Conceptual and Empirical Thoughts on Hybrid Types of Political Cultures

Within their research fields, political scientists use typologies in a variety of ways to categorize cases and then investigate them in further analyses with regard to their specific characteristics. Some researchers are particularly interested in the polar types (e.g. materialists/post-materialists, democracy/autocracy) and less in the mixed types (e.g. hybrid regimes) possible from the various combinations of variables. In their Civic Culture study, however, Almond and Verba (1963) argued that it is not the three ideal types (parochial, subject and participatory culture) that are ideal for the stability of democratic regimes, but the mixed type of Civic Culture, which combines features from all three ideal types. A specific hybrid type of political culture is thus to be preferred. Recent studies on East Asia (Mauk 2014, Shin/Kim 2017) or sub-Saharan Africa (Bratton 2002) show that in a number of countries it is precisely the preference of hybrid political regimes that could possibly explain why so-called grey zone regimes show a certain persistence there. Therefore, this article will deal with the significance of hybrid political cultures both conceptually and empirically.