VOLUME 13, NUMBER 1, JANUARY 2020 EXPLORING THE “GREY ZONE”: THE THEORY AND REALITY OF “HYBRID REGIMES” IN POST- COMMUNISTIC COUNTRIES David PROCHÁZKA and Ladislav CABADA THE BUMPY ROAD OF THE ECE REGION IN THE EU: SUCCESSES AND FAILURES IN THE FIRST FIFTEEN YEARS Attila ÁGH NATURA 2000 EXPERIENCES IN SOUTHEAST EUROPE: COMPARISONS FROM SLOVENIA, CROATIA AND BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA Aleksandar ŠOBOT and Andrej LUKŠIČ VOTE ÉLECTRONIQUE IN SWITZERLAND: COMPARISON OF RELEVANT PILOT PROJECTS Markus REINERS CHINA’S STRATEGY VIS-A-VIS TAIWAN’S DIPLOMATIC FRIENDS: IS BEIJING USING DOLLAR DIPLOMACY? Šárka WAISOVÁ ANALYTICAL IMAGES OF POLITICAL TRUST IN TIMES OF GLOBAL CHALLENGES. THE CASE OF SLOVENIA, SPAIN AND SWITZERLAND Lluís COROMINA and Simona KUSTEC JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS 2 EDITORIAL TEAM Editor-in-Chief General Editor Miro Haček Peter Csányi ................................................................. ................................................................ University of Ljubljana University of Economics in Bratislava Faculty of social sciences, CAAPPI Faculty of International Relations Kardeljeva ploščad 5 Dolnozemská 1, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 852 35 Bratislava 5, Slovakia [email protected] [email protected] General Editor General Editor Jurij Toplak Simona Kukovič .................................................................. .................................................................. Alma Mater Europa ea University of Ljubljana European Center Maribor (AMEU-ECM) Faculty of social sciences, CAAPPI Gosposka ulica 1 Kardeljeva ploščad 5 2000 Maribor, Slovenia 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia [email protected] [email protected] ...................................................................................... Articles appearing in JCP, are abstracted and indexed in following bibliographical databases: Scopus (SNIP IF=0.55/2018), Web of Science ESCI, ERIH PLUS, EBSCO, International Political Science Abstracts, ProQuest Political Science, International Bibliography of Social Sciences (IBSS), JournalSeek, UlrichsWeb, I2OR Database and Universal Impact Factor. EDITORIAL BOARD Davor BOBAN, University of Zagreb, Croatia Marjan BREZOVŠEK, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia LadiSlav CABADA, Metropolitan University Prague, Czech Republic Fernando CASAL BERTOA, University of Nottingham, UK Renata TRENESKA DESKOSKA, University Ss. Cyril and Methodius, North Macedonia Đorđe GARDAŠEVIĆ, University of Zagreb, Croatia Victoria GRAHAM, University of Johannesburg, South Africa Pavol HRIVIK, Alexander Dubcek University of Trenčin, Slovakia Lars JOHANNSEN, Aarhus University, Denmark Kenneth KA-LOK CHAN, Hong Kong Baptist University, China Rudolf KUCHARČÍK, University of Economics Bratislava, Slovakia LiSa McINTOSH SUNDSTROM, University of British Columbia, Canada Riccardo PELIZZO, Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan Eric PHÉLIPPEAU, University Paris Nanterre, France Meredith REDLIN, South Dakota State University, USA Andrius ŠUMINAS, Vilnius University, Lithuania Michael TKACIK, Stephen F. Austin State University, USA Taro TSUKIMURA, Doshisha University Kyoto, Japan Pablo VIDAL, Catholic University of Valencia, Spain Nebojša VLADISLAVLJEVIĆ, University of Belgrade, Serbia Werner WEIDENFELD, University of Munich, Germany Reuben WONG, National University of Singapore, Singapore George Vital ZAMMIT, University of Malta, Malta Mattia ZULIANELLO, University of Birmingham, UK CO-PUBLISHERS Faculty of International Relations University of Economics in Bratislava Dolnozemská 1, 852 35 Bratislava 5, Slovakia Centre for analysis of administrative-political processes and institutions (CAAPPI) University of Ljubljana, Faculty of social sciences Kardeljeva ploščad 5, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia Alma Mater Europaea - European Center Maribor (AMEU-ECM) Gosposka ulica 1, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia DESIGN CAAPPI, Ljubljana. Journal of Comparative Politics is published twice a year, in January and July. JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 EXPLORING THE “GREY ZONE”: THE THEORY AND REALITY OF “HYBRID REGIMES” IN POST- COMMUNISTIC COUNTRIES David PROCHÁZKA and Ladislav CABADA ............................................................................................................................................................................ 23 THE BUMPY ROAD OF THE ECE REGION IN THE EU: SUCCESSES AND FAILURES IN THE FIRST FIFTEEN YEARS Attila ÁGH ............................................................................................................................................................................ 