“…In contrast, we pursue two objectives: first, the concept of regime hybridity, which is still underdeveloped in the literature on gray‐area research, and will be differentiated, energized, and operationalized—without dissolving the political regime into the socioeconomic dimension of the underlying regime definition but rather expanding the political dimension’s definition from the state to civil society; secondly, it will examine whether there is a stable correlation between regime hybridity and the development shortfall that exists in rent economies. In doing so, democratization is neither considered here as a simple “epiphenomenon and consequence of the thorough capitalization of the world society” (Tetzlaff 1996:85), because democracy takes place without a “thorough capitalization,” that is, without abandoning a rent economy, nor is it assumed that democratization can be completely detached from the sociation (German: Vergesellschaftung ) by a market economy because, in order to reach full democracy, the structures that determine a rent economy need to be broken down. If this is not achieved, then regime hybridity is the natural outcome.…”