July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
Aspirations and Realities in Africa: The DRC’s Electoral Sideshow
Stymied in his effort to secure a third term, President Joseph Kabila manipulated the electoral process in order to secure a compliant successor.
1951 Results
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
Stymied in his effort to secure a third term, President Joseph Kabila manipulated the electoral process in order to secure a compliant successor.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
The CCP’s strategies for delivering economic and social benefits without democracy are proving deeply flawed. A particular threat to China’s stability is posed by the country’s restless single males.
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.
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.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
In 2017, the state of political rights and civil liberties around the world sunk to its lowest point in more than a decade. While the democratic powers grappled with their own internal problems, leading autocrats expanded their global efforts to undermine democratic institutions.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
“Democratic deconsolidation” on the level of attitudes and beliefs is real, and behind it lies a disturbing rise in tolerance for antisocial behavior, especially among the young.
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…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. The institutionalized recognition of diversity within India’s federal system has been crucial for democratic consolidation. Substantial decentralization since the 1990s has made state governments central actors in shaping economic activity and national-election outcomes. However, since his rise to national office in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has projected an image…
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.
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Peru’s economic boom is over and newly elected president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski faces a Congress dominated by opposition parties, putting him in a more precarious position than his predecessors.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
The evidence presented by Foa and Mounk is troubling, but it does not mean that democracy is now in long-term decline.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Over the last decade or so, Bolivia has made great progress at wider political and social inclusion, but at some cost to civil liberties and horizontal accountability.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Delegative presidencies have not been a problem in post-Pinochet Chile, but the rise of mass protest movements suggests that the country’s new democracy has gone too far in the direction of demobilizing society.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
A change in the shape of partisan competition, and the traditional parties’ ability to adapt to it, has led to the decline of once-pervasive clientelism.
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth sustains the antidemocratic policies that a nervous royal regime uses to defend against the threats and problems that confront it.
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
Burma’s troubled transition is imperiled by the reluctance of the military to loosen its grip. What lessons can the Burmese learn from other East Asian countries that have emerged from military rule?
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
The failure to establish modern, well-governed states has been the Achilles heel of recent democratic transitions, as democratization without state modernization can actually lower the quality of governance.
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
Indonesia’s 2014 legislative elections went smoothly. Yet the “money politics” that featured so heavily in these contests suggests a grave need to reform the country’s electoral system.
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
Levitsky and Way’s account of linkage and leverage leaves out the key role of “gatekeeper” elites.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
The events surrounding the EuroMaidan cannot be understood apart from the preceding five years of increasingly corrupt and authoritarian rule.