Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Paper prepared for the Panel Conceptualizing Autocracy at the 2011 General Conference of the
European Consortium for Political Research, Reykjavik, August 2011
The mass protests that recently shook the Arab world and, in reminiscence of such
earlier springs in the region as the Damascene Spring of 2000/2001 or the Cairo
Spring in 2005 have come to be known as the Arab Spring (Anderson 2011), not only
took the Arab and international public by surprise, but also challenged long-held
assumptions within the academic community (Gause 2011). After all, the study of
authoritarianism in recent years had mainly been focused on explaining why such
regimes as those of the Arab world had been so remarkably (and maybe, one might
add in hindsight, seemingly and superficially) stable and resilient. The events thus
ushered in a period of self-reflection for many scholars of Middle Eastern politics and
authoritarian rule. Plagued by the question of why we have been unable to foresee
events of such magnitude and to predict the instability of these regimes, it is tempting
to proclaim the failure of authoritarianism studies and to turn to other fields for
conceptual salvation.
Instead of joining the chorus of those proclaiming the death of authoritarianism
studies, we want to take this chance to thoroughly take stock of the discipline of
what is left of it after the Arab Spring seemingly dealt it such a decisive blow. While
1
Parts of the paper are based on an earlier contribution to a workshop on authoritarian rule which is published
(in German) as Koehler & Warkotsch (2010). We would like to thank the participants in this workshop,
and especially the editors of the conference volume, Holger Albrecht and Rolf Frankenberger, for their
helpful feedback. We would also like to thank the participants in a workshop on authoritarianism in the
MENA at the European University Institute, in particular the co-chairs Oliver Schlumberger and Philippe
Schmitter, for their feedback. In addition, Adrienne Hritier and Peter Mair read and commented on this
paper and gave us critical input and suggestions. Remaining shortcomings are nevertheless exclusively our
responsibility.
the discipline has changed considerably over the years in terms of the questions asked
and the approaches and methods employed, the problem of how to subdivide the
space of authoritarian regimes into conceptually and empirically meaningful categories,
as well as how to define the boundaries to neighboring areas, or more specifically to
democratic regimes, remained at the heart of the subfield. While classificatory
questions have always been central to the discipline, the uses to which they have been
put varied quite significantly: Earlier studies of authoritarian rule in what we refer to as
the first wave of authoritarianism studies in the 1970s and 1980s tended to see
different forms of authoritarianism as political outcomes whose emergence was to be
explained by specific constellations of political and social forces in developing nations,
whereas second wave studies from the late 1990s onwards converged on seeing
regime types as explanatory factors for regime stability and breakdown.
External events certainly drove the many changes in the way authoritarian regimes
were studied and classified. These developments at the same time also mirror
paradigmatic changes in the mother discipline of Comparative Politics itself. First
wave approaches, broadly speaking, relied on the background of grand theorizing in
the modernization theoretical tradition, focusing on how processes of socio-economic
change during the transition from tradition to modernity affected political structures.
Under the methodological influence of behavioralism, moreover, there was a strong
tendency to explain macro-level outcomes as an aggregation of individual-level
factors. Second wave approaches, on the other hand, adopted a (new) institutionalist
focus on the role of institutions in shaping political behavior and outcomes via the
reliance (in its rational choice variant) on formal models and regression analyses.
Taking institutions as independent variables, second-wave approaches (in accordance
with the general development in Comparative Politics), both reversed the logic of
their first-wave predecessors and emphasized the independent influence of
institutional factors.
However, the considerable academic attention authoritarian rule has received in the
past decades notwithstanding, the questions of how to properly subdivide the space of
authoritarian regimes as well as how to define them to begin with, remain fraught with
problems. While there have been some attempts to do both in a comprehensive
fashion, most notably by Juan Linz in 1975 (then republished in 2000), work in the
first wave of authoritarianism studies barely bothered with exploring the range of
authoritarian regimes and focused on specific subtypes instead; the second wave
literature, by contrast, while producing some influential typologies generally relied on
rather truncated definitions of authoritarianism and its bordering categories and
tended to overemphasize the significance of institutional factors, thus reproducing
conceptual difficulties that found their expression in the debate on hybrid regimes and
new authoritarianisms that are still in the heart of debates on nondemocratic regimes.
This paper thus serves several purposes at once. On the one hand we will present the
state of the art in authoritarianism studies by reviewing the two distinct waves of
scholarship on authoritarian rule mentioned above and by situating the development
of the subfield in the broader context of theorizing in Comparative Politics. On the
other hand, we aim to show how the current state of the art suffers from empirical
2
and conceptual problems arising out of second wave scholarship. The recent turn
towards a stability debate that has dominated authoritarianism studies in the 2000s
and focused on authoritarian institutions began to address some of the conceptual
issues but left others unresolved and hence reproduced the main theoretical problems.
We will first review the development of the discipline, then address these
methodological and theoretical issues, and finally try to point to ways of moving the
field forward by drawing on illustrations from regime trajectories in the Arab Spring.
political and economic systems modeled after the Western example (Apter 1965;
Binder et al. 1971; Rustow 1967). The original impetus behind models of
modernization and political development was thus to understand political processes in
the rapidly expanding universe of independent countries of the 1950s and 1960s by
focusing on how they tackled the supposedly universal challenges and crises of
modernization and political development.
With modernization the prospects of economic wealth and political stability appeared
on the horizon of underdeveloped nations that could, it was hoped, draw on the
earlier experiences of modernization and political development in the west and thus
avoid some of the more painful by-products of the process.2 On the other hand,
however, such developments were also seen as posing significant dangers and
challenges to societies undergoing modernization. Increasing levels of economic
development, industrialization, the expansion of education and social mobility, the
emergence of new social roles, urbanization, and associated processes would
ultimately, it was assumed, lead to attitudinal and behavioral changes that were bound
to exert adaptive pressures on the political system. Since the fundamental process of
modernization was thought to be universal (see especially Apter 1965; Bendix 1977;
Binder 1971; Rustow 1967), analysts were mainly preoccupied with understanding the
conditions under which political instability could be avoided and political order
maintained under such circumstances. The link between the process of modernization
and challenges to political stability was provided by the theory of relative deprivation
(see especially Gurr 1970; also see Huntington & Dominguez 1975, 8): The social and
attitudinal changes associated with modernization would lead to increasing aspirations
among different social groups; if these increasing aspirations were not met by
increasing opportunities to achieve their fulfillment, the likelihood of civil violence
was thought to increase.
Far from simply describing the supposed social mobilization and resulting increase in
demands for participation, many modernization theorists actually took a fairly explicit
stance against mass involvement in the politics of developing nations. Based on the
rationale that an increasing gap between demands for participation and a political
systems capacity to institutionally channel such demands would stall or entirely
endanger the modernization process itself, modernization theorists often saw
authoritarian methods of rule as necessary stages in a larger process of development
(see for example Apter 1965; Rustow 1967; Huntington 1968). The concern for
political order clearly trumped the concern for forms of political rule.
Thus, modernization theory generally was based on an elitist model of politics
whereby all that was necessary for modernization was the development of a
sufficiently educated, westernized elite that adhered to a scientific understanding of
reality that supposedly was characteristic of modern thought. This elite would then
2
This project was mainly pursued by Social Science Research Councils Committee on Political Development
under the guidance of Gabriel Almond that commissioned a series of edited volumes on questions of
political development that ultimately aimed at understanding such processes against the at least implicit
backdrop of the European experience (see Binder et al. 1971; LaPalombara & Weiner 1966; Pye & Verba
1965; Tilly 1975).
man state institutions and successfully drive modernization from above without the
potentially disruptive interference of the masses (Huntington 1968). Hand in hand
with modernization theories elitism hence went a strong focus on the state as
instrument of modernization in the hands of elites.
