January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
Election Watch
Reports on elections in Argentina, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Chile, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Guinea, Honduras, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritania, Nepal, Rwanda, Swaziland, and Tajikistan.
3036 Results
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
Reports on elections in Argentina, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Chile, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Guinea, Honduras, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritania, Nepal, Rwanda, Swaziland, and Tajikistan.
Elections in nearly eighty countries around the world captured headlines throughout 2024. Meanwhile, NATO turned 75, Viktor Orbán ramped up his repression, and Bitcoin became the currency of choice for democracy activists under threat. These ten essays were the JoD’s most-read online exclusives of 2024.
Billions in much-needed American military aid are now headed for Ukraine. The following Journal of Democracy essays demonstrate what it will take to reverse the course of this war of attrition, and why this struggle is a “contest between democracy and dictatorship.”
January 2011, Volume 22, Issue 1
For the first time ever in the history of Hong Kong, local democratic leaders and Chinese officials have forged a pact on limited democratic reforms. That may have marked a step forward for the cause of democracy in Hong Kong, but it has also led to a sharp split in the democratic camp.
July 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3
India has long baffled theorists of democracy. Democratic theory holds that poverty, widespread illiteracy, and a deeply hierarchical social structure are inhospitable conditions for the functioning of democracy. Yet except for 18 months in 1975-77, India has maintained its democratic institutions ever since it became independent of Britain in 1947. Over those five decades, there…
October 2024, Volume 35, Issue 4
Immigration threatens to erode liberalism, as far-right parties and migrant communities with illiberal views gain power. Mass publics have shouldered the blame. But should political elites be held responsible?
April 2007, Volume 18, Issue 2
Pervasive corruption hampers India's democracy, yet anticorruption movements may be helping to improve governmental accountability.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
Oppositions in monarchies don’t have to stage revolutions to win freedom: Monarchies are as compatible with democracy as they are with autocracy. The challenge for those who would remove a king is not to fall for the promises of reform that never come.
April 2017, Volume 28, Issue 2
Two of the Arab world’s more liberal regimes, the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco, are sometimes said to be evolving toward democracy. Is this true, and what are the longer-term prospects for these two monarchies?
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion has exposed the fundamental instability of Putinism.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
How can Chinese claim strongly to support both democracy and their authoritarian regime? The answer may lie in a Confucian concept of democracy.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
This is a central problem—perhaps the central problem—for classical liberal theory and its crucial distinction between the state of nature and the civil state. Which is better for liberty: nature or the state?
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Read the full essay here. The Russian system of personalized power is growing ever more dependent on the same strategies that proved useless in sustaining the USSR. While the system still has the potential to limp along, its survival tactics render the it progressively more dysfunctional. Among the circumstances weighing against the system’s survival are…
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
The ruling BJP has long sought to sideline Indian Muslims. But even the opposition is opting to exclude them politically. Muslims’ chances at greater representation remain dim.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
The year 2013 featured unprecedented strides for gay rights in some parts of the world, particularly in Western Europe and the Americas, but also startling setbacks elsewhere, as in Russia and some countries in Africa.
Afghanistan taught us that a firehose of unaccountable aid can destroy a country’s democratic future. In Ukraine, we are making the same mistake all over again.
January 2002, Volume 13, Issue 1
Reports on elections in Argentina, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, The Gambia, Honduras, Mauritania, Nicaragua, Poland, Sri Lanka, and Taiwan.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
For more than two decades, President Yoweri Museveni has been building an authoritarian regime that answers closely to his personal will.
Summer 1991, Volume 2, Issue 3
Reports on elections in Albania, Benin, India, Nepal, Suriname, the USSR, and Western Samoa.
April 1994, Volume 5, Issue 2
Reports on elections in Antigua, Costa Rica, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, Serbia.