Fifty shades of grey? Conceptualizing and measuring political regimes using theories of democracy, 1972 – 2010

The conceptualization and measurement of the range of political regimes in-between authoritarianism and democracy is characterized by many shades of grey. After the end of the Cold War, scholars formulated numerous new political regime typologies, commonly presented as diminished subtypes of democracy and authoritarianism and as transitional rather than stable institutional forms. Correspondingly, scholars collected data to develop new longitudinal and cross-national measures of political regimes. Although these efforts led to important new insights, they also face limitations. A myriad of regime typologies precipitates conceptual confusion and dichotomous measurements hamper the investigation of hybrid regimes. The paper addresses these limitations by developing a new measurement model of political regimes. Conceptually, the model is anchored within theories of democracy and focuses on institutions regulating the access to and exercise of political power, i.e. (1) political participation and competition (2) respect for human rights and (3) institutional constraints on the executive. Empirically, the model approaches political regimes as multi-dimensional and focuses on differences in degree rather than in kind. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) is applied on longitudinal data between 1972 and 2010 to measure the three political regime dimensions using multiple indicators. Second, Hierarchical Cluster Analysis allows for the study of political regimes beyond their constitutive attributes. We validate the new latent variables using content, convergentdiscriminant and nomological validation. So doing, we illustrate the usefulness of the approach by presenting new empirical insights.