Garrett 대 희 “Dae Hee” Edmark 

Sept. 10, 2023, 7:59AM 

Evaluating the 'Autocratic-Democratic Spectrum' and its Efficacy in the ACCURATE Categorization of Regimes

Frantz describes the typologies used to distinguish regimes as a gradient spectrum in her published work “Authoritarianism.” The typology seeks to place a state within a democratic-autocratic spectrum on the basis of “how authoritarian the government is.” The spectrum serves as a tool for distinguishing states within a gray area of autocracy. Frantz describes these states within the gray area as, “centrally assumed to be less authoritarian than those of dictatorships with restrictive political environments.” Therefore, implying that despite these states operating under an autocratic rule, they are operating within the principles of democracy (e.g. freedom of press, freedom of speech, inclusion, etc.) more-so than their authoritarian counterparts. 

In the same way regime types help explain societal and political outcomes, Frantz’s typologies help explain these societal and political outcomes empirically. A state's placement on the democratic-autocratic spectrum can project tendencies, behaviors and habits consistent to states who have placed similarly to them. When evaluating political and societal outcomes, the additional information provided by a state's “type of regime” alongside the usage of Frantz’ typologies can be used to accurately project outcomes & tendencies for factors such as economic growth and international conflict. For example, Personal Regimes have historically shown a tendency to initiate international conflict in contrast to other autocratic counterparts and are statistically likely to perform poorly economically in comparison to democratic states. (e.g. Russia, who has actively engaged conflict with Ukraine and currently sits #11 in global GDP)