it has become clear that the third wave of democratisation (Huntington 1991) has produced a mixed range of political regimes. While some countries succeeded in setting up institutionalised democracy, others failed to democratise and reverted to outright authoritarianism. But a much larger group of polities evolved into intermediary regimes that combine major attributes of both democracy and authoritarianism. These regimes have been dubbed ‘mixed’, ‘gray zone’ or ‘hybrid’ regimes (e.g., Karl 1995; Carothers 2002; Bunce & Wolchik 2008; also see Zinecker 2009), formally defined as those political regimes that are ‘neither clearly democratic nor conventionally authoritarian’ (Diamond 2002, p. 25). Depending on one’s perspective, this category is composed of varieties of electoral authoritarian systems (see, e.g. Diamond 2002; Levitsky & Way 2002; Schedler 2006a; Howard & Roessler 2006) and defective democracies (Croissant & Merkel 2004; also see Bogaards 2009). Most important, at the start of the twenty-first century hybrid regimes represent the most widespread type of political system outside the liberal-democratic world (Howard & Roessler 2006, p. 365; Bogaards 2009, p. 399). In fact, electoral authoritarianism has become ‘the modal type of political regime’ among less developed countries (Schedler 2006b, p. 3). Thus said, how well are we equipped to measure hybrid regimes? Recently, attempts have been made to create, using Dahl’s criteria of Polyarchy (Dahl 1971), a systematic scheme to measure hybrid regimes (Howard & Roessler 2006; Brownlee 2009). However, notwithstanding some of their merits, the existing measurements suffer from some ‘measurement validity’ problems that is the concerns about how adequately the chosen operationalization and the scoring of cases capture the concepts (regime types, in our case) the scholar seeks to measure (Adcock & Collier 2001, pp. 529-530). Consequently, the quality of the available measures precludes their use as definitive guide to hybrid regime measurement. This article advances an alternative measurement framework and illustrates how it can be usefully applied to identify political regime types. This is illustrated with a classification of regimes in the Soviet successor states for the period between 1991-2005. The choice of this particular region is motivated by the consideration that many scholars believe that the region is home to many ‘mixed’ forms of regimes (e.g. Levitsky & Way 2002; Bunce & Wolchik 2008; 2010; Hale 2010). The region’s political regimes, therefore, should serve as a 3 suitable ground for exploring a new measurement method. By introducing it, this article aims to contribute to the ongoing effort to design precise hands-on tools for measuring political regimes in general and hybrid regimes in particular. Furthermore, the typology of post-Soviet regimes hereby advanced can be used to derive hypotheses about change and durability of hybrid regimes that can be tested empirically by future research. It can also benefit scholars interested in understanding causes and consequences of regime change including democratic transitions, autocratic reversals, and the persistence of authoritarian rule. Disaggregating Hybrid Regimes To begin with, hybrid regimes combine considerable features of both authoritarianism and democracy and therefore, typologically, lie in the middle of the continuum between consolidated democracy (e.g. West European countries, USA) and full-scale authoritarianism (e.g. North Korea, Saudi Arabia). They range from authoritarian regimes with democratic aspects to democracies with anti-democratic deficiencies. Authoritarian regimes with democratic aspects have been termed differently but the most prominent concepts include ‘electoral authoritarianism’ (Schedler 2006a), ‘competitive authoritarianism’ (Levitsky & Way 2002), and ‘semi-authoritarianism’ (Ottaway 2003). With regard to democracies with deficiencies, scholars have introduced an entire vocabulary of diminished subtypes of democracy (Collier & Levitsky 1997) including such terms as ‘delegative democracy’ (O’Donnell 1994), ‘illiberal democracy’ (Zakaria 1997) and, more generally, ‘defective democracy’ (Croissant & Merkel 2004). These regimes are electoral democracies but differ from liberal democracy. While electoral democratic systems meet the procedural criterion of free and fair elections, they do not meet up to the more comprehensive (liberal)democratic standard encompassing the rule of law, an effective separation of powers and the guarantee of basic civil liberties (see, e.g. Zakaria 1997, p. 22). Electoral authoritarian regimes differ from closed authoritarian systems in that they allow for multiparty electoral competition (Diamond 2002, p. 25). Their rulers use such democratic institutions as parties, elections and legislatures. But, typically, these institutions are artfully manipulated (Schedler 2002), functioning as tools to help the ruler maintain his hold on power (Levitsky & Way 2002, p. 54). Manipulation of democratic institutions was not an essential part of the classical concept of authoritarian regime (Linz 1964; 2000). Hence, the introduction of the new term ‘electoral authoritarianism’. 