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: fareedaz@gmail.com]

1
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

2
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’.

3
 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

4
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

5
power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people’s vote’. Dahl thought that
in a political democracy, citizens must have channels to formulate their preferences and be
able, through their individual and collective action, to influence government decisions. He
believed that ‘a key characteristic of a democracy is the continuing responsiveness of the
government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals’ (Dahl 1971, p.
1).
The most important advantage of the Schumpeterian/Dahlian approach is that it
focuses largely on procedural criteria and can therefore be easily operationalized. Most of the
current conceptualisations of political regime follow Schumpeter and Dahl to consider
contestation as the most salient dimension of democracy/autocracy continuum and
concentrate on electoral competition and the protection of basic civil liberties as its two main
attributes. Therefore, following this tradition, democracies are defined as those political
systems in which there exists an equal level playing field for both opposition and incumbents
to compete for central governmental offices. Those political systems that do not provide for
‘free and fair’ competition are treated as autocracies (or authoritarian regimes). Hybrid
regimes reside somewhere in the middle between the two.
Having said that, it is necessary to first evaluate the extent to which countries conduct
open and fair competitive elections for the key government offices or, in other words, to
assess the conditions for political contestation (see Dahl 1971). To be precise, ‘to determine
whether a country is democratic, we need to know whether it allows for political competition.
To assess competition, we need to assess the structure and process of competition’ (Bogaards
2007, p. 1233).
Following the conceptual distinctions already outlined, three variants of political
competition are possible:
- contested elections (competitive system),
- restricted elections (authoritarian with restricted but competitive elections),
- elections absent or controlled (authoritarian, either ‘closed’ or with
uncompetitive elections).

In the second step, closed authoritarian and hegemonic authoritarian types, and,
separately, electoral and consolidated democratic types, need to be separated one from the
other. What distinguished electoral authoritarianism from closed authoritarianism is that
electoral authoritarian regimes, both hegemonic and competitive, are open to ‘some form of

6
multiparty or multifactional polling’ (Brownlee 2009, p. 524). What separates closed from
hegemonic authoritarian regimes is whether or not contestation (elections and parties) exists.
Electoral democracy, as has already been pointed out, is largely a minimalist Schumpeterian
democracy whereas liberal democracy is an institutionally consolidated democratic system
(Linz & Stepan 1996).

Measurement
Various data sources are available to the researcher who is interested in measuring
competition but some of the most oft-used datasets have some conceptual and measurement
problems (for an insightful review, see Munck & Verkuilen 2002). The commonly-used
Freedom House index, for example, has been shown to be inconsistent as a source of time-
series data. Hartlyn (2002, p. 128) pointed out that it had been shown that during the 1970s
and 1980s, the democracy audit organisation tended to rate favourably countries in some
regions, especially Latin America, than in others, and in the 1990s their ratings became
comparably more rigid. In general, methodologically the FH index is considered one of the
most problematic of all existing indices of democracy (Munck & Verkuilen 2002).
Another example is the widely-used combined Polity score (POLITY in the dataset),
calculated by subtracting a polity’s autocracy score (AUTOC, up to -10) from its democracy
score (DEMOC, up to +10) (Polity IV; Marshall & Jaggers 2009, p. 15). However, the Polity
dataset originally was intended to measure authority trends not regime types, and much of its
combined score is derived from a single measure of constraints on the executive (Gleditsch &
Ward 1997; see also Mainwaring, Brinks & Perez-Linan 2001; Cheibub, Gandhi & Vreeland
2009). As the constraints on the executive is a measure of horizontal accountability rather
than of openness and fairness of electoral competition, the use of the unified Polity score for
measuring contestation does not always and necessarily fit theoretical foundations of many
coding schemes (Mainwaring, Brinks & Perez-Linan 2001). Moreover, the question of
establishing unambiguous cut-off points along the single Polity scale remains unresolved
alongside the problematic nature of the index’s aggregation rules (Munck & Verkuilen 2002,
p. 26).
To avoid these pitfalls, it is advised to use component scores from the Polity dataset
not the combined autocracy-democracy scale (Gleditsch & Ward 1997). A more direct
measure of competition in the Polity dataset is the conceptual variable called ‘executive
recruitment’ (EXREC in the data set). It can be used as a baseline criterion in the first step of

