Den grå zonen : En uppsats om hybridregimens karaktärsdrag samt en fallstudie av Ryssland

Sammanfattning: C-essay in political science by Anna Höjenberg and Maria Stenberg, spring of 2006 “The Grey Zone – An essay on the characteristics of a hybrid regime and a case study of Russia”. Supervisors: Joakim Ekman and Jonas Linde This essay deals with the concept of hybrid regimes. The purpose is to describe the structure and the content of such a regime-type and try to create a model which can help us to analyse different countries. The essay is divided into two sections. The first part is a theory generated study which describes the characteristics of the concept hybrid regime. With the support of the different characteristics we have created a typology divided into four dimensions. The main material consists of articles from the scientific journal Journal of Democracy and academic books. The second part of the essay is a qualitative comparative case study of Russia, with the purpose to see whether Russia can be characterised as a hybrid regime or not. In our typology a hybrid regime is something between a democratic regime and an authoritarian regime. In contrast to an authoritarian regime it is possible for the opposition in a hybrid regime to come into power, but in comparison to a democracy the struggle is much harder and it requires a more extensive mobilisation. We consider Russia to fall into the category of hybrid regimes, but the recent developments under President Putin demonstrate that the country also inhabits several features that we considered authoritarian.