April 2026, Volume 37, Issue 2
Democracy’s present difficulties were predictable. History and older theories of democratic stability should have prepared us for both democratic backsliding and the vulnerability of Western democracy we are experiencing today.
January 2026, Volume 37, Issue 1
Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP have developed the textbook attack on India’s universities and centers of free thought. It offers a vital warning for other countries where higher education is in danger.
January 2026, Volume 37, Issue 1
Two decades ago, there was a wave of optimism about the rise of “Muslim democracy,” but these hopes have not been realized. What are the real barriers to progress?
January 2026, Volume 37, Issue 1
Authoritarians often abuse electoral systems and institutional power to thwart majority will. But the basic principles of democracy—political participation, fundamental rights, and the rule of law—can take shape in more than one way.
January 2026, Volume 37, Issue 1
While attending to the risk of majoritarian abuse, we must also guard against institutions that empower—and even entrench—authoritarian minorities.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Voters around the world are losing faith in democracy’s ability to deliver and increasingly turning toward more authoritarian alternatives. To restore citizens’ confidence, democracies must show they can make progress without sacrificing accountability.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Delivery matters, but so do leaders’ actions. Why have so many, in both strong and weak economies, been pushing against democratic constraints on their power, and why have those constraints failed to contain them?
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
When the “third wave” reached Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, it brought major advances for democracy. By the first decade of the current century, however, advances had given way to stasis and even erosion.
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
The country’s outgoing president relentlessly attacked Mexico’s democratic institutions, taking it to the brink of authoritarianism. His successor is poised to push its democracy over the edge.
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
Even as Georgia lurches toward autocracy, the country’s pluralism and democratic culture are deepening. What can Georgia’s contradictory trends reveal about democratic resilience?
October 2024, Volume 35, Issue 4
Alongside democratic backsliding is another, more pernicious phenomenon: dictatorial drift, where “soft” authoritarian regimes are opting to become highly repressive dictatorships. The West must develop new strategies to defend democracy across the globe.
July 2024, Volume 35, Issue 3
If democracies did a better job “delivering” for their citizens, so the thinking goes, people would not be so ready to embrace antidemocratic alternatives. Not so. This conventional wisdom about democratic backsliding is seldom true and often not accurate at all.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
Around the world, democracy has lost steam. If we are to regain the momentum, we must harness these essential elements and wage the struggle with the conviction that the times demand.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
Indonesians have just elected a former general accused of human-rights abuses, with little respect for democratic institutions. The country’s democracy has not failed, but it may soon be fighting for its life.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
Praetorian politics are not making a comeback. Africa’s recent putsches have more to do with democracy’s failure to deliver than any fondness for military rule.
October 2023, Volume 34, Issue 4
Despite worry of an authoritarian resurgence, the vast majority of “third wave” democracies are enduring. Democracy, buoyed by economic growth and urbanization, is outperforming most people’s expectations or fears.
October 2023, Volume 34, Issue 4
Theocratic democracy, the de facto grand bargain between religious groups and political leaders, offers key insights into the relationship between faith, freedom, and the global democratic recession.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Behind today’s authoritarian wave are democratically elected leaders who use and abuse institutions to undermine the system that brought them to power. But with the right strategies, opposition forces can slow or stop these would-be autocrats.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
In this symposium, the Journal of Democracy brings together leading scholars of India to perform a biopsy on the state of that country’s fragile democracy, and to offer us a prognosis for its future.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Under Narendra Modi, India is maintaining the trappings of democracy while it increasingly harasses the opposition, attacks minorities, and stifles dissent. It can still reverse course, but the damage is mounting.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
To say that Indian democracy is backsliding misunderstands the country’s history and the challenges it faces: A certain authoritarianism is embedded in India’s constitution and political structures.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Since the beginning of the second Modi government, an emboldened BJP has launched a steady, comprehensive, and unprecedented attack on civil liberties, personal rights, and free speech across India.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
It is true that politics under the BJP is a break from the past. But attempts to reduce the country’s present condition to democratic backsliding misunderstands the moment and is an injustice to India’s journey as a democracy.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
India has a long history of elites acting undemocratically. But the current government’s attacks on the media, arrests of opposition, and discriminatory laws are deeper and more alarming.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
Complaining about parties and politicians is common everywhere, but troubled Peru has devolved into a cautionary tale for what a democracy without established parties and professional politicians can look like.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
The global democratic decline of the last two decades is rarely discussed in the same breath with the 2003 decision by the United States and Britain to invade Iraq. But the roots of our present disorder can be traced to that disastrous and foolhardy war of choice.
