The article investigates the consequences of post‐Cold War regime transitions on human development in the former Soviet bloc. Relying on a mixed‐methods research strategy that combines econometric and qualitative comparative analysis, it proceeds through three consecutive steps. First, there is a discussion of how democratic institutions may solicit governments’ attention toward social issues. Second, the relationship between democratisation and human development in 21 post‐communist countries is tested. Third, democracy in its core attributes is unpacked, and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is used to identify a few alternative institutional configurations favouring human development. The analysis reveals that not only full democracies, but also some hybrid regimes, have been successful in this task.

External forces have pushed Central-East Europe's nascent political science disciplines toward convergence: the European Union's educational policies, the funding and training activities of public and private Western players, most prominently the ‘Open Society’ institutes and organizations established by financier George Soros. However, considerable disparities persist regarding national and international cooperation, research quality, and representation of professional interests. These disparities are in large part explained by the fact that the institutionalization of political science has been stunted in places where ‘hybrid’, semi-autocratic political regimes have emerged.

Competitive authoritarianism, a specific type of hybrid regime, is gaining ground globally. Corruption is particularly prevalent in these contexts as regimes utilise it to consolidate their power. However, some competitive authoritarian regimes also take significant measures to curb certain types of corruption. The present article posits that competitive authoritarian regimes, acting as rational utility-maximising actors, curb or enhance corruption types based on the net costs and benefits—that is, net gains—they yield for the regime. To elucidate the factors influencing net gains, an explanatory framework is presented. Its three constituent elements are accountability costs, transaction costs, and political benefits. The applicability of the framework is demonstrated with case studies of two corruption types in Hungary, namely, informal payments in healthcare and clientelism in awarding tobacco retail concessions.

The work of non-profit organisations (NPOs) in non-democratic country contexts tends to be judged on their contribution to the democratisation process rather than the activities they undertake.This neglects the potential impact NPOs have on societies within such contexts. In this study, we highlight that NPOs can influence public policy deployment in the Russian Federation even if they cannot affect public policy itself. By operationalising the very restrictions placed upon them, NPOs use their relationships with the state to effect change within their immediate environment and scope of their operational remit, even if they cannot hold authorities to account or influence policy development. The key to this is strong organising capabilities and engagement with the Russian public. We reflect on the implications of our findings to the understanding of civil society development and NPOs in Russia and in other similar non-democratic contexts.

Compliance with court decisions is essential for the rule of law. Generally, regimes comply with decisions that serve their interests; however, compliance with decisions against government interests is less certain. In 1947–2005 and 2014–2023, the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) decided many politically important cases in favour of the prevailing authoritarian and hybrid regimes. However, between 2005 and 2013, although the SCP reached decisions against the government’s interests in politically important cases, the government still complied. Why would authoritarian and hybrid regimes, such as those in Pakistan between 2005 and 2013, comply with decisions in politically important cases that were against their interests instead of disobeying or ignoring them? Very few studies have addressed this puzzling phenomenon. This article argues that increasing public support for courts coupled with reinforcement mechanisms—supported by both the judiciary and external actors—contributes to such compliance. The article concludes that a combination of social, political, and legal factors is essential for compliance by authoritarian and hybrid regimes in politically important cases.

This study examines how formal institutions in hybrid regimes, particularly presidentialism, party organization and electoral rules, actively foster and sustain clientelistic networks, leading to particularistic outcomes. While existing literature highlights the weakening of formal institutions and pervasive clientelism as drivers of democratic breakdown, this study uses the concept of neopatrimonialism to analyse how formal institutions themselves consolidate patron–client relationships to maintain power and stability. Focusing on Turkey, the analysis demonstrates that the institutional incentive structure consolidates the president's role as the central ‘patron’, controlling resources and offices, and encourages clientelistic networks to coalesce around the presidency. The discretionary allocation of resources through patron–client relationships sustains neopatrimonial authority as long as clients' loyalty is rewarded. However, this governance increases clients' dependence on the patron, binding them at the expense of representation and responsiveness. The analysis offers insights into how such institutional configurations contribute to authoritarianism and particularistic governance in hybrid regimes.

