Abstract
The analysis of classifications and typologies of political regimes that exist in political science demonstrates that the classifications that are aimed at global comparisons at a high level of abstraction will not always capture the political shifts made within one type of regime, both because of the rapid changes in the political sphere and also because it is difficult to assess changes in different political and socio-cultural environments. For a more accurate picture of the regime dynamism, the author recommends dropping to the middle level of the ladder of abstraction, as well as using a detailed four-level taxonomy of political regimes. On the first level of the analysis, in particular, a trichotomy was applied to distinguish between democratic, hybrid, and authoritarian regimes; the second level examines formal institutions of political regimes through a modified and updated version of the authoritarian regime type dataset first introduced by Hadenius and Teorell; the third level takes into account the legitimization basis of the regime, including its traditional (monarchical and religious), ideological, charismatic and populist forms; at the fourth level, the classification incorporates variation factors of political regime stability, such as resources (rentier regimes), repressions, and WOW-factors. The suggested taxonomization algorithm has been developed on the basis of the empirical data collected from the Arab East before and after the “Arab Spring”.
Keywords
Funding information
The study was funded by RFBR within the framework of the scientific project № 20-011-00922A “The Arab State after the ‘Arab Spring’: Trajectories and Dynamics of Political Transformations.”
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