July 2002, Volume 13, Issue 3
Nicaragua Votes: The Elections of 2001
The November elections were peaceful and competitive. For the third straight time, voters chose a conservative who embraced democratic liberties.
3016 Results
July 2002, Volume 13, Issue 3
The November elections were peaceful and competitive. For the third straight time, voters chose a conservative who embraced democratic liberties.
April 2002, Volume 13, Issue 2
Last year, Bulgarians elected their newly returned former king as prime minister and then, in a shocking upset, ousted their incumbent president. What do these results portend for the future of Bulgarian democracy?
July 2001, Volume 12, Issue 3
The 1990s began with an unprecedented democratic opening in Francophone Africa. While a number of countries have suffered setbacks and even reversals, others continue to make progress, and popular aspirations for democracy remain strong.
The small South American country has become a strategic foothold for authoritarian powers. Its election is hugely important for the future of democracy across the region.
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
Fifteen years after the wave of democratization crested in Africa, the region still grapples with an economic malaise that is disappointing popular expectations and undermining the legitimacy of electoral regimes.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Despite a brutal thirteen-year civil war, Syrians are not building from scratch. In fact, Syria has a long and rich history of state-building to guide them.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
Takis Pappas argues that certain nativist parties of the populist right should be counted as liberal-democratic. This is a mistake; these parties do not truly merit that name.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
No one should underrate the will and skill that the ruling Chinese Communist Party will put into keeping its grip on power.
The world increasingly appears afflicted by “us-them” divides that breed anger, resentment, and violence. But across the globe small local groups are mounting a thoughtful resistance against polarization and hate.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Faced with the rise of extreme and illiberal political players, mainstream parties have employed strategies of banning, marginalization, and cooptation. Yet to truly heal the underlying democratic ailment, establishment parties will need to look inward.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
It was the impact of Tiananmen that made the democracy movement in Hong Kong a mass phenomenon. Today, the democratic cause in Hong Kong remains linked to the democratic cause in China as a whole.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
The opposition thought they had Turkey’s autocratic president on the ropes. But Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s brand of authoritarian populism triumphed. A more divisive and repressive chapter will almost surely follow.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
Key democratic norms remained under threat in 2018, but there were also unexpected breakthroughs in Armenia, Malaysia, and Ethiopia.
April 2001, Volume 12, Issue 2
The sudden and surprising downfall of President Alberto Fujimori has opened the way for a return to democracy in Peru, but the country’s new leaders will face major challenges in the coming years.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
Despite impressive achievements in socioeconomic development, Bangladesh has struggled with establishing democracy and is now effectively under one-party rule.
January 2004, Volume 15, Issue 1
As it prepares to go from 15 to 25 member states, the EU has improved the prospects for democracy in the East, but nothing about enlargement promises to resolve the vexing issue of democracy within the EU structure itself.
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 2003, Volume 14, Issue 4
The famed former dissident reflects on the lessons learned from Poland’s transformation, the anxieties that continue to beset his country, and the hopes and fears that attend its return to Europe.
The 2022 World Cup has just kicked off in Qatar. Long before the first match, the small Arab monarchy made a bet that investing billions in the “beautiful game” might do wonders for their reputation, too.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
The global democratic decline of the last two decades is rarely discussed in the same breath with the 2003 decision by the United States and Britain to invade Iraq. But the roots of our present disorder can be traced to that disastrous and foolhardy war of choice.