Rethinking hybrid regimes: The American case.

Indeed, it is well worth asking whether this authoritarian regional regime, that operated as an enclave within national political system (and as a powerful minority in the Democratic Party), so distorted national politics as to make the United States itself a hybrid regime or as a recent book puts it, a "Southern Nation" (Bateman et al., [4])? Instead of viewing the political form constructed by populist government as a qualified democracy or as a qualified authoritarian regime, I argue that populist governments when fully in control constitute a distinct hybrid regime that wields together elements from democracy and authoritarianism but is neither one nor the other. Descriptively, some populist regimes may fit the competitive authoritarian label insofar as they are hybrid regimes; they are not subtypes of authoritarian regimes. I disagree with those who want to situate the regime type populist governments erect as "qualified" - illiberal, "semi", or "delegative" democracy - but also with those who see populism in government as a subtype of authoritarianism (competitive or electoral) or populism as "the government" as outright autocracy. [Extracted from the article]