Editorial Board

General Editors

Bertrand Badie
Institut d'études politiques (Sciences Po)
Paris, France
Dirk Berg-Schlosser
Philipps-Universität Marburg
Marburg, Germany
Leonardo Morlino
LUISS Guido Carli
Rome, Italy

Associate Editors
Nathaniel Beck Takashi Inoguchi
New York University University of Niigata Prefecture
New York City, New York, United States Tokyo, Japan
Walter Carlsnaes B. Guy Peters
Uppsala Universitet University of Pittsburgh
Uppsala, Sweden Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
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International encyclopedia of political science / edited by Bertrand
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1. Political science—Encyclopedias. I. Badie, Bertrand.

II. Berg-Schlosser, Dirk. III. Morlino, Leonardo

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Contents

7
List of Entries
vi

Reader’s Guide
xiv

Entries
P     2069
Q   2173
R   2197
S   2347

Index
I-1

institutional or constitutional reform is still an
open question. There is also debate as to whether
crisis situations favor or constrain reforms. In fact
a severe crisis increases the need for change and
even can turn into a “critical juncture” if existing
institutions break down or existing policies no
longer work. But it also reduces the leeway for
reform policies due to the pressure for immediate
action. Experiences and comparative studies in
administrative reforms have revealed that fiscal
crises limit the opportunities to reform organiza-
tions. On the other hand, an abundance of
resources reduces the need for change and can lead
to increasing conservatism. Competition between
governments or private organizations may stimu-
late reform processes, in particular if policymakers
enter into an exchange of best practices.
Nevertheless, the transfer of reform blueprints or
abstract concepts can have negative consequences
on the reform process if the particular conditions
or cultures of governments or organizations are
ignored by promoters of change. Again, the admin-
istrative reforms of the past decades provide
examples of such developments.
Regardless of these debates, in modern states
and in complex organizations, reforms evidently
arrive within limits. Hardly any reform follows its
initial aims or ideas. However, in view of the inter-
play between change of formal rules and the
dynamics of emergent interaction, what reformers
intend cannot be taken as an adequate standard
for evaluation; rather, it is the way they manage
conflicts and turn initiatives into a process of col-
lective learning among affected actors. In the end,
reforms can be regarded as successful if they bal-
ance change and stability and if the cyclical devel-
opment leads not to restoration of the status quo
ante but to ongoing evolution. Every reform is
embedded in the dynamics of institutions and
policy making. It never determines change.
Arthur Benz
Technische Universität Darmstadt
Darmstadt, Germany
See also Administration; Advocacy; Change, Institutional;
Institutional Theory; Institutions and Institutionalism;
Organization Theory; Path Dependence;
Reorganization; Revolution; Veto Player
Regime (Comparative Politics) 2233
Further Readings
Hinings, C. R., & Greenwood, R. (1988). The dynamics
of strategic change. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Pollitt, C., & Bouckaert, G. (2004). Public management
reform: A comparative analysis (2nd ed.). Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
Scharpf, F. W. (1989). The limits of institutional reform.
In J. J. Hesse, T. Ellwein, & R. Mayntz (Eds.),
Yearbook on government and public administration
(pp. 99–130). Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos.
Tsebelis, G. (2002). Veto players: How political
institutions work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Voigt, S. (1999). Explaining constitutional change: A
positive economics approach. Cheltenham, UK:
Edward Elgar.
Regime (Comparative Politics)
Regimes are the various types of political sys-
tems found in the sovereign countries of the
world. These can be defined as specific individ-
ual regime types or as contrasting types. In com-
parative politics, the concept of a political regime
refers to the formal and informal structure and
nature of political power in a country, including
the method of determining office holders and the
relations between the office holders and the soci-
ety at large. These relations could or could not
involve accountability of office holders to the
demos and likewise could involve various free-
doms granted to society or, conversely, none at
all. The distinction as to whether a country is a
democracy or not is thus a regime distinction—
and indeed (as we shall see) the central regime
distinction.
The first use of the concept in modern political
science was by David Easton. Easton contrasted
the regime with the ongoing political community
(the country), emphasizing that there can be and
have been fundamental changes to a political
system (producing a different regime) even while