Whereas early modernization theory was characterized by a certain optimism with
regard to the prospects of a quick recapitulation of the European experience in the
new nations in the form of quicker and less painful processes of industrialization and
social transformation for such late-comers, this optimism over the years gave way to
a more subdued vision where progress was not easily achieved and the transition
process from tradition to modernity was fraught with perils. Consequently, hope for
fast democratization gave way to wariness about the political stability of these states
during the transitional phase: modernity breeds stability but modernization breeds
instability (Huntington 1968).
First-wave scholarship in this respect took an increasingly pessimistic stance towards
the prospects of democracy in transitional societies and instead described how
changes in state-society interaction brought about by the disruptive force of social,
economic and political modernization resulted in distinct forms of authoritarian rule.
Elites were trying to solve the problems created by modernization and reacted
differently to different developmental challenges. The bureaucratic-authoritarian
military regimes of Latin America were thus interpreted as emerging from the
challenges of capitalist deepening at relatively advanced levels of modernization (see
especially ODonnell 1973), while single party regimes in Africa were presented as
political elites attempts to overcome problems of national integration and nationbuilding (Zolberg 1966). In brief, the centralization of political authority in the hands
of elites and the suppression of demands for (immediate) participation were seen as
the result of and to some extent necessary for achieving specific developmental goals.
In addition to this common perspective, first-wave literature was also characterized by
a focus on either a specific region populated predominantly by authoritarian regimes,
mainly Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, or on a specific subtype of
authoritarianism (see e.g. Finer 1988; Jackson & Rosberg 1981; ODonnell 1973;
Zolberg 1966). While these authors often constructed a rough overall typology of
authoritarian rule as they went along, there are very few systematic attempts to capture
the whole range of nondemocratic regimes (see Linz 1975 and 2000; and Perlmutter
1981 as notable exceptions).
In our review on the following pages, we follow the literature in adopting their focus
on specific regime types clustered in geographical regions. The discussion of military
regimes thus mainly concentrates on Latin America, whereas the debate on singleparty rule is primarily concerned with post-independence Sub-Saharan Africa; in the
last section, finally, we review some studies on personalism (or patrimonialism) that
grew out of debates on the persistence of supposedly traditional modes of political
rule.
Military Authoritarianism
Military interventions apparently are an inseparable part of political modernization
whatever the continent and whatever the country (Huntington 1968, 192). This
paradigmatic statement by Samuel Huntington aptly illustrates the modernizationtheoretic backdrop that informed many of the characteristic works on military regimes
specifically and authoritarianism more generally. Authors such as S.E. Finer (1988),
for example, held that military rule in its most direct form was always embedded in a
context of a low economic and political development, whereas others such as
Guillermo ODonnell (1973) argued that relatively high levels of development in some
Latin American cases had led to the rise of the special brand of bureaucraticauthoritarianism, combining a highly technocratic coup coalition of military officers,
managers and bureaucrats. While there is thus disagreement concerning the exact
nature of the socio-economic conditions giving rise to military intervention, most
classical authors agree that military rule is intimately tied to a specific stage of the
modernization process (Finer 1988; Huntington 1968; Huntington & Moore 1970;
Nordlinger 1977; ODonnell 1973; Perlmutter 1981).
The range of different types of military involvement in politics can best be
exemplified by Amos Perlmutters study on Modern Authoritarianism (1981).
Perlmutter classifies what he calls the non-institutionalized variant of authoritarian
regimes3 into corporatist and praetorian subforms, the former of which he further
subdivides into exclusionary and inclusionary corporatism, and the latter into
personalist, oligarchic, and corporate praetorianism.
Corporatism, according to Perlmutter, is a type of political domination by a coalition
of politicians, technocrats, military men and bureaucrats, with the military as the
ultimate arbiter and source of elite recruitment, in which different more or less
organized and more or less autonomous social groups are linked to the state and its
bureaucracy via patrimonial-clientelistic structures of control (Perlmutter 1981, 38 and
117). Praetorianism, on the other hand, essentially refers to a military dictatorship and,
depending on the degree of military interference, is subdivided into personalist (direct
rule by a military despot), oligarchic (the military ruler is dependent on the military
establishment to secure his rule), and corporate regimes (the military is still the most
powerful group, but rule is exercised by a coalition of the military and bureaucrats)
(Perlmutter 1981, 129). This scale thus reaches from military tutelage over civilian
politics to direct rule by military officers.
The exclusionary corporatist pole of Perlmutters authoritarianism scale is further
elaborated upon by Guillermo ODonnell (1973) who is mainly concerned with
explaining the rise of regimes he branded bureaucratic-authoritarian. At the same time
3
The institutionalized variants consist in essence of the two totalitarianisms of the 20th century Bolshevism
and Nazism as well as Fascism (Italy). Perlmutter thus dissolves the totalitarianism category into the
broader authoritarianism category. Besides giving rise to potential theoretical problems, empirically each
corresponds to only one case, which renders the utility of this conceptual subdivision somewhat doubtful.
Following more conventional usages of the authoritarianism concept, we will thus in the further
discussion of his argument exclusively deal with the noninstitutionalized types.
According to ODonnell, technocratic roles are positions in a social structure which require application of
modern technology as on important part of their daily routine. To perform these roles, each incumbent
must have prolonged schooling geared to provide the necessary technical expertise. In addition he must
keep abreast of developments in the more industrialized societies, where most of these roles originated
(1973, 30-31).
For a similar conception of military rule see Eric Nordlinger (1977), who argues for a subdivison into
moderators, guardians, and rulers based on different degrees of military intervention.
In fact, David Apter (1965, 396) described what he called a mobilization system as being very likely to
transform into a military oligarchy once the early stages of mobilizational success are over.
7 We consciously exclude the communist single-party regimes in Eastern Europe from consideration here since
they would have been considered totalitarian in Linzs framework. This leaves us with mainly African
single-party cases (see Brooker 1999, 106).
6
1968; Springborg 1979). There is a certain tension between the work of these scholars
and mainstream modernization theory with the new focus on the role of personal
loyalty in authoritarian regimes implying a critical attitude to some of the
assumptions of the first studies of modernisation and political development
(Eisenstadt 1973, 8). While under the assumptions of modernization theory, clientelist
or patrimonial patterns of behavior where relegated to the realm of pre-modern or
traditional politics, the term modern neo-patrimonialism first introduced by Samuel
N. Eisenstadt (1973) emphasized the fact that some modern political systems seemed
to combine legal-rational and patrimonial forms of domination (see also Mdard 1982,
179; Roth 1968).
The first author to comprehensively discuss personalism in modern contexts (and on
whose work Linz [1975 and 2000] largely bases his own account) was Guenther Roth
(1968). In Roths understanding, personalism or patrimonialism refer to a typology of
beliefs and organizational practices that can be found at any point of [] a continuum
[of political regimes, the authors] (Roth 1968, 197), and thus does not describe a
specific type of political rule. Eisenstadt (1973), and following him scholars such as
Jean-Franois Mdard (1982), Robert H. Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg (1981), and
Peter Pawelka (1985) by contrast, describe what they refer to as modern neopatrimonial or personalist rule as a specific form of (modern) authoritarian regimes
that is highly centralistic in the sense that access to power and resources is
concentrated at the center in the hands of political elites that are loyal to the person of
the ruler. The basis of regime maintenance in such orders is the distribution of
resources, rewards and access to spoils (Eisenstadt 1973; Jackson & Rosberg 1981;
Mdard 1982; Pawelka 1985; Roth 1968).