46 NATURA 2000 EXPERIENCES IN SOUTHEAST EUROPE: COMPARISONS FROM SLOVENIA, CROATIA AND BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA Aleksandar ŠOBOT and Andrej LUKŠIČ ............................................................................................................................................................................ 58 VOTE ÉLECTRONIQUE IN SWITZERLAND: COMPARISON OF RELEVANT PILOT PROJECTS Markus REINERS ............................................................................................................................................................................ 76 CHINA’S STRATEGY VIS-A-VIS TAIWAN’S DIPLOMATIC FRIENDS: IS BEIJING USING DOLLAR DIPLOMACY? Šárka WAISOVÁ ............................................................................................................................................................................ 102 ANALYTICAL IMAGES OF POLITICAL TRUST IN TIMES OF GLOBAL CHALLENGES. THE CASE OF SLOVENIA, SPAIN AND SWITZERLAND Lluís COROMINA and Simona KUSTEC ............................................................................................................................................................................ PARTICIPATE For further information on submissions, please consult the guidelines at http://www.jofcp.org. JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS 4 EXPLORING THE “GREY ZONE”: THE THEORY AND REALITY OF “HYBRID REGIMES” IN POST- COMMUNISTIC COUNTRIES1,2 David PROCHÁZKA and LadiSlav CABADA3 ……………………………………………………………………….…………………………………… The new multiple-configuration of the international relations and especially the break-down of the non-democratic regimes of the Soviet-type created the need for scholars to address new classifications of emerging regimes. The contribution of the presented text to the debate on ‘hybrid regimes’ is twofold. The authors strive to wholesomely introduce the debate, genealogy and intellectual background of this line of research, exploring if it is possible to employ the concept of ‘hybrid regimes’ to define the character of selected cases and simultaneously, if it is possible to change the paradigm of classification of studied regimes in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. In this text, the authors understand various conceptualizations of “hybrid regimes” as a unit on a different level on the ‘’ladder of abstraction’. Therefore the authors emphasize the theoretical employment of ‘hybrid regimes’ as a ‘meta-concept’, analysing the recent development in Hungary. Key wordS: hybrid regimes; grey zone of regimes; East-Central Europe; Hungary. 1 INTRODUCTION Since the one-party non-democratic regimes of the Soviet bloc fell, and the new multipolar world configuration has started taking shape, political scientists need to address the classification of regimes that are hard to fit into traditional typologies. The necessity to re-imagine the regime classification is reinforced by the increasing number of democratic transitions and the reverberating third wave of democratisation. Due to the significant change of the research subjects – 1 This article is the outcome of the project ‘Hybrid regimes theory in the East-Central European context’ (E24-66) carried out through the Internal Grant Agency at Metropolitan University Prague. We are grateful to the university for the support. 2 The authors would like to express their gratitude to Olga Brunnerová, MA, for her helpful comments as well as the improvement of the language quality of the article. 3 David PROCHÁZKA is an internal Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Humanities and Political Science, Metropolitan University Prague/Czech Republic. LadiSlav CABADA is associate professor of Comparative Politics at Metropolitan University Prague and University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic, permanent Visiting Scholar at the National University of Public Service in Budapest, Hungary, and Co-Editor of Politics in Central Europe. JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS 5 i.e. the political regimes – in recent decades, political scientists have suggested alternative typologies and new terminologies. Or, to be more precise, they introduced new conceptualisations of political regimes. The change of the regime’s character, however, does not only concern the large group of actors of the former post-communistic bloc, Pacific Asia or Latin America. The end of the Cold War saw the emergence of new states, which frequently deviated from the ideal types of liberal democracy or slightly different types of non-democratic regimes.4 As expected, this situation has opened the door for more than two decades of debate on so-called ‘hybrid regimes’, which has become an inseparable part of the broader discussion on the nature of democracy, authoritarianism and the examination of the character of the regimes as such. In the present day, it seems entirely inconceivable that the topic of ‘hybrid regimes’ could be omitted from research. The reason for this is that the plethora of regimes