Undergraduate Program Status
Elective | 4th year |
Hybrid regimes that alloy democratic rules with authoritarian governance are the most widespread political systems in the world at the beginning of the 21st century. Conventional accounts describe them as defective democracies or competitive authoritarian regimes. Alternative views point to the genuine features and functions of these regimes that cannot be reduced to those of half-democracies or half-autocracies. In fact, hybrid regimes are puzzling in several ways: (1) their establishment and sustainability have been unexpected either by the school of democratization/transitology or by the school of (new) authoritarianism; (2) neither democratic institutions (e.g. elections) nor autocratic institutions (e.g. dominant parties) function in a conventional way there; and (3) contrary to the expectations of stability, hybrid regimes have demonstrated a variety of (within-type) dynamics.
At the end of the course, you will: gain the understanding of the differences between hybrid, democratic and authoritarian regimes; become familiar with the major research schools dealing with hybrid regimes, their (normative) premises as well as their strengths and weaknesses; accumulate the knowledge about the actors, institutions and processes responsible for establishment, functioning, and dynamics of hybrid regimes; understand the interaction mechanisms between actors and structures as well as the links between global and local in hybrid regimes; know specifics of East European and Eurasian hybrid regimes relative to the hybrid regimes in other world regions; learn how to identify empirical puzzles and how to address them with theoretical knowledge and methodological tools; be skilled in ‘translation’ of research findings into practical policy recommendations.