July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
Political Attitudes in the Muslim World
A new look at the World Values Survey data reveals how the Muslim world’s religious context affects individual Muslims’ attitudes toward democracy.
3036 Results
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
A new look at the World Values Survey data reveals how the Muslim world’s religious context affects individual Muslims’ attitudes toward democracy.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
For much of its history, Nicaragua has shown a predilection for personalist and populist rule. What explains the persistence and allure of these phenomena, and what obstacles do they pose for democracy in Nicaragua?
Summer 1990, Volume 1, Issue 3
Reports on elections in Algeria, Bulgaria, Burma/Myanmar, Colombia, Czechoslovakia, Dominica, Dominican Republic, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Peru, Romania, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe.
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
Plebiscites have grown less common in recent decades in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries, even as the use of referendums in democracies has expanded. Despite their many shortcomings, referendums are, on balance, a mechanism for strengthening democracy.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
What does public opinion tell us about Burma’s longer-term prospects for democracy? The Asian Barometer Survey reveals contradictory attitudes regarding democracy and democratic values among the citizens of Burma.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Institutional choices matter in the postcommunist world, but geopolitical and civilizational boundaries still set the horizons of political possibility.
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
India’s sixteenth general election ushered in a new era in the country’s politics, putting Narendra Modi and the BJP firmly in charge. What accounts for the sharp swing away from the long-dominant Congress party?
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
Survey data indicate that Africans support democracy and its formal institutions, but also point to the importance of the informal realm, particularly when formal institutions fail to meet popular expectations.
January 2003, Volume 14, Issue 1
The Chinese state is much weaker than most people realize, which bodes ill for the country’s democratic prospects.
April 2007, Volume 18, Issue 2
Closely fought elections are often fraught with conflict, splitting societies asunder. How can democracy survive such rough and close contests?
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
After decades of civil war, Sudan is set to divide into two nations on 9 July 2011. Yet a number of explosive issues—including the drawing of borders and sharing of oil revenue—have still not been resolved, and the prospects for peace appear to be dimming.
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
Conventional scholarly wisdom holds that ethnic diversity within a given society generally dims democracy’s prospects. Careful reflection on the experience of many post-Soviet states, however, suggests that this need not be so.
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
The 2005 elections were marked by massive fraud, but the democratic world mostly looked the other way. Azerbaijani society remains receptive to democracy, but the regime clearly has other plans—and will soon have massive oil wealth to fund them.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
In 2018, Italian voters produced Europe’s first populist majority. Lega and the Five Star Movement, each populist in its own way, collectively won just over half the vote. Now they are locked in a struggle with the EU.
Nationwide protests against Xi Jinping’s zero-covid policy caught the Chinese Communist Party off-guard. Expect the Party’s security apparatus to strike back with quiet precision. | Sheena Chestnut Geitens
October 2003, Volume 14, Issue 4
Four years after his bloodless coup, Pervez Musharraf is executing a military “exit strategy” from politics that involves lots in the way of problematic strategy and little in the way of real exit from political power.
January 2006, Volume 17, Issue 1
Independent central banks throughout the former Soviet Union suffer from a dual democratic deficit. How can they gain greater democratic legitimacy without compromising their countries' economic health?
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
In a country where opposition forces were long marginalized and dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka faced little serious threat to his rule, Belarus’s 2020 antirevolutionary protest movement has changed the game.
July 2025, Volume 36, Issue 3
Turkey’s democratic future hinges on its opposition parties doing something few expected: winning elections in unfair conditions. Yet the opposition’s strong performance in local elections suggests that they may be putting together a winning formula for Turkey and beyond.
January 2011, Volume 22, Issue 1
Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, is best known for his eloquent and incisive essays. Two of them are featured here: “Can It Be That the Chinese People Deserve Only ‘Party-Led Democracy’?” and “Changing the Regime by Changing Society.”