January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
The Puzzle of Panamanian Exceptionalism
Despite a turbulent history and rampant corruption, Panama has emerged as one of Latin America’s richest and most stable democracies. How can this be?
2982 Results
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
Despite a turbulent history and rampant corruption, Panama has emerged as one of Latin America’s richest and most stable democracies. How can this be?
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Can democracy prosper when democratic countries are in geopolitical retreat? History cautions against the notion that democracy will inevitably prevail.
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. Online activism is an integral part of the broader landscape of citizen activism in contemporary China. It assumes a variety of forms, from cultural and social activism to cyber-nationalism and online petitions and protests. Technological development and social transformation provide the basic structural conditions. A fledgling civil society of online…
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
Data from the latest wave of the Afrobarometer survey show that Africans’ demand for liberal democracy remains high. The problem lies in lagging supply.
Journal of Democracy Web Exchange – Foa and Mounk reply–2_0 Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk–The End of the Consolidation Paradigm: A Response to Our Critics
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
The phenomenon of the “interrupted presidency” remains a key source of democratic instability in Latin America, as was demonstrated once again by the 2012 impeachment of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo.
July 2001, Volume 12, Issue 3
A review of Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries by Arend Lijphart and Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Views, by G. Bingham Powell, Jr.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
The crisis of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has sparked a surge of increased civic engagement by young people in the United States, but there is also evidence of a growing divide along class lines.
April 2002, Volume 13, Issue 2
Although Islamist terror groups invoke a host of religious references, the real source of their ideas is not the Koran but rather Leninism, fascism, and other strains of twentieth-century thought that exalt totalitarian violence.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
The Assad regime has been adapting to the new challenges posed by mass uprisings through a process of “authoritarian learning,” and at least some of its methods are being applied elsewhere in the region. Watch an interview with the author.
January 2004, Volume 15, Issue 1
A review of Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 by Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul; Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State by David Satter; and Putin's Russia by Lilia Shevtsova.
October 2001, Volume 12, Issue 4
The 15 states of the former Soviet fall into three broad categories, largely defined by fault lines of history and culture.
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.
July 2001, Volume 12, Issue 3
The elections of 2000 reflected the profound disillusionment of the Romanian electorate with the performance of the centrist government of the past four years, rather than a turn away from democracy itself.
October 2000, Volume 11, Issue 4
Recent studies of democracy in Latin America overlook the role of civil society as an agent of accountability.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
In the twenty years since 1989, acute excitement over democratic transition and consolidation gave way to symptoms of “democracy fatigue” and elite exhaustion; successful economic transition away from state socialism fell victim to a crisis of the free-market model; and the EU’s transformative power has reached its geopolitical limits. The nations of Central and Eastern…
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Western pressure can be decisive, but it is not always easy to forecast when and how it will be applied.
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
Iraq’s three elections in 2005 highlighted the role—but also the limits—of electoral-system design in managing potentially polarizing divisions.
January 2003, Volume 14, Issue 1
The regime has only institutionalized itself partially and temporarily; institutional norms are currently eroding, and this is likely to continue.
July 2000, Volume 11, Issue 3
Democracy is spreading everywhere except in the Arab world. Arab elections are an immense masquerade. Corrupt dictatorships seek to stifle freedom of thought and to control the flow of information.