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Anocracy


An anocracy is a government regime featuring inherent qualities of political instability and ineffectiveness, as well as an "incoherent mix of democratic and traits and practices".

These regime types are particularly susceptible to outbreaks of armed conflict and unexpected or adverse changes in leadership. Despite its popular usage, anocracy lacks a precise definition. Anocratic regimes are also loosely defined as part democracy and part dictatorship, or as a "regime that mixes democratic with autocratic features". Another definition classifies anocracy as "a regime that permits some means of participation through opposition group behavior but that has incomplete development of mechanisms to redress grievances". Scholars have also distinguished anocracies from autocracies and democracies in their capability to maintain authority, political dynamics, and policy agendas. Similarly, these regime types have democratic institutions that allow for nominal amounts of competition.

The operational definition of anocracy is extensively used by scholars Monty G. Marshall and Benjamin R. Cole at the Center for Systemic Peace and gains most of its dissemination through the polity data series. The data set aims to measure democracy in different states, and retains anocracy as one of its classification methods for regime type. Consequently, anocracy frequently appears in democratization literature that utilizes the polity-data set. In a closed anocracy, competitors are drawn from the élite. In an open anocracy, others compete too.

The number of anocratic regimes has steadily increased over time, with the most notable jump occurring after the end of the Cold War. During the period from 1989 to 2013, the number of anocracies increased from 30 to 53.

Due to the instability of anocratic regimes, human rights violations are significantly higher within anocracies than democratic regimes. According to Maplecroft's 2014 Human Rights Risk Atlas, eight of the top ten worst human rights violating countries are anocracies. In addition, the report categorized every current anocracy as "at risk" or at "extreme risk" of human rights offenses.

The high correlation between anocratic regimes and human rights abuses denotes the nonlinear progression in a country’s transition from an autocracy to a democracy. Generally, human rights violations substantially decrease when a certain threshold of full democracy is reached. However, human rights abuses tend to remain the same, or even increase, as countries move from an autocratic to an anocratic regime.


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