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| Johns Hopkins Univ. Press |
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April 2007, Volume 18, Number 2
Toward Muslim DemocraciesSaad Eddin Ibrahim
About two-thirds of the world's Muslims live under governments chosen through competitive elections. The remaining third lives mostly in the Arab world, a region that poses the hardest challenges for democratization.
The Challenge of Closely Fought Elections
Laurence Whitehead
Closely fought elections are often fraught with conflict, splitting societies asunder. How can democracy survive such rough and close contests?
India's Unlikely Democracy
- Six Decades of Independence
Sumit Ganguly
By most theoretical accounts, Indian democracy should not even exist. Yet, despite serious challenges, it shows signs of enduring and even deepening.
- Economic Growth and Political Accommodation
Aseema Sinha
So far, economic liberalization and globalization have not served to undermine India's democracy. Indeed, they may even be strengthening it.
- Civil Society versus Corruption
Rob Jenkins
Pervasive corruption hampers India's democracy, yet anticorruption movements may be helping to improve governmental accountability.
- The Rise of Judicial Sovereignty
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
India's courts have been playing a growing role in the country's political life. Yet even as judicial interventions have become more sweeping, the principles undergirding their legitimacy have become less clear.
Pamela Constable
Much has been achieved both in the war against the Taliban and in the larger struggle to create a democratic Afghanistan, but dire problems remain.
Venezuela: Crowding out the Opposition
Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold
President Hugo Chávez's regime demonstrates how a public desire for change plus state resources can be exploited to undermine democracy.
Another Russia?
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Battling KGB, Inc.
Garry Kasparov
The Putin regime is plunging Russia into a deepening crisis. It is time to end the fiction that today's Russia is a democracy.
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After the Leviathan
Leon Aron
There is a future for democracy in Russia, but it may have to wait until the people begin to feel the problems created by the current system.
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Putin's Invented Opposition
Stephen Sestanovich
The Kremlin's ultimate need for democratic legitimacy, both at home and abroad, may be the key vulnerability of the Putin regime.
The 2006 Freedom House Survey
Voting for Change in the DRCThe Pushback Against Democracy
Arch Puddington
Although the overall state of democracy in the world differed little from that in 2005, a series of worrisome trends seem to be contributing to a stagnation of freedom.
Herbert F. Weiss
The holding of competitive elections in this vast, strife-torn country must count as a significant achievement, even though voters signaled their disaffection with the entire array of political elites that had been ruling them.
Montenegro: A Miracle in the Balkans?
Srdjan Darmanović
Tiny Montenegro gained its independence in a referendum in May 2006. What forces lay behind its completely peaceful break from its much larger neighbor, Serbia?
Books in Review
- Are New Democracies War-Prone?
Michael McFaul
A review of Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War by Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder. - Assisting Political Parties
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
A review of Confronting the Weakest Link: Aiding Political Parties in New Democracies by Thomas Carothers.
Election Watch
- Reports on recent elections in Bahrain, Benin, Estonia, Gabon, The Gambia, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritania, Saint Lucia, Senegal, Serbia, and Turkmenistan.
Documents on Democracy
- Full text of an open letter to Russian president Vladimir Putin, signed by more than a hundred public figures from around the world, in response to the decision to close the Society for Russian-Chechen Friendship.
- Message delivered by Democratic Republic of the Congo president Joseph Kabila, acknowledging his victory after two rounds of elections in July and October 2006-the country's first multiparty polls since 1965. (Also see the essay by Herbert F. Weiss in this issue.)
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