the political community remains basically con-
stant. This entry defines a regime; discusses the
key distinction within a regime, that is, if it is a
democracy or not (or how much democracy it
has); and presents more generally the cases of
ambiguity.
2234 Regime (Comparative Politics)
What Is a Regime?
Regime is a midrange concept, falling between the
concept of specific governments (of individuals)
and the concept of the state (the broader adminis-
trative-legal structure that has sovereign control
over a country and the power to extract resources
from it). That is, governments may vary (e.g., the
shifts back and forth between Conservative and
Labour governments in the United Kingdom), or
presidential administrations may change (e.g.,
from George W. Bush to Barack Obama in the
United States), but these are not changes of regime;
the democratic regimes in each case remain. Thus,
over time a given regime may involve many gov-
ernments. Following from the above, for there to
be a regime change, the political “rules of the
game” must change in a systemic way, not merely
the winner of the game. Thus, South Africa in
1994 underwent a regime change from a racial
oligarchy to a liberal democracy; since then, there
have been several presidents, starting with Nelson
Mandela, but the regime has remained the same.
Conversely, a change of regime may occur in a
specific state, but the state itself normally remains
the same (of course, states do get formed and dis-
solved, but the point here is that over the very long
haul, a stable state is likely to experience multiple
regime types). Key state institutions and actors (the
bureaucracy, the judiciary, the military, etc.) thus
tend to carry over from one regime to another, for
example, from Imperial Germany to the Weimar
Republic—in this example posing problems for the
latter. Sometimes, though, a regime change will
involve the creation of entirely new state struc-
tures, such as with the creation of the Soviet Union
(the new communist bureaucracy, the Red Army
instead of the Imperial Army, etc.). Finally, one
must distinguish between public policies that speak
to the nature of the regime (such as the extent of
civil liberties) and more general socioeconomic
policies, such as economic policy, health care, or
same-sex marriage—the latter types of policies can
change (and may well change with different gov-
ernments) but do not involve regime change.
It should be noted that the word regime is some-
times used as the equivalent of “system,” for
example, a parliamentary regime versus a presi-
dential regime. However, this is too broad a use of
the concept of regime. Thus, if a democracy
changes from, say, a parliamentary system to a
presidential system, as Gambia did in 1970, it is
not a regime change. A similar point can be made
about unicameral versus bicameral systems or uni-
tary versus federal systems.
The Key Regime Distinction: Democracy
or Not (or How Much of It)?
There are many different specific political regimes
in the world, but the initial assessment of a regime
normally begins with whether or not it is demo-
cratic. In the contemporary world, a democratic
regime has three basic aspects: competitive elec-
tions, more or less universal suffrage, and a
responsible government—that is, those elected in
competitive elections both are accountable to the
people (the voters) and have the actual power to
govern, as opposed to effective power being in the
hands of a monarch, the military, or a clerical fig-
ure. (Implicit in this definition of democracy is
some sort of functioning state.) The opposite real-
ity here is that of an autocratic regime. That said,
since there are key differences among autocratic
regimes, these are normally identified more pre-
cisely, as specific regime types. The main types of
autocratic regimes are totalitarian regimes (involv-
ing a ruling ideology, mass mobilization, and total
state control), such as Nazi Germany; posttotali-
tarian regimes (involving less emphasis on ideol-
ogy and somewhat greater freedoms), such as the
Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev; sultanistic
regimes (involving the personal rule of an individ-
ual and his or her family), such as Iraq under
Saddam Hussein; traditional authoritarian regimes
(involving rule by a monarch), such as Imperial
Russia; military authoritarian regimes, such as the
one ruling Myanmar; theocratic authoritarian
regimes, such as the one in Iran (at least through
2009); and electoral authoritarian regimes (more
on this type below). There are some autocracies,
however, that straddle these specific regime types;
for example, Cuba and North Korea have elements
of both totalitarianism and sultanism.
Viewed as a simple dichotomy between a demo-
cratic regime and an autocratic regime, a clear
majority of the 194 or so countries in the world
today have democratic regimes. However, a stan-
dard further distinction is made between electoral
democratic regimes and liberal democratic regimes.
Electoral democracies have the three basic features

