Competitive authoritarianism describes countries in which elections are competitive and the primary means of gaining power but in which civil and political liberties are regularly abused by incumbents seeking to preserve power. Such regimes need to be treated as a separate regime type rather than as in transition to democracy. They have existed for long periods of time, do not necessarily democratize, and raise a set of questions ignored in studies of either fully democratic or fully authoritarian regimes. Competitive authoritarianism in Ukraine can best be seen as the outgrowth of supply-side rather than demand-side structural factors from the Soviet era. The failure of democracy is explained not by popular demands for authoritarian rule or the strength of extremist groups – as feared in the early 1990s – but by opportunities for incumbents to abuse democratic norms created by Soviet institutional legacies.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Lucan A. Way (2004) studied this question.