ABSTRACT
In the 1880s Nicaragua was called ‘the Switzerland of Central America’, for its honest and efficient government (Cruz 2002). That regime fell to a coup d’état in 1893, and from then until 1979 the country had eight years of freely elected government and 78 years of either dictatorship or civil war. The rest of the 20th century brought 11 years of revolutionary democracy, followed by 10 years of ‘feckless pluralism’ (Carothers 2002). In the 21st century, Nicaragua is usually labelled a hybrid regime, as are, among 36 others, Bolivia, Egypt, Nepal, Singapore and Tanzania (EIU 2011). Hybrids are characterized by some blend of elections with ‘substantial irregularities’, government pressure on opponents, a weak rule of law, a politicized judiciary, and ‘harassment of and pressure on journalists’. However, elections are not systematically fraudulent, political opposition has some room to manoeuvre and personal freedoms generally are respected (EIU 2011: 30).