given above. Liberal democracies have these as
well (and thus all liberal democracies are also elec-
toral democracies), but they additionally have the
liberal features of broad civil liberties, a strong rule
of law (e.g., an independent judiciary), horizontal
accountability of elected officials to other state
actors (e.g., ombudsmen and state auditors), and a
well-functioning state with limited if not minimum
corruption. There are, thus, many democratic
regimes that are electoral but not liberal. This is
especially true in Africa and Latin America. The
fact that the liberal democratic regimes of the
world are overwhelmingly found in Europe,
European settler societies, and the former Anglo-
American colonies has led to the criticism that this
is a Western rather than a universal concept.
By placing liberal democracies ahead of elec-
toral democracies (which in turn are ahead of
autocracies), the dichotomy between regimes has
been transformed into a continuum. Indeed, most
scholarly and related analyses use some sort of
continuum of regimes. In terms of global assess-
ments, Freedom House (an international nongov-
ernmental organization that conducts research and
advocacy on democracy, human freedom, and
human rights) distinguishes among free, partly
free, and not free regimes, based ultimately on
7-point scales for each of political rights and civil
liberties. (Freedom House also has a separate
dichotomous list of electoral democracies.) The
Bertelsmann Transformation Index uses a 10-point
scale that ultimately produces a continuum of five
categories: democracies, defective democracies,
highly defective democracies, moderate autocra-
cies, and autocracies. However, it classifies failed
states separately (within the broader autocratic
area).
Continua can also be used for the submeasures
of democracy. There are various measures of the
rule of law, including that of the World Bank.
Transparency International, a nongovernmental
organization, publishes a Corruptions Perception
Index. Yet these measures do not claim to make a
clear distinction among regimes, perhaps because
they deal with aspects of liberalism rather than
democracy. Regime distinctions can be made based
on the extent of the right to vote; this would lead
to pre–World War II Belgium and France, for
example, being classified as male democracies due
to the absence of female suffrage. Of course, in the
Regime (Comparative Politics) 2235
contemporary world, the vast majority of coun-
tries have more or less universal suffrage for both
genders, so suffrage is now a limited measure for
defining regimes. In terms of responsible govern-
ment, scholars have produced measures of the
extent of monarchical control, and especially of
military control. There are potential gray areas
here, especially with situations of monarchical or
military tutelage; normally these are seen as being
democratic regimes, but just so.
Without a doubt, however, the one submeasure
of democracy where there are specific continua
leading to regime classification is the extent of free
and fair elections. By “free and fair elections,” one
means many things: the ability of most, if not all,
people and parties to run for election; access of
candidates to voters; equal treatment of candidates
and parties by state actors such as the police and
courts; media pluralism so that opposition candi-
dates have media access (as opposed to the media
being controlled by government); secret ballot; no
coercion of voters; neutral and transparent ballot
counting with independent monitors allowed; no
major or “mysterious” delays in reporting the full
results; and impartial resolution of disputes. In a
democratic regime, these factors exist sufficiently
to allow a real opportunity for the government to
be defeated; in contrast, in an autocratic regime,
the government will tilt the playing field so that it
has an insurmountable advantage and/or will sim-
ply fabricate the results (as presumably happened
in Iran in 2009). Yet the dividing lines here are not
always clear and decisive. Certainly if a govern-
ment is defeated and hands over power, then one
assumes that the elections were fair and the regime
is democratic. However, if a government or presi-
dent is reelected, does that reflect unfairness or
simply the voters’ desire to reelect them? One
point here is whether the opposition cries foul or
accepts the results as legitimate. However, in some
cases, the opposition may not bother to cry foul if
it sees no point in protesting.
Even if the opposition is not allowed to win by
the powers that be, they may still have some elec-
toral success. At a minimum, they are allowed to
exist. This gave rise to the concept of an electoral
authoritarian regime, which conceptually is a rela-
tively new regime type. In such a regime, multi-
party/multicandidate elections are held but with
no chance of the incumbents losing power due to