The ‘waves and ebbs’ model proposed by Huntington in his 1991's The Third Wave has profoundly shaped how scholars interpret global trends of democratization and autocratization, but has also received criticisms, especially concerning its ability to explain regime change in the three decades following the end of the Cold War. I contend that, rather than an alternation between democratization waves and authoritarian ebbs, the post-Cold War period could be more fruitfully described as a phase of ‘regime convergence’ characterized by a tendency of both democracies and autocracies to shift towards hybrid forms of political regime. By showing that between 1990 and 2023 transitions to hybrid regimes significantly exceeded transitions in other directions, I demonstrate the empirical relevance of hybridization as a process affecting both democracies and autocracies, and I encourage renewed attention to this phenomenon distinct from both democratization and autocratization.

The analysis of public policy agendas in comparative politics has been somewhat limited in terms of geography, time frame and political system, with studies on full-blown autocracies and hybrid regimes few and far between. This article addresses this gap by comparing policy dynamics in three Hungarian regimes over 73 years. Besides our theoretical contribution related to policy-making in Socialist autocracy and illiberal democracy, we also test hypotheses related to non-democratic regimes. We find that – similarly to developed democracies – policy agendas in autocracies are mostly stable with occasional but large-scale “punctuations”. Our data also confirms that these punctuations are more pronounced in non-democratic polities. However, based on our results, illiberal political systems, such as the hybrid regime of Viktor Orbán, are difficult to pin down on such a clear-cut continuum between democracy and autocracy as the level of punctuation differs by policy agendas from parliamentary debates to budgets.

Parliamentary youth quotas have been adopted by nine countries, mainly African autocracies. They have also attracted the attention of international organisations, which consider them indicators of democratic progress. Why were these quotas adopted? This article challenges the long-standing regime survival thesis by explaining quota adoption as the result of the convergent strategies of actors placed inside and outside the regime. It also provides new theoretical arguments that point to the transformation of representative linkages in hybrid regimes and shows how this is justified in the light of empirical evidence grounded on qualitative methodology and extensive fieldwork. By connecting the broader historical and socio-political context where youth quotas emerged – Africa – to the micro-level processes of quota adoption – based on the Moroccan case – this article provides a dynamic picture of how political representation is claimed and mobilised in contemporary Africa while shedding some light on the inclusive limits of quota policies.

Scholarly attention has increasingly shifted from diminished subtypes of democracy to hybrid regimes, particularly competitive authoritarianism. Such regimes retain democracy’s formal features while failing to meet its minimum standards. When properties of distinct concepts like democracy and authoritarianism are combined, however, confusion, inaccuracy, and mischaracterization of cases may occur. By disaggregating political systems into electoral institutions, surrounding rights and freedoms, constitutionalism, and the rule of law, this article complicates the binary distinction between a midrange definition of democracy and competitive authoritarianism. A number of Andean cases are found to fall on the spectrum of defective democracies between these categories. Defective democracies break down when rulers violate the conditions necessary for institutionalized alternation in power by means of public participation and loyal opposition in an electoral regime. Given leaders’ reliance on electoral legitimacy, however, even defective democracies may prove surprisingly resilient.

This article investigates public and private goods provision in two hybrid regimes: Hong Kong and Singapore. We build on the selectorate theory, which analyses all regimes in terms of the size of their leaders’ support coalitions. This research follows a differences-in-differences design, with the exogenous political change in Hong Kong in 1997 as a treatment and Singapore as a control case. This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, as the aim of the selectorate theory is to transcend traditional regime typologies, a focus on hybrid regimes provides another test of the theory beyond the democratic–authoritarian divide. Second, the distinctive comparative set-up allows us to disentangle the effects of the size of the winning coalition from those of supporter loyalty. The empirical results demonstrate that whilst public goods increase with the winning coalition size, private goods provision is not affected unless accompanied by a change in supporter loyalty.