Advancing Research on Hybrid Regimes and Authoritarianism: Trends, Innovations and Cases

There are more authoritarian regimes worldwide than democracies today. Little has slowed down the hollowing and backsliding of democracy in Central and Eastern European polities. Western democracies that have long been considered safe and stable are likewise challenged by authoritarian practices that can fly under the radar. Another concerning development is the recent surge of military coups where militaries disrupt democratization processes or reinforce regimes. From January 2020 to October 2023 alone, 15 failed and successful coup attempts were staged in Myanmar, Mali, Sao Tome, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Chad, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Niger and Gabon. While there is wide consensus that we are in the midst of an authoritarian surge, there is much less clarity about the institutions, processes, and actors that uphold authoritarian regimes – or threaten them. Autocratic regimes emerge both incrementally through backsliding, and suddenly through collapse or coups. Many cases emerge even through a combination of both. Though a lot of new research sheds light on democratic erosion and autocratization processes, the study of modern autocratic regimes, their politics, and their institutions lags far behind. Whether hard authoritarianism or newer hybrid regimes, non-democratic regimes should be studied in their own right as well. As such, this section aims to provide a platform for researchers working on hybrid regimes and authoritarianism at ECPR’s general conference. This section welcomes a wide variety of papers and panels that share their focus on hard authoritarian regimes and mixed regime types. Sub-themes in this section can be grouped into "Research and Data Innovations", "Governance in hard authoritarian and hybrid regimes", "trends in autocratic practices and behaviors", as well Case Studies and Comparisons". A panel on “Research and Data Innovations“ offers researchers the opportunity to present new data, discuss methodological innovations, and conceptual dimensions to handling non-democratic regimes in research. "Governance in hard authoritarian and Hybrid Regimes" encompasses a similar focus on the domestic politics of the upcoming workshop "Hybrid Regimes and Authoritarianism: The Surge, Survival, and Fall of Non-Democratic Governance" at the ECPR Joint Sessions 2024. The sub-theme or panel "Trends in autocratic practices and behaviors" offers the opportunity to present research on trends like polarization, populism, legalism, militarization, and digitalization in authoritarian regimes as well as democracies. And last but not least, a panel on "Case studies and Comparisons" would welcome especially qualitative approaches to the study of autocratic regimes that are no less important than method- and data-driven approaches.