In the Reading “Competitive Authoritarianism” Levitsky and Way address the fundamental challenges to authoritarian regimes following the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the cold war. They assert that this change coincided with the diffusion of the formal architecture of democracy i.e multiparty elections- across the globe.

 Despite this transition and the hopes that the collapse of former regimes would lead to democracy, in many cases this did not eventuate. In many parts of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, emerged a hybrid regime which combined electoral competition with varying degrees of authoritarianism. These Hybrid regimes utilised democratic methods to contest for power however fell short of becoming democratic. Electoral manipulation, unfair media access and other factors contributed to the conclusion that whilst this competition was real, it was not fair.

The study of these hybrid regimes has received criticism for being bias as viewed through the lens of democratization, said regimes were often categorised as flawed democracy when perhaps they were better descried as a “different” form of democracy, foregoing the negative connotations associated with the term ‘flawed’.

Levitsky and Way go on to claim that this characterisation is misleading as the assumption hat hybrid regimes are(or should be) moving in a democratic direction, lacks empirical foundation and rather instead of assuming that such regimes are in transition to democracy it is more useful to ask why some democratized and others did not.

Competitive authoritarian regimes are civilian regimes in which formal democratic institutions exist and are widely viewed as the primary means of gaining power, but in which incumbents’ abuse of the state places them at significant advantage to their opponents, again the competition is real, however not fair. Thus the hybrid regime off Competitive authoritarianism displays important characteristics of both a democracy and authoritarianism.

Levitsky and Way also distinguish between competitive and non-competitive authoritarianism. They define non-competitive authoritarianism or full authoritarianism as a regime in which no viable channel exists for opposition to contest legally for executive power. In contrast competitive authoritarian regimes are distinguished from full authoritarianism in that constitutional channels exist through which opposition groups compete in a meaningful way for executive power.

What distinguishes competitive authoritarianism from democracy however is that the incumbent abuse of the state violates at least one of three defining attributes of democracy; free elections, broad protection of civil liberties and a reasonably level playing field. In the sense of free elections competitive authoritarian regimes hold competitive elections in that major opposition candidates are able to campaign publically and there is no massive fraud, however the results are often marred by the manipulation of voters lists, ballot box stuffing and/or the falsification of results, as seen in the Dominican Republic in 1994 and the Ukraine in 2004.

In competitive authoritarian regimes, civil liberties are nominally guaranteed and at least to some extent partially respected. Independent media exits and civic and opposition groups can generally meet freely and even protest against the government. However civil liberties are frequently violated. Independent media are frequently threatened with those opposed to the regime frequently arrested. More often however assaults on civil liberties take more subtle forms including legal repression to punish opponents.

As for the term ‘an even playing filed’, Levitsky and Way consider the playing field uneven when; state institutions are widely abused for partisan ends, incumbents are systematically favoured at the expense of the opposition and the opposition’s ability to organise and compete in elections is seriously handicapped. Three aspects of an uneven playing field are particularly important: access to resources, media and the law.

Competitive authoritarianism is a post-Cold war phenomenon, although a few existed during the cold war period they proliferated after the fall of the\ Berlin wall. This can be attributed to the economic crisis mounting, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the shift in the global balance of power in which the United States emerged as the dominant centre of economic and military power. The disappearance of a military, economic and ideological alternative to the liberal west had a major impact on the peripheral states, especially those who had previously not held elections.

Competitive authoritarian regimes are marked by an inherent tension. Within them exists meaningful democratic institutions which in turn create arenas of contestation through which oppositions may legally and legitimately challenge incumbents. Thus when incumbents enjoy broad public support e.g Botswana and Peru in the mid 1990’s) and/or face weak opposition they may retain power without egregiously violating democratic institutions. However the existence of multi-party elections, nominally independent legislatures, judiciaries and media creates opportunities for periodic challenges, and when incumbents lack public support, these challenges can be regime threatening. Most frequently opposition challenges take place at the ballot boxes, however there have been cases as in Russia in 1993 where these threats emerged in the parliament.

Furthermore it is highlighted in this reading that there are just as many unstable authoritarian regimes as there were stable ones and this hybrid regime should be viewed not as a transitional one between authoritarianism and democracy but rather a regime capable of surviving and functioning on its own merits. This reading provides, in my opinion a non bias approach to the concept of functioning political systems outside the generally accepted democratic terms.

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