January 2023, Volume 34, Issue 1
When ordinary voters are given a choice between democracy and partisan loyalty, who will put democracy first? Frighteningly, Europe harbors a deep reservoir of authoritarian potential.
January 2023, Volume 34, Issue 1
Indonesia is a leading example for fledgling democracies navigating tough transitions. But it is imperiled, and if it gives way, the loss for the democratic world will be enormous.
January 2023, Volume 34, Issue 1
This is the toughest time for Latin America’s democracies in decades. Democratic stagnation makes them ripe targets for illiberal populists and other would-be authoritarians who will feed the region’s worst vices.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
The BJP has won two successive national elections, but it refuses to respect the rights of Muslims. Is democracy on a collision course with liberalism?
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Democracies are under stress, but they are not about to buckle. The erosion of norms and other woes do not spell democratic collapse. With incredibly few exceptions, affluent democracies will endure, no matter the schemes of would-be autocrats.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Analysis that subtly defines away problems is not going to help democracies survive the threats they now face. The fear is warranted.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
It is no easy feat to agree on how democratic backsliding should be measured. No surprise scholars are coming up with strikingly different results.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Democratic death has been exaggerated. But fear that a democracy is going to break down may, ironically, be one of the things that protects it.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Democracies are increasingly under attack by the leaders they elect. We may not know the damage until it is too late.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
We welcome the common ground. The challenge ahead is to protect democracies genuinely in peril, while not losing valuable time and resources chasing authoritarian ghosts.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
President Kais Saied’s power grab has crushed Tunisian democracy, returning the country to the old playbook of Arab dictators past and present.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
Tunisia’s once-promising democratic transition had long failed to de-liver on its promises. It was a crisis waiting to be exploited. Kais Saied is simply the man who set it aflame.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
The country’s armed forces opened the door to democracy, only to help slam it shut a decade later. A desire for prestige and political influence has turned them into an autocrat’s accomplice.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
Whether democracy regains its footing will depend on how democratic leaders and citizens respond to emboldened authoritarians and the fissures within their own societies.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
Can we recognize the symptoms of backsliding before it’s too late? Though the signals are sometimes faint, a new study of sixteen cases around the world reveals key dynamics common to all.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
Indonesia’s president claims he is curbing democracy today to save it later. If he is wrong about his long-term wager, democratic institutions may not survive.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
Just as public frustration with democracy is mounting across the West, social turmoil and new technologies are splintering the very political authority governments need to act.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
Shortcomings in governance and electoral administration may be accelerating India’s slide to autocracy. Were these flaws embedded in Indian democracy from the start?
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
It is not easy to build a stable hybrid regime. Elected autocrats may try, but comparing Bolivia, Brazil, and Venezuela shows how difficult it is to succeed.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
Recent high-profile scandals have laid bare persistent shortcomings of Latin American democracy that, if unaddressed, could prove fatal.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
Once mostly found in authoritarian regimes, personalism is now putting established democracies in peril—a trend that digital technology will likely make worse.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
With brutal resolve, the ruling party sought not merely to win an election, but to annihilate the opposition. Now, with President John Magufuli gone, that strategic rationale will likely only grow stronger.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
Longtime president Yoweri Museveni, his ruling party, and his increasingly militarized regime opened 2021 with a grossly unfair election. But time may be on the side of Uganda’s young voters and their hunger for change.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
Recent survey research suggests that most voters disapprove of antidemocratic acts by elected leaders. Yet there are critical exceptions when a significant minority of voters are sympathetic to or even supportive of violations of democratic laws and norms.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
The swelling pessimism about democracy’s future is unwarranted. Values focused on human freedom are spreading throughout the world, and suggest that the future of self-government is actually quite bright.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The Editors’ introduction to “Mainstream Parties in Crisis.”
