Despite its increased prioritization over the past several decades, democracy remains an elusive feat for many nations. This is due, in part, to a recent uptick in hybrid regimes, which possess qualities of both democracy and authoritarianism simultaneously. Among others, one especially salient explanation for hybrid formation is democracy aid itself, which often engenders superficial democratization while masking ongoing authoritarian practices. Still, despite considerable research examining how various factors—including aid—impact hybrid regimes, relatively little headway has been made. This is due primarily to continued disagreement over how to best measure and situate hybrids within the broader democracy literature. In this review, I demonstrate the role sociology can play in addressing this issue while advancing research on democracy, hybrids, and aid in a productive way. I argue that using sociological theories explaining the spread of global norms—such as democracy—to analyze hybrid regimes will facilitate improved understanding of democracy and the factors which shape it across the social sciences.

中文翻译：

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民主，援助和传播：混合制度的一种规范方法

尽管在过去的几十年中，对民主的重视程度有所提高，但民主仍然是许多国家难以捉摸的壮举。这部分是由于最近混合政权的崛起，混合政权同时兼具民主和专制主义的特质。除其他外，对混合形式的一个特别显着的解释是民主援助本身，它往往在掩盖现行威权主义做法的同时造成表面民主化。尽管如此，尽管进行了大量研究来研究各种因素（包括援助）如何影响混合制度，但进展相对较小。这主要是由于在如何在更广泛的民主文献中最好地衡量和定位混合因素方面继续存在分歧。在这篇评论中，我展示了社会学在推进民主，混合，并以富有成效的方式提供帮助。我认为，使用解释全球规范（例如民主）的传播的社会学理论来分析混合政权，将有助于增进对民主及其在整个社会科学中塑造民主的因素的理解。