4 Moving down the ‘ladder of abstraction’ (Sartori 1970), following Howard & Roessler (2006), and before them Diamond (2002), electoral authoritarian regimes can be subdivided into hegemonic authoritarian and competitive authoritarian regimes. The crucial distinction between the two subtypes lies in the level of contestation they allow. Hegemonic authoritarian regimes hold elections but their outcome is known in advance whereas competitive authoritarian regimes allow for truly contested elections in which the opposition candidates have real chances to win. But unlike democracy, in which all competing parties have equal chances to win (or lose), competitive authoritarian regimes are ruled by the incumbents who will use their control of state resources and the media to disadvantage opponents and to prevent the opposition’s victory. Existing Measures Among several measures of hybrid regimes, two can be considered relatively more systematic: one developed by Howard & Roessler (2006), the other – by Brownlee (2009). Howard & Roessler’s (2006, p. 368) measurement draws on previous conceptual work on hybrid regimes. Their measurement tries to capture differences between hybrid types by assessing the level of contestation in a polity. This is done by examining the procedures used for selecting the chief executive in a polity. The coding draws information from two sources: the Freedom House (FH) ratings and the Polity dataset. The following coding is employed. Closed authoritarian regimes are those polities that receive a 7 (the worst score) on the FH political rights index or a -8 or worse on the Polity scale that ranges from +10 (full democracy) to -10 (full autocracy). To distinguish competitive authoritarian regimes from hegemonic authoritarian regimes, the authors use the measure of the share of votes for the winning party or candidate, putting the threshold at 70 %. On the other side of the continuum, liberal and electoral democracies are separated from competitive authoritarian regimes by applying the following rule: democracy is any regime-year receiving a FH political rights score of 1 to 2 or a Polity score of 6 to 10. Competitive authoritarian regimes, therefore, are all polities rated 3 to 6 on the FH political rights index or -7 to 6 on the Polity scale and in which the winning party/candidate got no more than 70 % of the vote. Brownlee’s (2009) measurement of hybrid regimes (electoral authoritarianism), in turn, is based on data from the World Bank’s Database of Political Institutions (or DPI, see Keefer 2007). Brownlee uses the DPI indices of Legislative and Executive Electoral 5 Competitiveness ( LIEC and EIEC ) to classify closed and electoral authoritarian regimes in the following way. Regime-years that received a score between 1-4 are coded as fully closed authoritarian whereas regime-years with a score of 5-7 are coded as electoral authoritarian. The latter are further classified into competitive authoritarian (a score of 7 on one of the indices) and hegemonic authoritarian (with scores no greater than 5 or 6 on the same measures). The principal advantage of Howard & Roessler’s and Brownlee’s approach to regime analysis is that it moves beyond a simplistic dichotomous view of political regime (such as, e.g. Alvarez et al. 1996; Przeworski et al. 2000). In addition, it can be used in combination with well-known typologies of classical authoritarian regimes (Geddes 1999; also Brownlee 2009) and of defective types of democracy (Croissant & Merkel 2004). Most importantly, it recognises the diversity of regimes that reside between liberal consolidated democracy and closed authoritarianism. It also acknowledges that these regimes are neither transitory nor temporary but regime types on their own (see also Carothers 2002; Bogaards 2009). Yet, there are several problems with respect to how the authors use data sources to measure regime types, specifically concerns about measurement validity (Adcock & Collier 2001). First, there seems to be a misfit between the concepts (regime types) the authors try to measure and their choice of measures in the data sets used. Second, the cut-off points are drawn largely arbitrarily and oftentimes without explicit justification. The Discussion section will provide a more elaborate examination of these points. An Alternative Method of Measurement This section introduces an alternative way of measuring hybrid regimes that is further used to create a typology of post-Soviet regimes for the period between 1991-2005. Conceptual Distinctions It has by now been largely accepted that democracies differ from autocracies in that they allow free contestation for the key government offices and respect the outcomes of such contestation. Focusing on political contestation for the key offices to conceptualise and operationalize political regime has a long tradition in comparative research and goes back to Schumpeter (1954) and Dahl (1971). Schumpeter (1954, p. 269) defined democracy as ‘that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the
