Anocracy, or semi-democracy, is a form of government that is loosely defined as part democracy and part dictatorship, or as a "regime that mixes democratic with autocratic features". Another definition classifies anocracy as "a regime that permits some means of participation through opposition group behavior, but that has incomplete development of mechanisms to redress grievances." The term "semi-democratic" is reserved for stable regimes that combine democratic and authoritarian elements. Scholars distinguish anocracies from autocracies and democracies in their capability to maintain authority, political dynamics, and policy agendas. Anocratic regimes have democratic institutions that allow for nominal amounts of competition. Such regimes are particularly susceptible to outbreaks of armed conflict and unexpected or adverse changes in leadership.

The operational definition of anocracy is extensively used by scholars Monty G. Marshall and Benjamin R. Cole at the Center for Systemic Peace, and that definition was widely disseminated through the polity data series. This data set aims to measure democracy in different states and uses anocracy as one of its classifications for regime type. Consequently, anocracy frequently appears in democratization literature that utilizes the polity data set.

Anocratic regimes, also known as hybrid regimes, are known for having guided democracy instead of liberal democracy. They combine authoritarian powers with some democratic practices, for example holding elections that are competitive to some degree. In a closed anocracy, competitors are drawn from the elite. In an open anocracy, others also compete. The number of anocratic regimes has steadily increased over time, with the most notable jump occurring after the end of the Cold War. From 1989 to 2013, the number of anocracies increased from 30 to 53.

The instability of anocratic regimes causes human rights violations to be significantly higher within anocracies than democratic regimes. According to Maplecroft's 2014 Human Rights Risk Atlas, eight of the top ten worst human-rights-violating countries are anocracies. In addition, the report categorized every current anocracy as "at risk" or at "extreme risk" of human rights offenses.

The high correlation between anocratic regimes and human rights abuses denotes the nonlinear progression in a country's transition from an autocracy to a democracy. Generally, human rights violations substantially decrease when a certain threshold of full democracy is reached. However, human rights abuses tend to remain the same or even to increase as countries move from an autocratic to an anocratic regime.

During the revolutions of the Arab Spring, Libya, Egypt, and Yemen, all of the countries made relative progress towards more democratic regimes. With many of the authoritarian practices of their governments remaining, those states currently fall under the category of anocracies. They are also listed as some of the most extreme human-rights-violating countries in the world. The violations include torture, police brutality, slavery, discrimination, unfair trials, and restricted freedom of expression. Research has shown that political protests, such as those that occurred during the Arab Spring, generally lead to an increase in human right violations, as the existing government tries to retain power and influence over governmental opposition. Therefore, transitioning governments tend to have high levels of human rights abuses.

In its annual Freedom in the World report, Freedom House scored states' violations of civil liberties on a seven-point scale, with a score of seven representing the highest percentage of violations. Freedom House defined civil liberty violations as the infringement of freedom of expression, associational and organizational rights, rule of law, and individual rights. Most consolidated democracies received scores of one, but almost all anocracies were scored between four and six because of the high percentage of civil liberties violations in most anocratic regimes.

Statistics show that anocracies are ten times more likely to experience intrastate conflict than democracies and twice as likely as autocracies. One explanation for the increase in violence and conflict within anocracies is a theory known as More Murder in the Middle (MMM). The theory argues that the unstable characteristics of anocratic regimes, which include the presence of divided elites, inequality, and violent challengers who threaten the legitimacy of the current social order, cause governing elites to resort to much more political repression or state terror than do democratic or authoritarian regimes. That leads to high levels of what are termed "life-integrity violations", which include state-sponsored genocide, extrajudicial executions, and torture.