In African studies, the concept of neopatrimonialism (or one of its various forms)
became the orthodoxy of the 1970s and early 1980s (Erdmann & Engel 2007, 97),
but the notion was also widely employed in the Middle East and North Africa (see Bill
& Springborg 1994; Pawelka 1985; Springborg 1979), as well as for a number of
regimes outside of these regions (see the contributions in Chehabi & Linz 1998). In
most conceptions, the notion not only describes a political regime, but at the same
time connotes relatively low state capacities with political control being mostly
exercised indirectly via cooptation and clientelism, but with repression remaining an
option of last resort (for different forms of personal rule in Africa, see Jackson &
Rosberg 1981). As Mdard succinctly put it, under neopatrimonial conditions, the
problem is not development, but the maintenance of order and survival. All the
energy of the rulers goes into more or less successful efforts to stay in power
(Mdard 1982, 163).
While most analyst of neopatrimonialism or personalism agree on the core defining
features of these terms (but not on the terms themselves), there is little agreement
about whether this phenomenon should be considered an independent regime type or
a trait of specific regimes. Taking the first position, Michael Bratton and Nicolas van
de Walle argue that while neopatrimonial practices can be found in all polities, it is
the core feature of politics in Africa and in a small number of other states, including
Haiti, the Philippines, and Indonesia. Thus, personal relationships are a factor at the
10
margins of all bureaucratic systems, but in Africa they constitute the foundation and
superstructure of political institutions (Bratton & Van de Walle 1994, 459). Other
analysts, however, consider personalism a trait that can be found in different forms of
(democratic and nondemocratic) political regimes and hesitate to conceptualize it as
an independent regime type (Hadenius & Teorell 2007; Lemarchand & Legg 1972;
Roth 1968).
The debate on personalist rule is certainly farthest removed from the focus on socioeconomic conditions characteristic of first-wave scholarship, although the prevalence
of neopatrimonial structures is linked with economic underdevelopment. The
informal political processes on which this perspective focuses, however, also play an
important role in the second-wave debates on the so called gray zone. Overall, the
first-wave literature on authoritarian rule strove to understand the origins of specific
forms of authoritarian rule in terms of the socio economic conditions and
constellations at the start of the modernization process as in the case of personalist
rule, or in the nature and consequences of the process itself, as in the case of military
and single party rule. Thus the focus of these studies was much broader, and included
economic as well as social factors, with more narrowly political factors such as regime
types being mainly thought of as dependent variables. However, while the focus of
these studies was on a broader array of factors within the individual countries, there
was hardly any comparative effort to delineate differences not just between countries,
but rather between different types of authoritarian rule. In terms of the question of
how to properly classify authoritarian regimes, efforts largely proceeded inductively,
implicitly based on the theoretical question of who holds power, but without attempts
to outline the general features of authoritarian regimes and then classify its subtypes
along generally identified dimensions.
Post-Democratization Debates and the Second Wave of Authoritarianism Studies
Several developments came together by the end of the 1980s and gave rise to what we
call the second wave of authoritarianism studies. Empirically, in the wake of the third
wave of democratization (Huntington 1991), many nations seemed to take the road of
democratization, but frequently developed into something that might at best be called
incomplete democracies, rather than full-fledged liberal democratic regimes. However
flawed these new democracies were, the global political changes of the third wave
resulted in renewed interest if not in the autocracies from which they resulted, then at
least in the conditions under and processes by which they embarked on
democratization. What Thomas Carothers (2002) called the transition paradigm
became the dominant theoretical lens in the study of authoritarian rule. Under the
impression of the successful democratization processes in Southern Europe and Latin
America, the conceptual tools developed in this context (see especially the seminal
work by ODonnell & Schmitter 1986) were applied on a global scale and produced
numerous studies on the progress of and obstacles to democratization or political
liberalization in other countries or regions (see for example Bratton & van de Walle
1994 and 1997 on Africa, or Brynen, Korany & Noble 1995 on the Middle East).
11
Despite the initially positive outlook, it soon became clear that democratization was
not on the agenda in large parts of the world and that the End of History (Fukuyama
1992) was thus not forthcoming. This realization spawned a series of new debates on
the conceptual level. Scholars began to develop new classificatory tools to deal with
the allegedly novel (or hybrid) nature of a number of post-third wave regimes, ranging
from so called adjective democracies to hybrid regimes and new authoritarianisms
(see Collier & Levitsky 1997; Diamond 2002; Levitsky & Way 2002 and 2010;
Schedler 2002 and 2006).
Theoretically, the gradual demise of modernization theorys grand theorizing which
sought to identify general pathways from tradition to modernity largely independent
of specific historical contexts ushered in a phase in which the so called new
institutionalisms put an explicit focus on the way in which political institutions shaped
actors behavior and thus political outcomes. Thus, while in the immediate tail waters
of modernization theory authoritarianism studies had emerged as a more distinct field
of study within Comparative Politics, due to the specific logic of the approach, area
study approaches dominated the subfield. This was to change with the arrival of the
second wave of authoritarianism studies which again sought to identify the
mechanisms in which transitions from authoritarian rule proceeded via the mediating
factors of mainly formal political institutions within more broadly comparative crossnational research designs often based on quantitative data.
These changes must again be understood against the background of general
developments in the discipline. By the late 1970s and more pronouncedly from the
1980s onwards, the behavioral focus on explaining macro level outcomes as
aggregates of individual level choices and modernization theorys focus on grand
theorizing were challenged on theoretical grounds. Whereas modernization theory
sought to find similarities in the transition processes of developing countries on their
way to modernity, other approaches started to explicitly focus on differences and tried
to trace them back to the institutional design of different polities (March & Olsen
1984; Hall 1996, 936). Hence, a number of approaches subsumed under the headline
of the new instiututionalisms developed and would set the tone from there on:
[N]ew institutionalists moved away from concepts (like modernity and tradition) that
tended to homogenize whole classes of nations, toward concepts that could capture
diversity among them. [] These new institutionalists shared the behavioralists
concern for building theory. However, by focusing on intermediate institutions, they
sought to explain systematic differences across countries that previous theories had
obscured (Thelen and Steinmo 1992, 6).
The focus on institutional factors combined with an emphasis on cross-national
comparison on the basis of quantitative indicators would thus come to be one of the
defining features of second wave studies on authoritarianism. Whereas the first wave
literature mostly sidestepped the question of regime classification, the cross-national
comparative focus of second wave studies presupposed the construction of
typological systems to capture relevant difference. Again, efforts at delineating regime
types proceeded inductively by adding new types more or less ad hoc which, instead
of being part of a systematic effort to outline the space of political regimes, blurred
12
the line between the different types to accommodate empirical cases that were deemed
to not fit either category. This process was largely a reaction to the political changes
brought about by the third wave of democratization and the end of the Cold War.
From Adjective Democracies to New Authoritarianisms: The Gray Zone Debate
The first reaction to the Eddies in the Third Wave (Eisenstadt 2000) that became
apparent in the second half of the 1990s in this regard was the development of so
called adjective democracies (see especially Collier & Levitsky 1997; Collier & Mahon
1993). The debate on adjective democracies is part of the transition and consolidation
debates and grew out of the empirical observation that some regimes, even though
they might have acquired the form of democracies, continued to lack its substance
(see Merkel 2004; Merkel & Croissant 2000; ODonnell 1994 and 1996; Zakaria 1997).
