The Emperor Has No Clothes

Issue Date October 2005
Volume 16
Issue 4
Page Numbers 5-8
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What can be done with regimes that proclaim their devotion to democratic principles but violate them in practice?

About the Author

Václav Havel, a playwright and one of Europe’s most prominent moral and intellectual figures, was a leading dissident during the period of communist rule. He was elected as the first president of postcommunist Czechoslovakia, and later served as president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. From April to June of 2005, he occupied the Kluge Chair for Modern Culture at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

View all work by Václav Havel

Further Reading

Volume 12, Issue 3

Women and Democracy: Regional Differences and Contrasting Views

An increase in women’s political mobilization has accompanied the global trend toward democratization, but women’s movements have taken diverse paths in different regions of the world.

Volume 11, Issue 4

Mexico’s Victory: Vicente Fox and the Rise of the PAN

Although Fox’s National Action Party (PAN) is frequently portrayed as a reactionary party, it is better understood as a liberal-democratic alternative to the former ruling party’s authoritarianism.

Volume 17, Issue 4

Favorable Conditions and Electoral Revolutions

Over the past decade, a series of "electoral revolutions" has taken place from Slovakia to Kyrgyzstan. Why has this path to democratization been especially common in the postcommunist region?