The post–Cold War period has witnessed a proliferation of political regimes that combine formal democratic institutions and markedly authoritarian practices. Such “hybrid” regimes outnumber democracies in the developing and postcommunist worlds. Yet they have received little scholarly attention. Marina Ottaway's Democracy Challenged, which focuses on the phenomena of “semi-authoritarianism,” helps to fill that gap. Semi-authoritarian regimes “hold regular multiparty elections, allow parliaments to function, and recognize, with-in limits, the rights of citizens to form associations and of an independent press” (pp. 5–6). Yet because “power cannot be transferred through elections,” competition is ultimately “a fiction” (p. 15). Semi-authoritarianism regimes are found throughout Asia (Malaysia, Singapore), North Africa (Algeria, Egypt), sub-Saharan Africa (Senegal, Uganda), Latin America (Venezuela), and postcommunist Eurasia (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan) (pp. 3–4). Ottaway argues that these regimes “are not imperfect democracies struggling toward improvement and consolidation.” Rather, they are an effort by autocrats to “maintain the appearance of democracy without exposing themselves to the political risks that free competition entails” (p. 3).

The book is divided into three sections. Part I devotes a short descriptive chapter to each of five illustrative cases: Egypt, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Senegal, and Croatia. Beyond regional, cultural, and socioeconomic differences, the cases vary in their regime dynamics: Egypt is a case of stable semi-authoritarianism, Venezuela of “democratic decay,” and Croatia of “dynamic change” toward democracy.

Part II uses the case studies to build generalizations about the dynamics of semi-authoritarianism. Chapter 6 examines the mechanisms through which semi-authoritarian governments maintain themselves in power. This is a critical issue. Because semi-authoritarian regimes are formally democratic, coercive mechanisms are largely informal. Moreover, given an international context in which open repression is costly, these mechanisms often must float under the radar screens of international observers. The chapter describes the “games” used to maintain an uneven playing field, including tampering with voter rolls, clientelism, illicit finance, “legal” proscription of candidates, monopolization of the airwaves, subtle harassment of the independent media (through control over newsprint and manipulation of tax and libel laws), and repeated institutional reengineering.

Chapter 7 seeks to explain the rise and persistence of semi-authoritarianism. Although the chapter's focus on “structural obstacles” to democracy (low growth, social inequality, ethnic polarization, weak states) will not surprise scholars, democracy assistance programs, influenced by the leadership-centered “transitions” literature of the 1980s, often underestimate the impact of these structural conditions (p. 161). The chapter then examines the “asymmetric power structures” underlying semi-authoritarian regimes, showing how governments use control over state agencies and patronage networks to create such an uneven playing field that electoral competition becomes a farce.

Part III, which is aimed at practitioners, highlights several flaws in current efforts to promote democracy from abroad. First, civil-society assistance programs usually target “free floating” Westernized elites who run “small and isolated NGOs” that lack societal support (p. 213), while often ignoring “socially embedded” organizations that are less liberal or Western oriented (p. 181). Second, technical assistance programs tend to attribute the corrupt or abusive behavior of bureaucrats, judges, and legislators to a lack of technical skill, when it is usually a response to the incentives created by existing power structures (pp. 217–18). Third, efforts to reform judicial, legislative, and electoral institutions tend to assume that getting the rules right on paper will ensure their performance in practice, when in reality, these institutions often lack real power and are not taken seriously by elites (pp. 219–20).

Underlying these critiques is an important insight: The problem in semi-authoritarian regimes is “power, not know-how” (p. 209). “Low-end” democracy assistance, such as training and technical assistance, has “little impact on the distribution of power” (p. 209). Consequently, it often “embellish[es] the facade of democracy without producing much substantive change” (p. 189). Only “high-end” assistance that strengthens opposition forces and independent power centers will weaken semi-authoritarian regimes. Ottaway thus reaches a skeptical conclusion regarding the impact of democracy assistance programs. Although the inter-national community “has been successful at encouraging, cajoling, and at times coercing the political elites of these countries toward acceptance of superficially democratic processes and institutions,” it has “ultimately been unable to push them further” (pp. 193–94).

A few shortcomings of the book are worth noting. First, notwithstanding its laudable effort to map out the gray zone between democracy and authoritarianism, its conceptualization of semi-authoritarianism is somewhat muddled. As a residual category for all cases that are neither democratic nor fully authoritarian, semi-authoritarianism lumps together what are quite different regimes. Regimes in Iran, Singapore, and Ukraine are all hybrid, but they differ in analytically important ways. The book also fails to distinguish between hegemonic regimes, in which electoral institutions are essentially a facade, and regimes in which elections are quite competitive. Ottaway defines semi-authoritarianism as the former; “competition is a fiction” (p. 15), and incumbents “are in no danger of losing their hold on power” (p. 6). This definition fits Egypt and Azerbaijan, but in many cases, including several of her own, incumbents are in danger of losing power through elections. In Croatia and Senegal, they did just that. In Venezuela, too, the electoral process remains fair (p. 87). Indeed, beyond the fact that President Chavez “ranted and raved against the press” and “tried to control the labor unions' internal elections,” it is never clear how Venezuela “slipped into semi-authoritarianism” (p. 87).

This book also does little to explain variation in the trajectory of semi-authoritarian regimes. Why do some semi-authoritarian regimes remain stable (Egypt, Malaysia) while others democratize (Croatia, Peru)? Answers may lie in differences in power asymmetries between states and civil societies. They may also lie in the international context. Ottaway concludes that although external actors “contributed much to the creation of the façade of democracy,” domestic factors ultimately “deter-mined the political realities behind that façade” (p. 226). Yet a closer look at post-1989 regime trajectories reveals a striking pattern: Whereas most semi-authoritarian regimes in Central Europe and Latin America eventually democratized, most in Africa, Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East remained intact. Hence, it may be that semi-authoritarianism is harder to sustain in countries with close proximity to the United States and Europe. Unfortunately, these explanatory paths are left unexplored.

Notwithstanding these quibbles, Democracy Challenged is an important book. Ottaway makes a compelling case that semi-authoritarian regimes are widespread, are likely to endure, and cannot be understood as “flawed” or “prolonged” democratic transitions. For practitioners of democracy assistance, the book usefully highlights the centrality of power asymmetries in sustaining semi-authoritarianism. And for a scholarly community that focuses almost exclusively on formal institutions, it shows that in many post-transitional regimes, formal democratic institutions are less important than the informal mechanisms of coercion that lurk beneath them.