7
regime coding. The EXREC variable is a composite scale measuring the extent of
contestation for the highest executive office in a country. It is derived from three other
variables of the Polity dataset: the extent of institutionalisation of executive transfers, the
competitiveness of executive selection and the openness of executive recruitment (Marshall
& Jaggers 2009, pp. 49-62). According to Marshall & Jaggers (2009), the concept of
executive recruitment is derived from its original conceptualisation by Eckstein and Gurr
where executive recruitment was meant to involve
‘…the ways in which social superordinates come to occupy their positions of political
authority – that is, how institutionalised, competitive and open are the mechanisms for
selecting a political leader. In terms of modern democratic theory, democratic systems are
defined as those polities that afford their citizens the opportunity to replace their political
representatives through regularly scheduled, competitive and open elections’ (Marshall &
Jaggers 2009, p. 49).

Table 1. Polity EXREC Variable Description

Polity IV: executive Description Score in Polity

recruitment dataset

Executive selection Recruitment of the chief executive is determined 1

through ascription by hereditary succession.

Dual executive: The position of chief executive is shared. 2

ascription + designation Executive recruitment is determined both by
hereditary succession and designation.
Executive recruitment Chief executives are chosen by designation by 3
through designation the ruling political elite, without formal
competition by parties or individuals.
Executive recruitment ‘Unregulated’ changes in executive power 4
through self-selection through forceful seizures of power by rival
political elites. In addition to the use, or threat
of use, of force, there are no formal mechanisms
by which the transfer of executive power is
regulated.

8
Gradual transition from
self-selection
Dual executive:
ascription + election
Transitional or
restricted elections
Gradual transition (2 or more years) from 5
‘unregulated’ executive recruitment to some
other form of ‘regulated’ recruitment process.
The position of chief executive is shared. 6
Executive recruitment is determined both by
hereditary succession and election.
The chief executive is chosen through elections 7
which are ‘free’ but not necessarily ‘fair’ in both
design and practice. While elections are
competitive, nevertheless, the electoral process
is stacked – although the results are not
predetermined – in favor of one candidate over
another.

Competitive elections Chief executive is chosen through competitive 8

multi-candidate elections. The electoral process
is transparent and its outcomes are
institutionally uncertain.
Note: Descriptions are adapted from Marshall & Jaggers 2009, pp. 49-62.

The EXREC variable is a 7-point scale that ranges from 1 (executive recruitment
determined by hereditary succession) to 8 (executive recruitment by competitive elections)
(see Table 1). This measure provides a good source to draw upon when assessing the extent
of competition and distinguishing between systems in which elections are absent or
controlled from those systems in which elections are held but with some restrictions, and also
from those in which elections are competitive. These correspond to the following three
categories respectively:
- authoritarian (‘closed’ or with uncompetitive elections),
- authoritarian with restricted but competitive elections (‘free but not fair’),
- competitive.

Competitive systems are those systems in which the electoral process is ‘free and
fair’, and the outcomes of elections are ex ante uncertain. The score matching such
description is a score of 8 on the Polity’s EXREC variable and assignment of this score in a
particular year means a regime can be considered competitive for that year. The authoritarian
9
type with restricted but competitive elections corresponds to what the literature has described
as ‘competitive authoritarianism’ and does not need further classification. This type is easy to
capture with the EXREC variable. Its score of 7 stands for multiparty elections that are ‘free’
but not necessarily ‘fair’. Putting the threshold at 7 makes it possible to distinguish
competitive authoritarian regimes (country-years coded 7) from authoritarian regimes with
either closed or uncompetitive elections (country-years falling below 7, i.e. 1-6).
Since neither the EXREC nor any other Polity variables are sufficiently discriminating
for the task of distinguishing between closed and hegemonic authoritarianism, a more
suitable discriminating variable is the index of electoral competitiveness, more precisely
Legislative-Executive Indices of Electoral Competitiveness (LIEC and EIEC in the dataset).
The source of data for these indices is the World Bank’s DPI dataset which covers the years
1975-2006 (Keefer 2007). The original scoring was done with one-year lag, so this has to be
taken into account when coding. It is suggested to use a combined average score. The
preference for the average score of the two indices is due to the consideration that the
presence of at least some competition involving several parties for either the legislature or the
chief executive office is indicative of hegemonic electoral authoritarianism. Since
competitive authoritarianism had already been sorted out by the Polity EXREC measure, the
DPI score helps to distinguish closed from hegemonic types. The threshold separating the
two is established at the average score of 4. A score below or equal to 4 indicates closed
authoritarianism; higher than 4 - hegemonic authoritarianism. The DPI scores between 1 and
4 describe the following conditions:
- 1 = without legislature or executive;
- 2 = unelected legislature or executive;
- 3 = legislature or executive where only one candidate is elected, and
- 4 = only one party running (see Table 2).

