POSC 017 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Illiberal Democracy, Authoritarianism, Democracy Promotion
25 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
End of the cold war triggered a wave of hybridization. Many regimes in the developing world fall somewhere in between well-functioning. The transition paradigm made some controversial assumptions: Any country moving away from dictatorial rule is in the transition toward democracy. Democratization tends to unfold in a set sequence of stages; these scholars believe in these 3 stages of the regime (opening breakthrough consolidation) Only a minority of transitional countries (around 25%) are gradually becoming well functioning democracies. Some examples: south america- chile and uruguay. Most of the transitional countries have a political grey zone. The majority of countries in the developing world today can be considered hybrid regimes . Semi-democracy, electoral democracy, weak democracy, partial democracy, illiberal democracy, virtual democracy, semi-auth, competitive auth. How to make sense of this diverse group. Electoral democracies have contested and free and fair elections. They are always qualified as democracies, but low quality democracies. Serious democratic deficits which affects the quality of democracy.
