Mezi demokracií a autoritářstvím: Krátké zastavení nad novějšími příspěvky ze světa hybridních režimů

The topic of hybrid regimes has always provoked heated debate. This article contributes to it by analyzing five principal writings on this subject. The fi rst one, ‘Competitive Authoritarianism’ by Levitsky and Way, is a groundbreaking contribution in terms of providing an explanation of the stability of this specific type of political regime. The other four books represent newer contributions on this topic. Two of them are quantitative and focus on elections in competitive authoritarian regimes. In their work ‘Defeating Dictators’, Bunce and Wolchick explain causes for certain electoral outcomes in hybrid regimes, but their contribution is based on a strictly qualitative perspective. The remaining books adopt a more critical view by bringing interesting insights from a research in contemporary Africa. Although all books reviewed in this article offer interesting contributions to the discussion about hybrid regimes, some important shortcomings and opportunities remain for future research. Besides conceptual problems, the existing research about hybrid regimes is based mainly on large-N comparative studies employing statistical methods or qualitative research based primary on a smaller number of cases. What we need is more research based on intermediate-N design and also increased range of methods, but mainly on a qualitative comparative or qualitative contextual analysis. New methodological approaches to the study of hybrid regimes can bring new explanations about the dynamics in hybrid regimes. Intermediate-N research perspective can also contribute to the large theoretical discussion about hybrid regimes with a broader spectrum of midrange theories and concepts which can be more suitable for analysis of many of the contemporary cases.