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
Ukraine versus Russia is a modern David versus Goliath conflict that matters not only for the future of Ukraine, but for that of democracy itself.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
When South Korea’s president declared martial law last December, he shocked the country and sparked a political crisis that laid bare deep-seated divisions. Can Korean democracy overcome the nationalist polarization that has always defined it?
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Everything we know about getting and keeping democracy suggests we should be, at best, cautious about the prospects for Syria’s democratic future. But, as this collection of essays suggests, there are reasons for hope.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Syrians rejoiced when Bashar al-Assad’s regime fell. After decades of dictatorship and civil war, Syrians must now rebuild their country while seeking justice for the victims of authoritarian rule.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
After the collapse of the Assad regime, Syria stands at a crossroads. Nothing is assured, but the country’s civil society is its best hope for charting a democratic future.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Despite a brutal thirteen-year civil war, Syrians are not building from scratch. In fact, Syria has a long and rich history of state-building to guide them.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
The ruling BJP has long sought to sideline Indian Muslims. But even the opposition is opting to exclude them politically. Muslims’ chances at greater representation remain dim.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Propaganda is autocrats’ weapon of first resort, allowing them to rely on persuasion rather than violence to achieve their ends. But citizens have grown savvy, so autocrats are taking a new tack: spreading their messages via private news outlets indirectly controlled by regime proxies.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Democratic backsliding is usually seen as something driven by presidents, but under certain circumstances elected legislatures can cause it, too. Legislative hegemony is a growing danger.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
The “third wave” of democracy started in 1974 — or so the story goes. But the crests and crashes of waves of democracy and authoritarianism have been neglected. A close look can help us understand the current moment, when democracy appears to be in retreat.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Democracy across the world is being undermined by the very forces that once made it possible: the liberal economic order and political competition. The global concentration of wealth has made democratic governance less effective and stripped the people of their power.
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.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
A Ukrainian human-rights lawyer on moral responsibility during war; Nilofar Shidmehr’s poem “Say Her Name: Mahsa Jina Amini”; a Cuban prodemocracy activist vows to never give up; Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Belarus’s sham election; a Zimbabwean journalist turns himself in to police; the frontlines of the protests in Georgia; and an open letter to Xi Jinping.
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
With illiberal forces ascendant across the globe, protecting individual liberties and the democratic process is crucial. But when institutions empower minority groups over the majority, can democracy survive?
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
Many pundits cry for a negotiated settlement to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. But they misunderstand Vladimir Putin’s motives. The only just end to the war will be in the trenches, not at the bargaining table.
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
Nicolás Maduro brazenly stole Venezuela’s 2024 presidential election, despite a free, fair, and transparent ballot count that showed a clear opposition victory. Why would an autocrat want to maintain one of the world’s best voting systems?
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
The student movement that toppled Bangladesh’s longtime autocratic ruler wants more than a return to the old order. These young revolutionaries are seizing a chance to start anew. How and by whom will the country’s future be decided?