As David Collier and Steven Levitsky observed in their seminal 1997 article, this
empirical phenomenon led to the proliferation of diminished subtypes8 of democracy
in the literature. Concepts such as illiberal democracy (Zakaria 1997), defective
democracy (Merkel 2004), or delegative democracy (ODonnell 1994), all have one
fundamental point in common in that they serve to highlight a specific regimes
democratic deficits by adding a negative adjective that signals in which area the
respective regime fails to reach democratic standards: The characteristic feature of
Guillermo ODonnells delegative democracy (1994), for example, is that the formal
institutional system is counteracted by powerful informal particularistic and
patrimonial norms that severely weaken horizontal accountability; Wolfgang Merkel
and Aurel Croissant (2000), in turn, argue that democratic deficits in defective
democracies in general are due to the existence of informal institutions alongside a
formal institutional system and differentiate between different types of defects
according to the partial regime affected. In general, the characteristic feature of
adjective democracies is the existence of formally democratic institutions that are
prevented from working properly by informal institutions and processes. In the
context of adjective democracies, moreover, these democratic deficits tend to be
interpreted as consolidation challenges, rather than permanent features of alternative
regime types, thus establishing an implicit expectation that these regimes will
eventually develop into complete liberal democracies.
Partly in opposition to this teleological bias, the discussion on hybrid regimes
conceptualized regimes in the gray zone between democracy and authoritarianism as
mixed regimes that combine elements of both fundamental types, rather than being
simply on the way towards consolidated democracy (Karl 1995; Bogaards 2009;
Diamond 2002; Levitsky & Way 2002; Ottaway 2003; Rb 2002; Zinecker 2004).
8
We do not discuss the methodological problems of diminished subtypes and radial categories here (for these
notions, see Collier & Mahon 1993; Lakoff 1987). We argued elsewhere (Koehler & Warkotsch 2010, also
see the appendix to this paper) that the concept of diminished subtypes and the underlying notion of
radial categories suffer from the so called problem of wide-open texture (Andersen 2000). In less
abstract terms, since radial categories by definition lack a core of defining features, their extension cannot
be defined sharply.
13
Although the insistence of many theorists of hybrid regimes that such forms of
political rule are potentially stable rather than yet-to-be-consolidated democracies
represents an important step, there are also some interesting similarities between this
debate and the debate on adjective democracies. The most important of these
similarities in the given context is the role of formal institutions. Steven Levitsky and
Lucan Way (2002, 52) for example, initially defined their concept of competitive
authoritarianism as a hybrid regime in which formal democratic institutions are
widely viewed as the principal means of obtaining and exercising political authority,
although [i]ncumbents violate those rules so often and to such an extent [] that the
regime fails to meet conventional minimum standards for democracy. Thus, what
distinguishes hybrid regimes from adjective democracies (if anything) is the extent of
violations of formal democratic rules, rather than any qualitative differences.9 In other
words, it is the extent to which the existing rules are observed by the actors (a
question of regime consolidation), rather than the rules themselves (a question of regime
type) that distinguishes hybrid regimes from adjective democracies.10
The last step in the classification debate has been taken by theorists of so called new
authoritarianisms, with the electoral authoritarian (Schedler 2002 and 2006) type
being the most widely used variant. Electoral authoritarian regimes, to use Andreas
Schedlers (2002) characterization, are regimes in which opposition parties lose
elections.11 The difference between electoral authoritarian and hybrid regimes thus
again mainly lies in the extent to which the formal political arena is controlled by the
authoritarian incumbents and reflects Barbara Geddes (2005, 6) warning that most
authoritarian governments that hold elections are not hybrids but simply successful,
well institutionalized authoritarian regimes. In contrast to both, adjective
democracies and hybrid regimes, new authoritarianisms are clearly located within the
classical three fold typology of political regimes (Linz 1975). They constitute subtypes
of authoritarian regimes that allow for some degree of political participation, without,
however, crossing the threshold to meaningful political contestation. In a way, the
emergence of new authoritarianisms as the (as of yet) last step of the classification
debate indicates that analysts have almost come full circle in their conceptual
understanding of the gray zone phenomenon. Whereas early contributions
emphasized the democratic side and the dynamism inherent in gray zone regimes,
more recent work suggests that we might be looking at stable, nondemocratic regimes
that are not altogether different from classical forms of authoritarianism.
On a more abstract level, another major difference is that in contrast to adjective democracies, hybrid regimes
can be defined clearly in the framework of classical categories (Sartori 1970). In other words, whereas it is
impossible to state unambiguously where the boundary between adjective democracies and nondemocracy lies, it is possible to define hybrid regimes by a combination of necessary and sufficient
features (see Rb 2002 for one of the very few clear definitions).
10 If we follow a classical definition of political regimes (Easton 1965; Munck 1996), then this in the last analysis
amounts to saying that on the level of regime types, there are no differences between hybrid regimes and
adjective democracies because the defining rules are the same. The difference would rather be on the level
of regime consolidation (ODonnell 1996).
11 Of course, Schedlers characterization of EA regimes was inspired by Adam Przeworskis (1991) famous
definition of democracy.
9
14
(2) go beyond the exclusive focus on formal institutional features for classificatory
purposes.
Before we can develop this argument in more detail, we have to briefly take a step
back and ask a more fundamental question: Why do we need concepts in the first
place? What is their function in the research process? Although it is certainly true that
the issue of concept formation in social science research has received relatively little
attention especially when compared to the vast literature on indicators and
measurement (Goertz 2006, 2; also see Gerring 1999, 358), there nevertheless seems
to be a consensus that answering the what-is question (Mair 2008, 179) necessarily
has to be the first step in any (social) scientific endeavor (Gerring 1999; Goertz 2006;
Mair 2008; Sartori 1970 and 1991). The fundamental epistemological reason for this is
that there are a potentially unlimited number of similarities and differences between
any two objects (Dupr 2002, 61). Since this is the case, there is at least one
perspective under which any two objects can be considered the same (Popper 1973,
376). Concept formation solves this problem. In an effort to provide conceptual
containers (Sartori 1970, 1038), the process of concept formation forces us to take a
position (Popper 1973, 375)12 and to single out a dimension which we consider
essential in the given context, thus establishing a system of similarity and dissimilarity
relations among the objects concerned. Only once we have decided under which
perspective we compare two objects can we decide if they are different or the same;
and only once we answered the what-is question can we approach the how-much
question (Mair 2008, 179). Or, to put it in Giovanni Sartoris words, [we] cannot
measure unless we know first what it is we are measuring (Sartori 1970, 1038).
This last point is especially important in our context since it is linked with a debate
between proponents of dichotomous regime measures and advocates of continuous
scales (see Collier & Adcock 1999).13 Without going into too many details with respect
to this discussion here, it is important to note two things. First, the view that any
concept could be of an inherently continuous nature (Bollen & Jackman 1989, 612)
as is sometimes argued for the case of democracy misses the important point that
if we conceptualize a concept as continuous, this is a theoretical choice that cannot be
justified with reference to the real concept being continuous (also see Mair 2008, 185
for a critique of this idea). To see this, consider that such a claim would force us to
accept the philosophically quite strong position that concepts possess some form of
objective existence that is independent of the process of concept formation. As long
as we consider conceptual systems to be the products of our own attempts to impose
order on the world (rather than to reflect an objectively existing order), there is no way
12
13
Translation from German by the authors. The original quote is Diese Skizzen zeigen, da Dinge in
verschiedener Hinsicht hnlich sein knnen und da beliebige zwei Dinge, die von einem Standpunkt aus
hnlich sind, von einem anderen Standpunkt aus unhlich sein knnen. Allgemein gesprochen setzt
hnlichkeit und somit auch Wiederholung stets die Einnahme eines Standpunkts voraus []. (Popper
1973, 375; emphases in the original).