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Like the “transition paradigm” before it, the concept of democratic backsliding threatens to flatten our perceptions of complex political realities. Examples from East-Central Europe illustrate the ambiguous dynamics at play in many troubled democracies.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The return to power, via elections, of the Rajapaksa family signals the consolidation of a Sinhalese Buddhist ethnocracy. But there are reasons to hope it will not take a turn toward full despotism.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
India’s covid-19 response has accelerated the country’s slide toward competitive authoritarian rule by centralizing decision making, undermining federalism, and providing new pretexts for stifling dissent.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
For all the concern over authoritarianism’s advance, the competence of governance may be what determines the next chapter in the struggle between democracy and dictatorship.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
Although South Korea is praised for its success at fighting covid-19, the triumph came at a cost to rights and privacy, and is drawing attention away from a larger drift toward illiberalism and bitterly factionalized politics.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
Ordinary citizens in East Asia, Latin America, and Africa are increasingly disappointed with democracy and its ability to deliver.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Despite being in a “slump,” democracy shows vivid signs of its persisting appeal.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Democracies are grappling with an era of transformation: Identity is increasingly replacing economics as the major axis of world politics. Technological change has deepened social fragmentation, and trust in institutions is falling. As our most basic assumptions come under question, can liberal democracy rebuild itself?
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Is liberal democracy the endpoint of history? The ongoing democratic recession, growing disaffection among citizens, and rising populism pose new challenges to this view. Yet testing Francis Fukuyama’s much-criticized thesis requires us to consider not only liberal democracy’s internal contradictions, but also those of its authoritarian rivals.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
There is still an opportunity to pull the world out of its democratic slump. What is most needed is democratic conviction and resolve.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
The mass protests that have taken place in 2019 in Hong Kong and elsewhere show that people’s desire for liberty cannot be extinguished.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
The military junta that seized power in 2014 finally organized an election in 2019, but with the goal of preventing rather than facilitating a return to civilian rule.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
The first half of President Rodrigo Duterte’s single six-year term saw steady erosion of legal barriers against abuses of power, typified by a bloody and extralegal “drug war.” Yet in midterm Senate elections, Filipino voters gave him a decisive victory.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
A trio of national ballotings in 2019 tell a tale of waxing authoritarianism in Southeast Asia, but things could have turned out worse.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
A review of Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day by Sheri Berman.
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
In both Eastern and Western Europe, social-democratic parties have shifted to the center on economic policy, not only sapping the electoral strength of these parties, but also opening up political space for the populist right.
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
Why do ordinary people vote to return to office undemocratic incumbents? New survey experiments in several countries suggest that many voters are willing to put their partisan interests above democratic principles—a finding that may be key to understanding democratic backsliding.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
Key democratic norms remained under threat in 2018, but there were also unexpected breakthroughs in Armenia, Malaysia, and Ethiopia.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
At present, the key struggle for the future of liberal democracy appears as if it will be unfolding among parties and thinkers on the right.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
The triumph of far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s October 2018 presidential election was made possible by a series of economic, social, and political crises that have shaken Brazilian democracy.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
In the world’s largest democracy, liberalism is in retreat, as evidenced by a pattern of assaults on minorities, press freedom, and the independence of key cultural and intellectual institutions.
October 2018, Volume 29, Issue 4
What factors help a democracy to survive a crisis? A study of cases in which democracy suffered a steep decline, yet ultimately recovered and endured, offers new insights. In moments of crisis, unelected and nonmajoritarian actors can play a pivotal role.