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Table 2. Legislative and Executive Indices of Electoral Competitiveness (LIEC and
EIEC)

no legislature/executive: 1
unelected legislature/executive: 2
elected, one candidate: 3
one party, multiple candidates: 4
multiple parties are legal but only one party won seats: 5
multiple parties did win seats but the largest party received more than 6
75% of the seats:
largest party got less than 75%: 7
Note: Source: Keefer 2007, pp. 15-16.

The average score of 4 is only possible to obtain if one of the values of the LIEC or
EIEC indices is at least 5 indicating that multiple parties are legal but only one party won
seats (which implies that there were elections where multiple parties run). Since competitive
authoritarian regimes had already been sorted out in the first step, there is no need to worry:
all country-years that do not fall into the closed authoritarian category are automatically
entered as hegemonic even if a country received the highest score of 7, signifying that the
largest party won less than 75 %. For the reasons explained further, a scoring of hegemonic
and competitive authoritarian regimes based on the DPI’s LIEC and EIEC indices can lead to
a misclassification (e.g. Brownlee 2009).
Finally, to distinguish electoral democracies from consolidated ones, the most
obvious measure is the Polity’s institutionalised Democracy score (DEMOC in the dataset)
which is an eleven-point scale (0-10). It is a good and unequivocal measure of the quality and
functionality of democratic institutions. A competitive regime that receives a score of 10 (the
highest score) on this scale is a consolidated democracy. Otherwise, it is an electoral
democracy.
Table 3 shows how, following the procedures explained above, the researcher can
create a typology consisting of the following regime types: closed authoritarianism,
hegemonic authoritarianism, competitive authoritarianism, electoral democracy and
consolidated democracy.

11
Table 3. Coding Rules and Measurement
Regime Authoritarian (‘closed’ or with Authoritarian Fully Competitive Regime
Categories uncompetitive elections) with restricted
but
competitive
elections (‘free
but not fair’)
Indicator Elections absent or controlled Restricted Contested elections
1
and its (Polity IV EXREC score = 1-6) elections (Polity IV EXREC score = 8)
Measure (Polity IV
EXREC score
= 7)
Further if DPI2 comb. if DPI comb. - if Polity if Polity
Specificatio average Leg.- average Leg.- DEMOC DEMOC
3
n Rules and Exec. IEC Exec. IEC score = score = 10
Measureme score ≤ 4 score = otherwise
nt (one-year otherwise
lagged) (one-year
lagged)

Regime Closed Hegemonic Competitive Electoral Consolidated

Types Authoritarian Authoritarian Authoritarian Democracy Democracy

Note: Author’s coding rules (see discussion in the text); Sources: 1Polity IV (Marshall & Jaggers
2009, pp. 49-62); 2 DPI Leg.-Exec. IEC = Legislative and Executive Indices of Electoral
Competitiveness (Keefer 2007, pp. 15-16); 3Polity IV (Marshall & Jaggers 2009, pp. 13-14).

Application: A Classification of Post-Soviet Regimes, 1991-2005

To illustrate heuristic possibilities of the new method, I use the new measurement
strategy to score regimes in the twelve post-Soviet states of Eurasia. It has long been held that
this region boasts one of the world’s largest pools of hybrid regimes (e.g. Carothers 2002;
Schedler 2006b, p. 3; Bunce & Wolchik 2008; Hale 2010), and it therefore is a suitable
ground for testing the new measure. Table 4 shows a classification of post-Soviet regimes
obtained.