The debate about continuous vs. dichotomous regime type measures revolves around the question whether
regime types, and here especially democracy, should be considered to be qualities that are either present
or absent in a given regime (dichotomous), or rather occur in different degrees in any regime
(continuous).
16
of maintaining that they possess any inherent qualities. From a theoretical perspective,
conceptualizing a concept as continuous or dichotomous is thus a choice that can only
be justified by the usefulness of the resulting conceptual containers.
Secondly, it is important to keep in mind the distinction between conceptualization on
the one hand, and operationalization and measurement on the other. While the
usefulness of operationalizing the features of a certain regime type in a continuous
manner depends on the specific research question being asked (Adcock & Collier
1999; Brownlee 2009a; Hadenius & Teorell 2007), on the level of conceptualization
the notion of continuous regime types is indeed confused (Alvarez et al. 1996, 21).
Either we can order all existing regimes on a single continuous scale, or there are
different regime types; to maintain that there are different regime types and that they
can at the same time be ordered on such a scale is simply a contradictory statement
because a continuous scale by definition does not allow for qualitative differences.14
If we look at recent conceptual discussions in the field of authoritarianism studies
from such a perspective, a number of problems on different levels emerge. As we
have alluded to above, the different expressions of the gray zone debate, namely
adjective democracies, hybrid regimes, and new authoritarianisms all rely on the idea
of an underlying regime continuum, with liberal democracy on the one end, and fully
closed autocracies on the other. In between these two poles lay a number of different
regime types that are conceived of as neither fully democratic, nor completely
authoritarian, but exhibit qualities of both regime types to varying degrees. Whether
this continuum is expressed in terms of degrees of democracy, competitiveness, civil
liberties and political rights, or some other concept does not matter for the given
context. The fundamental idea remains that of a continuum on which all political
regimes can be projected (see Munck 2006 for an explicit version of this argument).
As Axel Hadenius and Jan Teorell (2007, 144) pointedly observe, however, [i]f the
degree of competitiveness were the only dimension along which authoritarian regimes
differed, we would need no regime typology. This observation is quite to the point.
To see why this is true and how it is linked to the problem of concept formation, let
us assume we indeed had such a scale of competitiveness and corresponding values
for all regimes around the globe.15 What would we do with these data? Following the
logic of the gray zone, we would probably try to specify a number of thresholds that
would, for example, result in the well known spectrum of liberal democracy, electoral
democracy, competitive authoritarianism, hegemonic authoritarianism, and closed
authoritarianism (see Diamond 2002 for a classificatory scheme that comes very
close). But how would we decide where to establish the cutoff points? In principle,
there are two different possibilities: Either we rely on some kind of arbitrary process
14
15
The reverse of course is even more obvious: a nominal variable cannot be projected on an interval scale.
Some scholars tend to think of the Polity scale, the EIEC (executive index of electoral competition) and
LIEC (legistative index of electoral competition) contained in the World Banks dataset of political
institutions (DPI), or even the Freedom House or Polity scores in such terms. While all of these scales
certainly have their problems, our point here is more fundamental. Irrespective of which scale we use,
establishing thresholds is either arbitrary (and thus empirically useless), or presupposes a conceptual
dichotomy that justifies this particular threshold.
17
Note that this immediately follows from Sartoris famous admonition that concept formation precedes
measurement (1970).
18
influential in helping to give rise to what can now be considered a formal current
within the literature on authoritarian rule that recognizes formal institutions as an
important part of authoritarian regimes (see Carter 2010; Cox 2009; Gandhi 2008;
Gandhi & Przeworski 2006 and 2007; Lust-Okar 2005; Magaloni 2006 and 2008;
Miller 2009; Przeworski 2009).
The second factor that led to a re-appreciation of the role of formal institutions as
distinctly authoritarian institutions came from a more empirically oriented perspective
informed by detailed case studies. Building on earlier work in the Comparative Politics
and area studies literature (see e.g. Harik 1973; Hermet, Rose and Rouqui 1978;
Perlmutter 1981; Dawisha & Zartman 1988), scholars re-examined the role of
imitative institutions (Albrecht & Schlumberger 2004) in the field of incumbentopposition relations, arguing that the existence of opposition actors can have
functional aspects for dictators (see Albrecht 2005, and 2010) and that dictators use
formal institutions to structure their political systems through inclusion and exclusion
(Lust-Okar 2004, 2005, and 2007). Others focused on formal institutions such as
elections and legislatures that were interpreted as mechanisms of co-optation and the
distribution of spoils (Blaydes 2010; Gandhi 2008; Koehler 2008; Lust-Okar 2006), or
analyzed the role of ruling parties in stabilizing elite coalitions in authoritarian contexts
(Brownlee 2007; Langston 2006; Magaloni 2006). These mainly empirically oriented
studies produced important evidence for the fact that formal institutions can serve
important functions under autocracy without necessarily inducing any kind of regime
change.
The main conclusion emerging from this focus on authoritarian institution is
succinctly summarized by Ellen Lust-Okar (2005, 1) who maintains that formal
institutions matter in authoritarian regimes although [t]hey do so independently of
the larger rules of the game that characterize regime types. In the meantime, the
debate on authoritarian institutions and regime stability has crystallized around two
main sub-debates. The first of these debates focuses on the dynamics of authoritarian
elections (see Blaydes 2010; Gandhi & Lust-Okar 2009; Koehler 2008; Lindberg 2009;
Lust 2009; Lust-Okar 2006; Magaloni 2006; Schedler 2006), whereas the second
mainly analyzes the role of dominant or single parties in the context of authoritarian
rule (Brownlee 2007; Kricheli & Magaloni 2010; Langston 2006; Magaloni 2008).
Taken together, the current conceptual state of the art in authoritarianism studies is
characterized by two different research agendas that, a common focus on formal
institutions notwithstanding, produce rather incompatible results. We will return to
this problem in the next section. Before we discuss this issue, however, we will briefly
summarize what we think are the most important components of the current state of
the art.
hypotheses cannot easily be reconciled with the gray zone perspective that more
institutions mean more democracy, but rather suggest that the relationship between
institutionalization and authoritarian rule is not as uniform as maintained by these
scholars.
As our brief review of the debate on formal institutions under authoritarianism has
shown, one of the main conclusions of this current of literature is that formal
institutions can be integral parts of authoritarian regimes. Whereas this conclusion
should not come as a surprise in the case of such institutions as authoritarian single
parties (Kricheli & Magaloni 2010; Magaloni 2006 and 2008; Smith 2005), it has also
been shown to be true for less obvious cases such as opposition parties (Albrecht
2005; Dawisha & Zartman 1988), legislatures (Gandhi 2008), and elections (Koehler
2008; Lust-Okar 2006 and 2009; Magaloni 2006). If these arguments are indeed valid,
they raise considerable doubts concerning one of the fundamental assumptions
involved in the gray zone-debate. If the formal institutions on which analysts of
hybrid regimes and new authoritarianisms focus in their efforts to determine degrees
of competitiveness do not function as democratic institutions in the first place, why
should we then classify nondemocratic regimes along the dimension of the degree to
which these institutions produce dynamics that resemble those found in democratic
systems (such as electoral results)? In other words, if it cannot be taken for granted
that the presence of formal party systems, elections, or parliaments will automatically
increase the degree of competitiveness, using these features as the basis for
classification will be of little value. Rather, formal institutions seem to work under
some circumstances, while they fail to do so under others (see for example Howard &
Roessler 2006; Smith 2005). Classifying gray zone regimes along the very dimension of
formal institutional competitiveness prevents us from asking under what kind of
regime these formal institutional effects arise in the first place.
