Many countries have adopted the form of democracy with little of its substance. This makes the task of classifying regimes more difficult, but also more important.
About the Author
Larry Diamond is senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, and founding coeditor of the Journal of Democracy.
In recent years, new types of nondemocratic government have come to the fore, notably competitive authoritarianism. Such regimes, though not democratic, feature arenas of contestation in which opposition forces can…
Regular elections have become a fixture of political life throughout sub-Saharan Africa, but there are now “two Africas” in this regard: one where elections bring the blessings of greater political…