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Table 4. Classification of Post-Soviet Regimes, 1991-2005

Country Start End (at 2005) Type

Azerbaijan 1993 HegemA

Armenia 1991 1995 ElecDem
Armenia 1998 CompetA
Belarus 1991 1993 CompetA
Belarus 1997 ClosedA
Georgia 1991 2003 CompetA
Georgia 2004 ElecDem
Kazakhstan 1991 1994 ClosedA
Kazakhstan 1995 HegemA
Kyrgyzstan 1991 2004 HegemA
Kyrgyzstan 2005 CompetA
Moldova 1991 2000 CompetA
Moldova 2001 ElecDem
Russia 1992 CompetA
Tajikistan 1994 HegemA
Turkmenistan 1991 ClosedA
Ukraine 1991 1993 CompetA
Ukraine 1994 ElecDem
Uzbekistan 1991 1994 HegemA
Uzbekistan 1995 1998 ClosedA
Uzbekistan 1999 HegemA
Note: ClosedA = Closed Authoritarian; HegemA = Hegemonic Authoritarian; CompetA =
Competitive Authoritarian; ElecDem = Electoral Democracy.
The coding follows the procedures discussed in the text (also see Table 3). The three-year threshold
applies to distinguish regimes, understood as the rules of the political game, from periods of struggle
over the rules, turmoil and temporary interventions which are better seen as interregna (Geddes 1999,
p. 116, fn. 1). The DPI data on Tajikistan (1991-1993) is not available.

Of particular interest is an observation that there is no linear evolution towards

democracy and away from closed authoritarianism. This observation is particularly relevant
for theory of regime change and democratisation which often inaccurately assumes such

13
universal evolutionary linearity. It also re-confirms Carothers’ justified criticism of the once-
dominant transition paradigm and democratic teleology, in general (Carothers 2002).
Furthermore, the following three tendencies are noteworthy. First is the trend towards
less competitiveness. Belarus, Armenia and, to an extent, Azerbaijan (if we take the year
1992 as the ‘democratizing moment’, followed up by stabilization of a hegemonic
authoritarian regime), are in this group. Second is the trend towards greater competitiveness.
This group includes Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova. All three are electoral democracies,
albeit of a highly deficient kind (for a somewhat similar view, see Beichelt 2004).
Finally, there are three cases in which political regimes have been remarkably stable.
The stable regimes are the competitive authoritarian regime in Russia, the closed
authoritarian regime in Turkmenistan, and the hegemonic authoritarian regime in Tajikistan.
Among post-Soviet competitive authoritarian regimes, Russia’s is of particular interest.
While many post-Soviet competitive authoritarian regimes moved towards greater or lesser
competitiveness (e.g. Belarus, Moldova, Georgia), Russia’s competitive authoritarianism has
remained surprisingly resilient. This seems to defy general belief that competitive
authoritarian regimes are inherently unstable (e.g. Bunce & Wolchik 2008, p. 7). Further
research may be needed to inquire into the causes and implications of the unusually durable
competitive authoritarian system that has formed in post-Soviet Russia.

Discussion
From the conceptual point of view, the proposed measurement strategy comes close to the
classification scheme used by Howard & Roessler (2006) but has several advantages. First
and foremost, it is a straightforward, easy-to-replicate and theoretically-grounded measure of
political regimes. Second, unlike the oft-used Polity scale (which Howard & Roessler
combine with Freedom House scores), in which the constraints on the executive is the major
contributor (Gleditsch & Ward 1997; Mainwaring, Brinks & Perez-Linan 2001, pp. 56-57),
the EXREC variable, that is proposed as an alternative, provides a direct measure of political
contestation. Following Alvarez et al. (1996), it is perhaps more useful to consider the
difference in the extent to which the power of the executive is constrained an empirical
rather than definitional question, as there is variation on this even among established
democracies.