October 2018, Volume 29, Issue 4
Public-opinion data from Pew Research Center show that global support for representative democracy is widespread, but often thin. Amid rising economic anxiety, cultural unease, and political frustration, citizens are increasingly open to alternative systems of government.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Thirty years ago in Central and Eastern Europe, belief in an open society and a sense of reasserted national and indeed European identity seemed to go hand-in-hand. But that was then.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has used its two-thirds majority in parliament to change the constitution, erase checks and balances, and make the electoral system even more majoritarian.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Viewed until recently as an exemplar of democratic transformation, Poland is increasingly seen as a leading case of democratic backsliding, thanks to a series of illiberal measures pushed through by the Law and Justice party.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
The political turmoil following a journalist’s murder in Slovakia has revealed serious dangers to the country’s democratic institutions.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
For countries emerging from communism, the post-1989 imperative to “be like the West” has generated discontent and even a “return of the repressed,” as the region feels old nationalist stirrings and new demographic pressures.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
Across the West, economic, demographic, and cultural shifts have spurred the rise of populists who embrace majoritarianism and popular sovereignty while showing little commitment to constitutionalism and individual liberty.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
The ability of liberal democracies around the world to translate popular views into public policy has been declining. Yet there is no easy way to overcome this trend without weakening the capacity of governments to solve some of the most pressing challenges of the coming decades.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
In 2017, the state of political rights and civil liberties around the world sunk to its lowest point in more than a decade. While the democratic powers grappled with their own internal problems, leading autocrats expanded their global efforts to undermine democratic institutions.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Is liberal democracy the only suitable type of government for a strong, modern society? A quarter-century ago, the answer seemed to be a clear yes. But today the picture is much cloudier.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
“Democratic deconsolidation” on the level of attitudes and beliefs is real, and behind it lies a disturbing rise in tolerance for antisocial behavior, especially among the young.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Democracy’s retreat is real, yet alarmist reports of a global demise or crisis of democracy are not warranted.
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
Analogies with interwar Europe are often misdirected. In the 1920s and 1930s, regime breakdowns occurred in struggling new democracies, but established democratic systems exhibited remarkable endurance.
April 2017, Volume 28, Issue 2
Rising populism in the U.S. and beyond is calling into question the liberal-democratic bargain that has defined the postwar era. What led to Americans’ present revolt against elites, and what are its implications?
April 2017, Volume 28, Issue 2
Traditional intermediary institutions such as parties and the legacy media are not what they once were, and they are not coming back. What are the implications of new social media and digital-campaign techniques?
April 2017, Volume 28, Issue 2
In 2016, established democracies figured prominently on the list of countries experiencing declines in freedom, while emboldened autocracies stepped up their repression at home and interference abroad.
January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1
Political scientists have long assumed that “democratic consolidation” is a one-way street, but survey evidence of declining support for democracy from across the established democracies suggests that deconsolidation is a genuine danger.
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Liberal democracy in Europe today is under siege from a variety of political forces, but it is critical to recognize the distinctions among them.
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Europe’s democratic stability hinges on Germany, but a far-right challenger is on the rise. Can the country’s long-dominant centrist parties hold on?
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Once a protest party, the right-wing National Front has sought to recast itself for electoral success. How will Marine Le Pen fare in the 2017 presidential race?
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Once the poster child for successful postcommunist transitions to democracy, Poland is now governed by populist nationalists. What happened?
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Post-1945 Western Europe benefited greatly from center-left parties offering real solutions to real problems. Where has that left gone?
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
The crisis of liberal democracy is Europe-wide, but it has assumed an especially intense form in Central and Eastern Europe.
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
What some had thought would be the “end of history” has instead turned out to be the “new world disorder.” Democratic liberalism may have no new ideological rival, but older identities are powerfully reasserting themselves.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Is democratic deconsolidation underway in the United States and Europe? In recent years, support for democracy, especially among millennials, has been dwindling in a number of established democracies.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
Old-fashioned military coups and blatant election-day fraud are becoming mercifully rarer these days, but other, subtler forms of democratic regression are a growing problem that demands more attention.
