Voting as an Act of Resistance in Hybrid Regimes

The rich literature on the ethics of voting is mostly focused on the moral issues that voters face in democracies. However, elections are not held exclusively in democracies. This raises the question as to how far can we generalize the findings of an ethics of voting in democratic elections to other electoral contexts. In this paper, I argue that so-called hybrid regimes present voters with some unique moral challenges that voters in democracies do not face, and some forms of voting as a unique form of resistance to such regimes. Hybrid regimes are characterized by a restricted system of political rights or the severely diminished value of political rights. This makes voting a unique—even if imperfect—means for expressing resistance within and to such a regime. At the same time, hybrid regimes may turn into full-blown autocracies or turn back into democracies through elections—which generates special considerations that voters may and should take into account in resolving their moral dilemmas in such regimes.