2236 Regime (Comparative Politics)
the lack of fairness and perhaps freedom as well.
Yet it is the very reality of election “victory” that
is used to give legitimacy to the regime, if not
indeed to claim it as a democracy. Singapore is a
classic case here. These electoral authoritarian
regimes can be contrasted with fully closed regimes,
where no opposition is allowed to exist (e.g.,
totalitarian and sultanistic regimes or certain tradi-
tional authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia).
On the other hand, in some autocratic regimes
elections are not just a rubber stamp, and election
outcomes are of concern to the government.
Opposition forces may win a significant minority
of the seats or even some control of regional/local
governments. Even if the playing field is not level
enough, or fair enough, for the government to be
defeated overall, it can still experience a worse or
better result from election to election. Malaysia for
decades (through the time of writing) fits this situ-
ation. Thus, scholars have developed the concept
of a competitive authoritarian regime that,
although clearly authoritarian as opposed to dem-
ocratic, allows much more competition and plural-
ism (including media freedom) than (hegemonic)
electoral authoritarian regimes, not to mention
fully closed regimes. The concept of a competitive
authoritarian regime thus overlaps with the
Bertelsmann Transformation Index’s notion of a
moderate autocracy. It is thus possible for such
competitive authoritarian regimes to become com-
petitive enough to produce a transition to democ-
racy, as happened to Ukraine when the amount of
vote rigging needed to produce victory for the
regime’s presidential candidate in 2004 led to the
Orange Revolution and the ushering in of a demo-
cratic regime.
These distinctions among democracies, com-
petitive authoritarian regimes, hegemonic electoral
authoritarian regimes, and fully closed regimes
essentially or ultimately reflect the electoral success
of the opposition. To repeat, in democracies the
opposition has a realistic chance of defeating the
government (and if this does not happen in an
individual election, it is the result of voter prefer-
ences and/or poor opposition strategies rather than
an unfair playing field), in competitive authoritar-
ian regimes the opposition is able to win a reason-
ably large number of seats (and thus also hold the
government to some account in the legislature),
and in hegemonic electoral authoritarian regimes
the opposition wins only a tiny and largely irrele-
vant number of seats (but it still exists, unlike in
fully closed regimes). These differing regime clas-
sifications thus draw heavily on election outcomes,
but the general level of freedom in a country (such
as its Freedom House score) usually is related rea-
sonably well to this specific indicator of election
outcomes. There are also liberal autocratic regimes
where the civil rights are much greater than the
effective political freedoms, such as Monaco and
Tonga; that said, in these countries the autocracy
stems from a lack of responsible government (and
thus “relevant” elections) rather than unfair elec-
tions per se.
All of this also raises the question of whether
empirically there is a maximum level of support
for a government/incumbent beyond which the
result is not credible and the regime cannot be
considered a democracy. Usually, something like
70% of the vote is suggested here. Yet in countries
broadly considered to be democratic, such as
Botswana and Namibia, incumbent parties have
won over 70% of the vote in elections (however, in
South Africa the African National Congress has
never reached this level of support, its best result
being 69.7% in 2004). In part, this may reflect the
exceptional support given to parties that led the
nation’s struggle for independence. Certainly in
Western democracies, parties (or presidential can-
didates) competing in national elections never get
much more than 60% of the vote, even in the most
successful cases. Indeed, presidential elections in
the United States are interesting in this regard,
since there does appear to be an effective “ceiling”
just above 60% of the vote. In descending order,
the largest vote shares in such elections have been
61.1% (Lyndon Johnson in 1964), 60.8% (Franklin
Roosevelt in 1936), 60.7% (Richard Nixon in
1972), and 60.3% (Warren Harding in 1920)—all
very close values. Outside the United States, one
can note the vote share of 64.7% that José Figueres
got in Costa Rica in 1953—an undisputed out-
come in a democratic regime. Consequently, it
seems clear that a result of 90% or 80% cannot be
consistent with democracy. That said, many dubi-
ous/nondemocratic outcomes are based on much
less lopsided “official” results, such as 63% for
President Ahmadinejad in Iran in 2009, 51%
for President Salinas in Mexico in 1988, and 47%
for President Kibaki in Kenya in 2007—all of