Authoritarianism Studies and the Arab Spring: Challenging the State of the Art
So far, we arguably dealt with the easier part of the exercise. Criticizing conceptual
frameworks on the basis of logical and methodological arguments, although an
important part of coming to terms with conceptual confusion, can only be the first
step. Which constructive lessons can we learn from the conceptual confusion in
authoritarianism studies? Is there a way of getting the concepts right? Obviously, and
maybe disappointingly, we cannot offer a full fledged classificatory system that would
overcome the problems we identified in the existing conceptual tools. What we will
do, however, is to offer some thoughts on the direction in which such an endeavor
should lead.
In order to illustrate these ideas, we confront the state of the art in authoritarianism
studies reviewed in the preceding pages with empirical evidence of different regime
trajectories in the Arab Spring. Our main concern is to show that an understanding of
these trajectories presupposes going beyond institutionalist regime categories and
hypotheses and integrating some of the issues emphasized by first wave approaches.
21
Given both the ongoing nature of regime change in the Arab world and our mainly
conceptual concerns in this paper, we naturally do not aim to give an account of the
Arab Spring as such, but rather want to point out how understanding these
developments requires us to go beyond the existing state of the art by linking existing
institutionalist notions of authoritarian regimes back to their social origins. In other
words, we urge scholars to look beyond institutional effects and to take the noninstitutional origins of institutions seriously as factors conditioning institutional effects
(see Heydeman 1999; Levitsky & Murillo 2009; Smith 2005; Waldner 1999).
The Arab Spring saw mass mobilization in most countries of the Middle Eastern and
North African (MENA) region outside the Gulf,17 yet only a handful of regimes either
broke down or exhibited strong signs of instability.18 A more complete explanation for
the emergence of and differences between protest movements in different cases
certainly has to await both more empirical research and at least a relative stabilization
of the situation. Why, for example, is it that the Egyptian uprising was concentrated in
population centers such as Alexandria, Cairo, and Port Said and left rural areas
(especially in Upper Egypt) relatively untouched, while protests in Syria and Tunisia
spread from the periphery to the cities (Anderson 2011; Hibou 2011)? What accounts
for the very different role played by political parties, trade unions, and other formal
political organizations in different cases? What, if anything, can such differences tell us
about likely post-Arab Spring developments?
Despite the fact that the situation is far from settled in many countries and that an
attempt to answer most of these questions would thus be premature, some interesting
differences in regime trajectories are nevertheless already apparent. Most importantly
at the time of writing only two Arab dictators, Zine al-Abidine bin Ali of Tunisia and
Husni Mubarak of Egypt, had definitely been forced out of office. In other cases,
large scale mobilization led to protracted crises in which concessions, negotiations,
repression, and continued mobilization interacted. This last trajectory is exemplified
by Syria and Yemen, with Libya forming a somewhat special case due to foreign
intervention. Lastly, there are cases of regime stability in the presence of mass protests
as in Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, and Morocco, and cases without major protest events
such as Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf monarchies. Table 1 summarizes these
differences. What we want to do here is not so much to empirically explain these
differences, but to show how such an empirical explanation requires us to go beyond
current institutionalist approaches focusing on the effects of institutions.
17
18
And even the Gulf did not remain completely untouched with mass demonstrations in Bahrain.
One of the best sources on the dynamics of protest in different countries is a series of reports by the
International Crisis Group, covering protests in Egypt (I), Yemen (II), Bahrain (III), Tunisia (IV), Libya
(V), and Syria (VI and VII). We largely draw on these sources which we cite as ICG 2011 followed by the
Roman numeral referring to the specific report.
22
Cases
Egypt
Tunisia
(Libya)
Syria
Yemen
Algeria
Bahrain
Jordan
Morocco
Oman
Kuwait
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
Geddes (1999 and 2003) excludes monarchies from her regime typology and only later versions of her dataset
(Smith 2005 and Brownlee 2007) contain monarchical cases. Gandhi (2008), by contrast, sees monarchies
as a separate regime category but offers little in terms of discussing what exactly makes monarchies
different (beyond the chief executives title). Richards and Waterbury (1996) and Lust-Okar and Jamal
(2002) both offer interesting discussions of monarchs preference for tactics of divide and rule over
strategies of central control that they attribute to the fact that monarchs draw legitimacy from sources
outside the political system (religion, tradition), while presidents have to legitimate themselves within the
political arena.
23
regimes combining military, single party, and personalist elements, while considering
Algeria after 1997 a military regime, Tunisia a single party regime (thus, in contrast to
Gandhi [2008] taking into account the marginal role of the Tunisian military), and
both Libya and Yemen personalist regimes. While it remains unclear how exactly these
differences are measured empirically, regime trajectories still cut across regime type
categories. Finally, the third major regime typology developed by Hadenius and
Teorell (2007) classifies Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen as limited multiparty regimes,
while Algeria is categorized as a military multiparty and Syria as a military one-party
regime. Libya in this system falls into the other-category. Again, it is difficult to see
how such classifications are arrived at empirically and the regime trajectories cut
across regime types.
While it is not surprising that regime typologies can easily be criticized on the basis of
individual cases, what is more striking is the degree of disagreement among the three
most wide-spread classificatory systems. This fact which to our knowledge went
unnoticed (or at least un-discussed) in the literature raises serious doubts as to
whether quantitative findings based on different typologies can be easily be compared
or even integrated.20
Beyond the rather crude instrument of regime typologies, we might turn to specific
hypotheses about authoritarian institutions to account for the different regime
trajectories. Two such hypotheses immediately come to mind: The rather wellcorroborated idea that ruling parties contribute to regime stability (Blaydes 2010;
Brownlee 2007; Geddes 1999; Levitsky & Way 2010; Magaloni 2006 and 2008; Smith
2005), and the less well-researched hypothesis that different authoritarian regimes are
more or less vulnerable to mass protests (Ulfelder 2005).
The basic idea behind the hypothesis of ruling party effects is that as soon as dictators
transfer some of their discretionary power to the institutional processes of a party
organization, political elites have good reasons to expect that they might profit from
continued loyalty to the regime. By lengthening actors time horizons, ruling parties
allow elites to trade off current losses against expected benefits and thus increase their
incentives to remain loyal (see Brownlee 2007; Magaloni 2006 and 2008). Jay Ulfelder
20
This is not an effect of our cases. I merged the Gandhis and Geddes datasets to compare the two typological
systems on the basis of the set of country-year observations in which they overlap (Gandhis dataset
includes all dictatorships between 1946 and 2002, whereas Geddes data [in the version of Smith 2005]
run from 1930 through 2000). A bivariate correlation between the country-years classified as military
regimes in both datasets yields a coefficient of 0.28, indicating that there is substantial disagreement as to
which regimes should be classified as military dictatorships. This is due to the fact that of the 2,475
country-year observations common to both datasets, Gandhis typology classifies 44 percent as military
dictatorships, whereas Geddes coding rules produce only 7 percent. The picture changes if we collapse all
regimes with military involvement from Geddess typology (military regimes, military/personalist regimes,
and military/personalist/single-party regimes) into a single category. The correlation coefficient then is
0.52, and the percentages are 44 (Gandhi) and 19 percent (Geddes), respectively. The differences are not
as pronounced for the monarchy type. The correlation coefficient is 0.86 and the percentage is 11
(Gandhi) and 10 percent (Geddes). The remaining regime categories (civilian dictatorship and single-party
regime or personalist regime) are not directly comparable. Nevertheless, these differences suggest that the
results based on these two classificatory systems cannot be easily compared or integrated because they are
using very different categories despite employing partially the same terminology.
