Democratization and hybrid regimes. International Anchoring and Domestic Dynamics in European post-Soviet States

While transitions to electoral democracy have largely been a success story, this has not been the case for the consolidation of democracy, leading to the instauration and consolidation of a growing number of hybrid regimes. This edited volume addresses the main reasons of this phenomenon looking at the empirical reality of European post-Soviet states – Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine. It is divided into three parts. The first part is dedicated to the definition of hybrid regimes and to the presentation of some main hypotheses on the paths and reasons that have led these countries to the instauration of hybrid or authoritarian regimes. The second and third parts of the volume are dedicated to the role played respectively by external actors and domestic dynamics in favouring a certain regime change. It is suggested to develop the research question – that is why some countries have not transformed their political regimes into democracies and have remained authoritarian regimes or have become hybrid ones? – into two more specific questions: (1) what are those domestic and external actors and factors (DEAFs) that, in each country and in a specific temporal period, prevent a successful democratization of the political regime? And (2) what happens when some of these DEAFs interact with each other? It is shown that most important interactions, in terms of reinforcing or weakening democratization, are those combining the domestic and external levels of analysis.