3081 Results
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
The military junta that seized power in 2014 finally organized an election in 2019, but with the goal of preventing rather than facilitating a return to civilian rule.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
“New media” may generate a lot of buzz, but authoritarian regimes are proving disturbingly adept both at counteracting them and at using more traditional media to help themselves hang on to power.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Analysis that subtly defines away problems is not going to help democracies survive the threats they now face. The fear is warranted.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Propaganda is autocrats’ weapon of first resort, allowing them to rely on persuasion rather than violence to achieve their ends. But citizens have grown savvy, so autocrats are taking a new tack: spreading their messages via private news outlets indirectly controlled by regime proxies.
October 2025, Volume 36, Issue 4
Although an island of stability and democracy in a region often short of both, Costa Ricans’ faith in government is declining as the challenge of financing its costly welfare state grows. This democratic stalwart is no longer immune to the appeal of populism.
The Journal of Democracy is the world’s leading publication on the theory and practice of democracy. Since its founding in 1990, the Journal has engaged leading scholars, writers, and activists in critical discussions about the prospects and perils for democracy across the globe. The Journal of Democracy is housed within the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)…
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
To a degree that is still not widely appreciated, the BJP has replaced Congress as India’s party of welfarism. The carefully crafted political persona of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “leader of the poor” has been crucial to this shift.
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
Vladimir Putin aspires to be a classic authoritarian modernizer, but in today's globalized world Russia faces challenges that bureaucratic centralization and a traditional strong hand cannot meet.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
Contra Ben Margulies, one can clearly mark the boundaries that separate antidemocrats from democrats (nativists included), and nativists from populists.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
Liberty flourished in Hong Kong, but the Chinese Communist Party has crushed it. Beijing wants “capitalism without freedom” in the city, but can there be one without the other?
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
The triumph of far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s October 2018 presidential election was made possible by a series of economic, social, and political crises that have shaken Brazilian democracy.
Voters across the world see democracy as unresponsive, out of touch, inept, and even corrupt. Something needs to change, but no one can agree on what. What democracy needs, Joel Day argues in a new Journal of Democracy online exclusive, is a single bold and effective reform plan.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
President Alvaro Uribe’s time in office was marked by disturbing trends that included a spike in extrajudicial killings and an attempt to overthrow term limits, but the country’s institutions of horizontal accountability proved remarkably resilient.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
After two decades of elections that produced a number of alternations in power, an impasse over “caretaker government” crippled the 2014 contest and has made single-party rule all too real a prospect.
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
Wracked by postelection violence in 2007 and 2008, Kenya embarked upon a course of constitutional change that culminated in an August 2010 referendum. How was the new basic law framed and passed, and what will it mean for democracy in this key East African country?
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
In April 2008, disputed election results in the tiny state of Moldova sparked violent protests and a harsh response from state authorities.
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
The military regime opened up the media sector to more competition and private broadcasters in 2002, and the ramifications turned out to be vast.
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
President Vladimir Putin's lopsided election victory was assisted by an unlevel electoral playing field, but elections still matter in Russia and they will make more difficult the consolidation of authoritarianism.
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
Since Tanzania’s 2015 elections, rising repression and opposition protest have displaced an older dynamic of comparatively restrained and unchallenged dominance by the ruling party.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
Vietnam and its smaller neighbors Laos and Cambodia remain bastions of illiberalism and one-party rule despite rapid economic growth and falling poverty. What will it take to reform their elitist political cultures and curtail the use of public office for private ends?