which were nevertheless (at best) competitive
authoritarian regimes.
Ambiguous and Hybrid Regimes
Regardless of how many categories there are in a
continuum of regime types, one needs to ask
whether this continuum could be collapsed into
two categories—democracies and autocracies. In
other words, is every country ultimately consid-
ered to be a democracy or an autocracy, or is
there some unclear middle ground? Scholarly and
related research differs as to whether or not there
is ever any such unclear middle ground. There are
two rather different problems here. First of all, a
country could have a fluid or unstable political
system, making it hard to pin it down. In this
case, one option is the concept of a transitional
regime. Conversely, the previous regime could be
deemed to remain in place (and the country be
classified as such) until there is a clear shift to a
new regime. Second, there could be genuine
scholarly disagreement about the political reality
in a country, with independent analysts having
differing opinions as to, say, the level of competi-
tiveness. This divergence is most common where
the government/incumbent is reelected, and seems
to be genuinely popular, but where there are (seri-
ous) procedural issues—for example, Russia
under Vladimir Putin or Venezuela under Hugo
Chávez. Such polities could be considered ambig-
uous regimes, at least until there is a reasonable
consensus on their regime classification (which
incidentally tends to be that they are authoritar-
ian, leading to a related debate as to the point at
which democracy broke down). A variant of this
dilemma is where a country just places into a cat-
egory. For example, the Bertelsmann Transformation
Index refers to highly defective democracies as
barely meeting its minimum criteria for democ-
racy. It also acknowledges a gray area between
democracy and autocracy.
These situations all involve ambiguity in classifi-
cation. The resulting notions of ambiguous regimes
or transitional regimes are meant not to be precise
categories but rather to reflect the inability to be
precise. Conversely, the notion of a hybrid regime
involves combined aspects of democracy and autoc-
racy in a fairly stable, ongoing way. This concept is
more likely to be used if more aspects are included
Regime (Comparative Politics) 2237
in the assessment. Narrow(er) assessments that
focus on just competition and responsible govern-
ment are likely to place every country on one side
or the other of the divide—that is, as either a
democratic or an autocratic regime. However, if
there are multiple criteria—and if these are weighted
equally—then the reality arises of countries that are
democratic in some aspects and autocratic in others
or that average out as being in the middle. This is
the reality of, for example, the Economist
Intelligence Unit’s Index of Democracy, which has
five aspects including political participation and
political culture—indeed, what this really seeks to
measure is consolidated democracy. Consequently,
a substantial number of countries fall into its
hybrid regime category, defined as having a score
from 4.0 to 5.9 out of 10. Decomposing their com-
ponents would categorize the vast majority of these
countries as either (unconsolidated) electoral
democracies or competitive authoritarian regimes,
with a few countries scoring as they do because of
a lack of sufficient stateness.
Alan Siaroff
University of Lethbridge
Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
See also Authoritarian Regimes; Democracy, Types of;
Hybrid Regimes; Parliamentary Systems; Totalitarian
Regimes
Further Readings
Chehabi, H. E., & Linz, J. J. (Eds.). (1998). Sultanistic
regimes. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Collier, R. B., & Collier, D. (2002). Shaping the political
arena: Critical junctures, the labor movement, and
regime dynamics in Latin America. Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press.
Diamond, L. (1999). Developing democracy: Toward
consolidation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press.
Diamond, L. (2002). Thinking about hybrid regimes.
Journal of Democracy, 13, 21–35.
Easton, D. (1965). A systems analysis of political life.
New York: Wiley.
Fishman, R. M. (1990). Rethinking state and regime:
Southern Europe’s transition to democracy. World
Politics, 42, 422–440.
Levitsky, S., & Way, L. A. (2002). The rise of competitive
authoritarianism. Journal of Democracy, 13, 51–65.