"Conventional” and “Virtual” Civil Societies in Hybrid Regimes

In hybrid regimes “conventional” civil society (i.e., the field of formal civil society organizations based on face-to-face networks) is often weak for several reasons: past authoritarian rule usually leaves stunted formal civil society development in its wake; hybrid regimes fear the challenges that “conventional” civil society organizations present to their hegemony and repress it; and formal organizations based on face-to-face relations are relatively easy for hybrid regimes to regulate and target. However, as we have witnessed over the last decade in a number of hybrid regimes, the rise of the internet has provided a new basis for civic activism within hybrid regimes, even in the presence of an anemic “conventional” civil society. This paper explores the implications of this mixture of weak “conventional” civil society and robust “virtual” civil society for state-society relations within hybrid regimes that is associated with the rapid growth of the internet in recent years, utilizing survey data from Russia, Ukraine, Tunisia, and Egypt.