14
 Third, it is less arbitrary: it relieves the researcher from the need to make difficult
choice about establishing proper thresholds along the 21-point Polity scale. The other
commonly-used practice is to use different cut-off points on the 7-point Freedom House
indices of political rights and civil liberties. In fact, several authors employed the FH index to
identify hybrid regimes (e.g. Diamond 2002; Schedler 2006b; Morlino 2009). Just like the
cutting off of the combined Polity score, the use of the FH score is arbitrary unless theoretical
justification as to why particular cut-off points have been chosen was provided (also see
Bogaards 2009, p. 407).
Fourth, it provides a direct measure for competitive authoritarianism (an EXREC
score of 7) which makes it unnecessary to identify how much of the popular vote went for the
winning party or candidate (the indicator used for this by Howard & Roessler) or the share of
seats won by the largest party (Brownlee 2009). The DPI indices of legislative and executive
electoral competitiveness, which are sometimes used to identify competitive authoritarian
regimes, may not be an accurate measure to gauge the extent of contestation. Like with
similar measures, the risk is to confuse competition with competitiveness which may lead to
misclassifications of competitive and noncompetitive elections, the point first raised by
Giovanni Sartori, and later tested by Bogaards (2007) on African data (also, see Munck &
Snyder 2004).
Brownlee (2009), for instance, uses the DPI indices of electoral competitiveness to
classify closed and hybrid authoritarian regimes in the following way. He codes regime-years
that received a score between 1-4 as fully closed authoritarian whereas those that received a
score of 5-7 code as electoral authoritarian. The latter are further disaggregated 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 problem with such approach
is that it does not fully appreciate the skilfulness of the incumbents in hegemonic
authoritarian regimes with respect to manipulation of the electoral process. I illustrate this
with an example of Azerbaijan.
In the 2005 parliamentary elections, which according to international observers were
largely rigged, the governing Yeni (New) Azerbaijan Party (YAP) won only 61 seats (48.8 %)
in the 125-member Milli Mejlis (the Azerbaijani legislature) while the so called independents
won 43 seats (34.4 %). Of the two running opposition blocs, i.e. the Freedom Bloc (Azadliq)
and the YeS-Yeni Siyaset (New Policy) Alliance, only the Freedom Bloc could secure some 6
seats in the legislature (Kara 2007). The independents were not only all regime loyalists but

15
were in fact party affiliates. The Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
Election Observation Mission reported that a large number of self-nominated candidates,
which constituted more than half of all candidates, had a party affiliation and 332 members of
the YAP were registered as self-nominated ‘independents’ in addition to the 101 candidates
officially registered by the party (see OSCE 2006, p. 9; Kara 2007, p. 721).
Despite similar problems with previous parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan, the
DPI, which is compiled from ‘objective facts’, continued to register a score of 7 for
legislative competitiveness for the country since 1995 through 2005. Drawing on this
information, Brownlee (2009) coded all these years as ‘competitive authoritarian’ in his
dataset. The same is true for legislative indices for Uzbekistan (coded 7 from 1999 through
2005), and Kazakhstan (1995-2005) which also ended up in the competitive authoritarian
group for these years although their scores for executive competitiveness were 3 for
Kazakhstan (1992-2006), and 6 (1992-95) and later 3 (1996-2006) for Uzbekistan. All this,
despite Brownlee’s (2009, p. 524) own coding rules: ‘Regime years that measured 1-4 in the
DPI index were coded as fully closed authoritarian’ [It is unclear whether he uses an average
score or a score on one of the indices] and despite the following statement on the same page:
‘Levitsky and Way explicitly excluded regimes like Egypt and Uzbekistan, where rulers
enjoyed hegemonic electoral dominance’. The proper coding for all three regimes, especially
after the year 2000, would be not ‘competitive authoritarian’ but ‘hegemonic authoritarian’.
The former, as Brownlee (2009, p. 524) rightly pointed out, requires setting the standard
higher.

Conclusion
As more and more scholars find it fruitful to use the hybrid regime framework in their
analyses, it is important to match this interest with an adequate measurement of mixed
regimes. This article puts forth a measurement method which can be used to identify various
forms of hybrid regimes and applied universally. The alternative measurement method aims
to overcome some of the flaws found in the existing measures of hybrid regimes in general
and electoral authoritarian regimes in particular.
The added value of this analysis is a new classification of post-Soviet regimes based
on the measurement introduced. Political scientists have long studied political regimes as
both the dependent variable (regime outcomes) and an explanatory factor (comparative

16
performance of various regime types) (Gasiorowski 1990, p. 110). Developing a good
typology is the crucial step in any research interested in regime characteristics and
trajectories of regime change. The classification of post-Soviet regimes presented in this
article can be used to study patterns of regime change between the opposite poles of closed
authoritarianism and liberal democracy.
Our typology of post-Soviet regime types raises a number of questions that are
relevant for theory building and further empirical testing. For example, what accounts for the
diversity of hybrid regimes in the states of the former Soviet Union? Are particular
(sub)types of hybrid regime more likely than others to democratise? Why has Russia’s
competitive authoritarian regime, unlike others in the same region, remained so uniquely
stable? What are the implications of different types of regime for socio-economic
performance of post-Soviet states? Answering these questions is an important step towards
developing a macropolitical theory of change and stability of hybrid regimes in the
developing and postcommunist worlds.

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