24
(2005), on the other hand, has argued that single party regimes (in Geddes sense)
should be most vulnerable to mass protests because they draw legitimacy from mass
support.
Both hypotheses are certainly plausible and more or less well-corroborated by crossnational quantitative evidence (see Magaloni 2008; Ulfelder 2005; Smith 2005).
Neither of them, however, allows us to differentiate between regime trajectories
among the non-monarchical cases Arab cases. Both cases of regime breakdown
(Egypt and Tunisia) had hegemonic party organizations, as do two cases of protracted
crisis (Syria and Yemen), while one case (Libya) does not have a ruling party. The
presence or absence of ruling parties thus does not seem to hold much explanatory
potential in the Arab Spring. Neither did party regimes proof more stable as expected
by the ruling party effects hypothesis, nor did they proof generally prone to regime
breakdown in the face of mass protest as expected by Ulfelders (2005) theory. Rather,
some party regimes broke down while others entered protracted crises, but none
remained stable.
The evidence concerning other institutionalist hypotheses is similarly mixed: The
Middle East and North Africa with its history of competitive clientelist electoral
politics does not accord well either with Lindbergs (2007 and 2009) theory of
democratization by elections, or with Brownlees (2009a and 2009b) or Hadenius and
Teorells (2007) ideas about the positive relation between the degree of
competitiveness and democratization. At the same time, at least at first sight a
linkage/leverage type of explanation following Levitskys and Ways excellent study of
competitive authoritarianism (2010) does not seem to hold too much potential either.
In short, the state of the art after the second wave of authoritarianism studies does not
seem to offer conceptual tools that could help us to understand the events of the Arab
Spring.
We hold that this is not coincidental, but rather the effect of two interrelated
problems in institutionalist studies of authoritarian rule. The first problem has been
discussed in the general institutionalist literature as the problem of functionalism
(Pierson 2000) but has barely found its way into the debates of authoritarian
institutionalism (but see Gandhi & Lust 2009). This problem basically refers to the
fact that many institutionalist scholars of authoritarianism do not sufficiently
differentiate between describing the function of institutions and explaining their
existence. Rather, they tend to conclude that institutions exist because they perform
specific functions, an argument that is both difficult to maintain on a logical level and
historically unconvincing (Little 1991).
The second problem is what we call a formalism problem (see also Levitsky & Murillo
2009). With this we refer to the fact that institutional form has received ample
attention in recent debates whereas institutional strength or effectiveness has not (see
Levitsky & Way 2010; Smith 2005 for exceptions). It should certainly not come as a
surprise to students of institutions that institutional strength is an important
intervening variable. Despite the rather consensual nature of this proposition,
however, the question of institutional strength has rarely been examined by scholars
25
26
References
Acemoglu, Daron and James A. Robinson. 2006. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.
Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Albrecht, Holger (ed.) 2010 (forthcoming). Contentious Politics in the Middle East: Governance and
International Relations in the Middle East. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
. 2005. "How Can Opposition Support Authoritarianism? Lessons from Egypt."
Democratization 12, no. 3: 378-97.
Albrecht, Holger and Oliver Schlumberger. 2004. "'Waiting for Godot:' Regime Change
Without Democratization in the Middle East." International Political Science Review/
Revue internationale de science politique 25, no. 4: 371.
Almond, Gabriel Abraham and James Smoot Coleman. 1960. The Politics of the Developing Areas.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Alvarez, Mike, Jos Antonio Cheibub, Fernando Limongi and Adam Przeworski. 1996.
"Classifying Political Regimes." Studies in Comparative International Development 31, no. 2:
3-36.
Andersen, Hanne. 2000. "Kuhn's Account of Family Resemblance: A Solution to the Problem
of Wide-open Texture." Erkenntnis 52, no. 3: 313-37.
Anderson, Lisa. 2011. "Demystifying the Arab Spring." Foreign Affairs 90, no. 3: 2-7.
Angrist, Michele Penner. 2006. Party Building in the Modern Middle East. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.
. 2004. "Party Systems and Regime Formation in the Modern Middle East: Explaining
Turkish Exceptionalism." Comparative Politics 36, no. 2: 229-49.
Apter, David E. 1955. The Gold Coast in Transition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
. 1965. The Politics of Modernization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bendix, Reinhard. 1977. Nation-Building and Citizenship: Studies of Our Changing Social Order. 2nd
ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Binder, Leonard. 1971. "Crises of Political Development." In Leonard Binder, James S.
Coleman, Joseph LaPalombara, Lucian W. Pye, Sidney Verba and Myron Weiner
(eds.). Crises and Sequences in Political Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
3-72.
Binder, Leonard, James S. Coleman, Joseph LaPalombara, Lucian W. Pye, Sidney Verba and
Myron Weiner. 1971. Crises and Sequences in Political Development. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Blaydes, Lisa. 2010 (forthcoming). Competition Without Democracy: Elections and Distributive Politics
in Mubarak's Egypt. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bogaards, Matthijs. 2009. "How to Classify Hybrid Regimes? Defective Democracy and
Electoral Authoritarianism." Democratization 16, no. 2: 399-423.
Bollen, Kenneth A. and Robert W. Jackman. 1989. "Democracy, Stability, and Dichotomies."
American Sociological Review 54, no. 4: 612-21.
Bratton, Michael and Nicolas Van de Walle. 1997. Democratic Experiments in Africa: Regime
Transitions in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University
Press.
. 1994. "Neopatrimonial Regimes and Political Transitions in Africa." World Politics 46,
no. 4: 453-89.
Brooker, Paul. 1999. Non-democratic Regimes: Theory, Governments and Politics. Basingstoke:
Macmillan.
27
28
29
LaPalombara, Joseph and Myron Weiner. 1966. Political Parties and Political Development.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lemarchand, Rene and Keith Legg. 1972. "Political Clientelism and Development: A
Preliminary Analysis." Comparative Politics 4, no. 2: 149-78.
Levitsky, Steven and Mara Victoria Murillo. 2009. "Variation in Institutional Strength." Annual
Review of Political Science 12, no. 1: 115-33.
Levitsky, Steven and Lucan Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold
War. New York; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 2002. "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism." Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2: 5165.
Lindberg, Staffan I. (ed.) 2009. Democratization by Elections: A New Mode of Transition. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
. 2009. "The Power of Elections in Africa Revisited." In Staffan I. Lindberg (eds.).
Democratization by Elections: A New Mode of Transition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 25-46.
Linz, Juan J. 1964. "An Authoritarian Regime: Spain." In Erik Allardt and Yrjo Littunen (eds.).
Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems. Helsinki: Westermarck Society,
. 2000. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
. 1975. "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes." In Fred Greenstein and Nelson
Polsby (eds.). Handbook of Political Science, Vol. III. Reading: Addison Wesley, 174-411.
Little, Daniel. 1991. Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science.
Boulder: Westview Press.
Lust-Okar, Ellen. 2004. "Divided They Rule: The Management and Manipulation of Political
Opposition." Comparative Politics 36, no. 2: 159-79.
. 2006. "Elections under Authoritarianism: Preliminary Lessons from Jordan."
Democratization 13, no. 3: 456-71.
. 2007. "The Management of Opposition: Formal Structures of Contestation and
Informal Political Manipulation in Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco." In Oliver
Schlumberger (eds.). Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durability in
Nondemocratic Regimes. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 39-58.
. 2005. Structuring Conflict in the Arab World: Incumbents, Opponents, and Institutions.
Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lust-Okar, Ellen and Amaney A. Jamal. 2002. "Rulers and Rules: Reassessing the Influence of
Regime Type on Electoral Law Formation." Comparative Political Studies 35, no. 3: 337.
Lust, Ellen. 2009. "Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East." Journal of Democracy 20, no. 3:
122-35.
Magaloni, Beatriz. 2008. "Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule."
Comparative Political Studies 41, no. 4/5: 715-41.
. 2006. Voting for Autocracy: Hegemonic Party Survival and its Demise in Mexico. Cambridge;
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Magaloni, Beatriz and Ruth Kricheli. 2010. "Political Order and One-Party Rule." Annual
Review of Political Science 13, no. 1.
Mair, Peter. 2008. "Concepts and Concept Formation." In Donatella della Porta and Michael
Keating (eds.). Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: A Pluralist Perspective.
Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 177-97.
March, James G. and Johan P. Olsen. 1989. Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of
Politics. New York: Free Press.
Mdard, Jean-Franois. 1982. "The Underdeveloped State in Tropical Africa: Political
Clientelism or Neo-Patrimonialism." In Christopher Clapham (eds.). Private Patronage
and Public Power: Political Clientelism in the Modern State. London: Frances Pinter, 162-92.
30
Merkel, Wolfgang. 2004. "Embedded and Defective Democracies." Democratization 11, no. 5: 33
- 58.
Merkel, Wolfgang and Aurel Croissant. 2000. "Formale und informale Institutionen in
defekten Demokratien." Politische Vierteljahresschrift 41, no. 1: 3-30.
Miller, Michael K. 2009. "Electoral Authoritarianism and Democracy: A Formal Model of
Regime Transitions." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American
Political Science Association, Toronto, September 3-6, 2009.
Moore, Clement Henry. 1962. "The Neo-Destour Party of Tunisia: A Structure for
Democracy?" World Politics 14, no. 3: 461-82.
Munck, Gerardo L. "Disaggregating Political Regime." In Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Working Paper No. 228, 1996.
. 2006. "Drawing Boundaries: How to Craft Intermediate Regime Types." In Andreas
Schedler (eds.). Electoral Authoritarianism. The Dynamics of Unfree Competition. Boulder:
Lynne Rienner, 27-40.
Nordlinger, Eric A. 1977. Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments. Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice-Hall.
O'Donnell, Guillermo A. 1994. "Delegative Democracy." Journal of Democracy 5, no. 1: 55-69.
. 1996. "Illusions About Consolidation." Journal of Democracy 7, no. 2: 34-51.
. 1973. Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics.
Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California.
O'Donnell, Guillermo A. and Philippe C. Schmitter. 1986. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule:
Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Ottaway, Marina. 2003. Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi-Authoritarianism. Washington, D.C.:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Pawelka, Peter. 1985. Herrschaft und Entwicklung im Nahen Osten: gypten (Rule and Development in
the Middle East: Egypt). Heidelberg: C.F. Mller.
Perlmutter, Amos. 1981. Modern Authoritarianism: A Comparative Institutional Analysis. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Pierson, Paul. 2000. "The Limits of Design: Explaining Institutional Origins and Change."
Governance 13, no. 4: 475-99.
Popper, Karl R. 1973. Die Logik der Forschung. Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Przeworski, Adam. 1991. Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in Eastern Europe
and Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. "Force, Wealth, and Elections." Department of Politics, New York University, 2009.
Pye, Lucian W. and Sidney Verba. 1965. Political Culture and Political Development. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Richards, Alan and John Waterbury. 1996. A Political Economy of the Middle East. 2nd ed.
Boulder, Colo: Westview Press.
Roth, Guenther. 1968. "Personal Rulership, Patrimonialism, and Empire-Building in the New
States." World Politics 20, no. 2: 194-206.
Rb, Friedbert. 2002. "Hybride Regime: Politikwissenschaftliches Chamleon oder neuer
Regimetypus? Begriffliche und konzeptionelle berlegungen zum neuen Pessimismus
in der Transitologie." In Petra Bendel, Aurel Croissant and Friedbert Rb (eds.).
Zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur. Zur Konzeption und Empirie demokratischer Grauzonen.
Opladen: Leske und Budrich, 99-118.
Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens. 1992. Capitalist Development and
Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Rustow, Dankwart A. 1967. A World of Nations: Problems of Political Modernization. Washington:
The Brookings Institution.
31
Sartori, Giovanni. 1991. "Comparing and Miscomparing." Journal of Theoretical Politics 3, no. 3:
243-57.
. 1970. "Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics." The American Political Science
Review 64, no. 4: 1033-53.
Schachter, Ruth. 1961. "Single-Party Systems in West Africa." The American Political Science
Review 55, no. 2: 294-307.
Schedler, Andreas (ed.) 2006. Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition.
Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
. 2002a. "The Menu of Manipulation." Journal of Democracy 13, no. 2: 36-50.
Schmitter, Philippe C. 1971. Interest Conflict and Political Change in Brazil. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Smith, Benjamin B. 2005. "Life of the Party: The Origins of Regime Breakdown and
Persistence under Single-Party Rule." World Politics 57, no. 3: 421-51.
Springborg, Robert. 1979. "Patrimonialism and Policy Making in Egypt: Nasser and Sadat and
the Tenure Policy for Reclaimed Lands." Middle Eastern Studies 15, no. 1: 49-69.
Tilly, Charles (ed.) 1975. The Formation of National States in Western Europe. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Tullock, Gordon. 1987. Autocracy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Ulfelder, Jay. 2005. "Contentious Collective Action and the Breakdown of Authoritarian
Regimes." International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique 26,
no. 3: 311-34.
Waldner, David. 1999. State Building and Late Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1960. "Ethnicity and National Integration in West Africa." Cahiers
d'etudes africaines 1, no. 3: 129-39.
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wintrobe, Ronald. 2007. "Dictatorship: Analytical Approaches." In Charles Boix and Susan C.
Stokes (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 363-94.
. 1998. The Political Economy of Dictatorship. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University
Press.
. 1990. "The Tinpot and the Totalitarian: An Economic Theory of Dictatorship." The
American Political Science Review 84, no. 3: 849-72.
Zakaria, Fareed. 1997. "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy." Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6: 22-43.
Zinecker, Heidrun. 2004. "Regime-Hybriditt in Entwicklungslndern [Regime Hybridity in
Developing Countries]." Zeitschrift fr Internationale Beziehungen 11, no. 2: 239-72.
Zolberg, Aristide R. 1966. Creating Political Order: The Party-States of West Africa. Chicago: Rand
McNally.
. 1963. "Mass Parties and National Integration: The Case of the Ivory Coast." The
Journal of Politics 25, no. 1: 36-48.
32