Tunisia’s Insecure Strongman
Kais Saied is claiming a landslide election win. The truth is he was never willing to face a real competition. Just how insecure he feels will likely determine how much more repressive he will become.
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Kais Saied is claiming a landslide election win. The truth is he was never willing to face a real competition. Just how insecure he feels will likely determine how much more repressive he will become.
April 2022, Volume 33, Issue 2
Europe appeared ready to turn its back on the pessimistic vision of populists—and then Putin upended the continent. A new book may serve as a textbook for progress, or a signpost of democracy’s dashed hopes.
Online Exclusive by Andrei Kozyrev | The more determined democracies are to avoid war, the greater the risk that autocracies will wage it.
April 2017, Volume 28, Issue 2
Rodrigo Duterte’s rise to the presidency of the Philippines reflects a broader trend in Southeast Asia of voters favoring politicians who elevate order above law. What does the history of “voting against disorder” in Indonesia and Thailand imply for the future of democracy in the Philippines?
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?
July 2012, Volume 23, Issue 3
In Hungary’s 2010 general elections, Fidesz won 68 percent of the seats in parliament—allowing it to impose a wholly new constitutional order.
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.
October 2002, Volume 13, Issue 4
Politics in the Arab Middle East is often a matter of powerholders first liberalizing — and then "deliberalizing" — public life in order to first maintain their rule. But this "survival strategy" is a dead end.
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 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
Excerpts from: Maria Ressa’s comments on social media at the 2021 Copenhagen Democracy Summit; NGO statement on the arrest of Algerian human-rights defenders; statement denouncing the dismissal of Constitutional Court judges and the attorney general; letter on the sentencing of a Saudi man for allegedly running a satirical Twitter account.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
A review of Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society, by Ronald J. Deibert.
Across the globe, the people who run our elections are being undermined, targeted, and attacked. Here is how to shore them up—and protect democratic institutions, too.
In 2022, we began publishing shorter, exclusively online pieces. No topic mattered more to you than Russia’s disastrous war in Ukraine. We also published essays from the sharpest minds on protests in China and Iran, instability in Pakistan, and more.
July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3
The recognition of democracy as a universally relevant system is a major revolution in thinking, and one of the main contributions of the twentieth century. While not yet universally practiced, democracy is now being taken as generally right.
Spring 1991, Volume 2, Issue 2
Excerpts from: the draft constitution of the Russian Republic; a letter from the mayor of Budapest, Hungary to the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania; the inaugural address Haitian president, Reverend Jean-Bertrand Astride.
The last Soviet leader brought down his regime and ended the Cold War. The free world owes him a debt of gratitude. | By Lucan Ahmad Way
April 1998, Volume 9, Issue 2
Reports on elections in Chile, Costa Rica, Djibouti, Guyana, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Lithuania, Mauritania, South Korea, Yugoslavia (Serbia).
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?