Typologies of Political Regimes in the Struggle for Meanings Within Arab Regime Dynamics | South-Russian Journal of Social Sciences
Typologies of Political Regimes in the Struggle for Meanings Within Arab Regime Dynamics
Vol. 23 (2022) No. 3, Political Institutions and Processes
Vol. 23 (2022) No. 3
Political Institutions and Processes

Typologies of Political Regimes in the Struggle for Meanings Within Arab Regime Dynamics

Kharitonova O.G.
Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO University) under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation
ORCID ID 0000-0003-1908-0613
PDF (Russian)
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-23-3-48-66
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-23-3-48-66

How to Cite Array

Kharitonova O.G. (2022) Typologies of Political Regimes in the Struggle for Meanings Within Arab Regime Dynamics. South-Russian Journal of Social Sciences, 23 (3), pp. 48-66. DOI: 10.31429/26190567-23-3-48-66 (In Russian)
Submission Date 2022-11-25
Accepted Date 2022-12-28
Published Date 2023-02-28

Copyright (c) 2023 Оксана Геннадьевна Харитонова

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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

Arab East, “Arab Spring”, political change, authoritarianism, legitimacy, regime dynamics, political regime, taxonomy of political regimes

Acknowledgements

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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