3246 Results
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
The “color revolutions” in the postcommunist countries cannot be attributed to diffusion alone. Structural factors offer a better explanation of why such revolutions have succeeded in some countries and not in others.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
The liberal emphasis on unhindered mobility comes with costs, particularly for those unable to leave.
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
The CCP regime has lost support among three groups it should normally be able to count on: street-level police, retired military officers, and state employees who are drafted into stifling dissent on the part of their own relatives.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
Although Ukraine’s regional divisions are often thought to be detrimental to state-building and democratization, they have in fact been a source of strength and helped to prevent tilts to the political extremes.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
On the surface, intelligence-sector reform since the fall of apartheid has been a model of success, but the growing politicization of security-sector forces by the ruling ANC may pose a threat to the consolidation of South Africa's young democracy.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
Law-based rule means a set of basic conditions that make civic life possible. A democratic rule of law requires all that and more, however.
April 2004, Volume 15, Issue 2
Weak or failed states are at the root of many serious global problems, from poverty and AIDS to drug trafficking and terrorism, to the failure of democratic government itself. State-building must become a priority for the world community.
January 2003, Volume 14, Issue 1
Political renewal is contending with a process of political decay that has yet to reach an end.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
The BJP is ruling with a heavier hand than ever before, attacking opponents and silencing critics. Ironically, these may be the ideal conditions for a democratic revival—if the opposition seizes the moment.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
Of all the “Arab Spring” countries, so far only Tunisia has managed to make a transition to democracy. Tunisians now have a chance to show the world a new example of how religion, society, and the state can relate to one another under democratic conditions.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Robert Michels’s classic work on the “iron law of oligarchy” can help us to understand why there is so much dissatisfaction with representative democracy.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
The 2009 vote for the presidency and local councils was marred by fraud, provoking a political crisis and casting a deep shadow over upcoming parliamentary elections. The Afghan experience calls into question whether voting should occur before other essential reforms are in place.
April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2
Seymour Martin Lipset’s contributions to political science and sociology are not theoretical achievements alone, but reflect his keenly practical moral awareness, his understanding of leadership, and his great love of democracy as the finest form of government ever devised.
April 2008, Volume 19, Issue 2
Why has China's transition to democracy been so delayed, and what can be done to hasten it?
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…
