Second, terms like “semidemocratic,” “semi-authoritarian,” and
“Partly Free” are often used as residual categories and tend to gloss over
important differences among regime types. For example, El Salvador,
Latvia, and Ukraine were all hybrid regimes in the early 1990s, and
each received a combined political rights and civil liberties score of six—
or “Partly Free”—from Freedom House in 1992–93. Yet these regimes
differed in fundamental ways. Whereas in Latvia the principal undemocratic
feature was the absence of citizenship rights for people of Russian
descent, in El Salvador the main undemocratic features included substantial
human rights violations and the absence of civilian control over
the military. Ukraine possessed both universal citizenship rights and a
civilian-controlled military, but civil liberties were frequently violated
and incumbents routinely abused or manipulated democratic procedures.
Hence, although each of these cases could be categorized as “hybrid,”
“semidemocratic,” or “partly free,” such labels obscure crucial differences—differences
that may have important causal implications.
Different mixes of authoritarian and democratic features have distinct
historical roots, and they may have different implications for economic
performance, human rights, and the prospects for democracy.