3191 Results
January 2002, Volume 13, Issue 1
The United Nations did superb work in helping Mozambique to end its long-festering civil war and start down the path to recovery, but those gains could slip away amid ominous conditions of partisan polarization, excessive political centralization, and a winner-takes-everything electoral system.
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. Although China’s farmers did not play a large role in the 1989 protests, they have been quite contentious since. Rural unrest has been triggered in part by reforms and in part by savvy “peasant leaders” who quickly seize opportunities that appear. Recently, many protest leaders have concluded that tame forms…
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
Across East-Central Europe, the political center ground has long been characterized by the uneasy cohabitation of liberal and illiberal norms, but the latter have been gradually overpowering the former.
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
Having suffered under both of the twentieth century's most brutal brands of dictatorship—fascism and communism—the CEE peoples have been dreaming of a new and better future, the future of the European Union and the Euro-Atlantic community.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Today’s authoritarians are using “sharp power” to project their influence internationally, with the objective of limiting free expression, spreading confusion, and distorting the political environment within democracies.
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. Seven decades after gaining its independence from the British Empire, India retains all the hallmarks of a functioning democracy: It holds reasonably free and fair elections, has a mostly independent judiciary plus a largely free press, and enjoys a robust and growing civil society. Yet thanks to India’s colonial inheritance…
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
Authoritarian regimes around the world hold elections and manipulate them every step of the way. How do we understand and work around the challenges these regimes pose to what should be a clean and democratic electoral process?
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
Political competition by itself does not curb corruption. Societies must also have a combination of values, social capital, civil society, and civic culture in order to impose effective normative constraints on corruption.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Nelson Mandela, who died in late 2013, fought for freedom for all the people of South Africa and masterfully guided his country’s transition to a nonracial democracy. His record on foreign policy is more ambiguous, but also instructive.
July 2024, Volume 35, Issue 3
What some elites in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand portray as “unity” is nothing more than a corrupt bargain meant to cheat voters of their right to decide their country’s political future before a single ballot is cast.
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
Both Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe have undergone significant democratization in recent years. Yet each region retains a distinctive approach, grounded in its own history, to common problems of social welfare and inequality.
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
Regime type is important, but it is the power of the fossil-fuel industry in both autocracies and democracies that is blocking the green transition globally.
July 2025, Volume 36, Issue 3
We must face an uncomfortable truth: Democracies often fail to reverse the damage after an authoritarian lapse, if they manage to recover at all. If we are to make our political systems more resilient, we must steel democracy against authoritarianism before it is too late.
July 2025, Volume 36, Issue 3
As President Erdoğan’s grip on power is slipping, his regime is turning more repressive. But Turkey may still avoid becoming a full-blown autocracy. The opposition is increasingly popular, and there remains a way to tilt the playing field to their advantage.
July 2002, Volume 13, Issue 3
This region’s five republics have just lived through a remarkable first decade of independence that raises questions about “preconditions”-based theories of democratization.
April 2002, Volume 13, Issue 2
Italy has long mixed great local and regional diversity with a unitary approach to governance. In October 2001, however, Italian voters approved a series of changes to their country’s Constitution that could mark a decisive turn toward federalism.
October 2000, Volume 11, Issue 4
In hotly contested parliamentary elections, candidates supportive of President Khatami’s reforms won an overwhelming victory.
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.
April 2022, Volume 33, Issue 2
The same technologies that are making traffic flow faster, cities run better, and ad-targeting more precise are also helping authoritarian governments to crush protests, hunt dissidents, and control their populations.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Democratic societies must address the spread of technology developed in authoritarian settings while continuing to uphold democratic norms.
