January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
How to Un-Rig an Election
A review of How to Rig an Election by Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas.
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July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
Authoritarianism Goes Global: Countering Democratic Norms
Favored by global conditions that lean their way, authoritarians have been busy over the last decade coming up with new and inventive ways to thwart the global advance of democracy and human rights.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
The Rise of Kleptocracy: Laundering Cash, Whitewashing Reputations
To safeguard their ill-gotten gains, kleptocrats rely on a web of transnational relationships and the complicity of Western fixers.
October 2018, Volume 29, Issue 4
Understanding Authoritarian Regionalism
Taking advantage of broad global respect for regionalism, authoritarian regimes are using their own regional organizations to bolster fellow autocracies. These groupings offer a mechanism for lending legitimacy, redistributing resources, and insulating members from democratic influences.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
Transition Leaders Speak
A review of Democratic Transitions: Conversations with World Leaders, edited by Sergio Bitar and Abraham F. Lowenthal.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Democratic Parliamentary Monarchies
How do democracies emerge from monarchies? In an essay that eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz was working on when he passed away in October 2013, he and his coauthors draw lessons from the European experience about whether and how Arab monarchies might aid or resist democratic development.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
Tunisia’s Transition and the Twin Tolerations
Of all the “Arab Spring” countries, so far only Tunisia has managed to make a transition to democracy. Tunisians now have a chance to show the world a new example of how religion, society, and the state can relate to one another under democratic conditions.
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
Iran in Ferment: The Green Wave
Iran’s massive protest movement against June’s electoral coup is now moving into a new phase. What are its prospects?
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
The Quest for Good Governance: Learning from Virtuous Circles
Are the “virtuous circles” crucial to good governance always the product of long-term developments under unique historical circumstances, or can they be started or accelerated by wise policies?
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
The Evolution of Political Order
A review of Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
Controlling Corruption Through Collective Action
Political competition by itself does not curb corruption. Societies must also have a combination of values, social capital, civil society, and civic culture in order to impose effective normative constraints on corruption.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
Corruption: Diagnosis and Treatment
Successfully fighting corruption in developing and postcommunist countries requires far more than instituting best practices from advanced democracies. Corruption first must be properly diagnosed; in some cases it can be effectively treated only by attacking the distribution of power itself.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
How to Compete in Unfair Elections
Opposition movements often boycott rigged polls rather than risk legitimizing an autocrat. It is usually a mistake. Here is the playbook for how one opposition seized the advantage.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
Fighting Terrorism: The Democracy Advantage
Despite worries that terror groups can turn open societies’ very openness against them, the numbers reveal that liberal democracies enjoy significant advantages in resisting the threat of terrorism.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
The Maidan and Beyond: Oligarchs, Corruption, and European Integration
Controlling corruption is a huge challenge for Ukraine, especially in the natural-gas industry. The steps needed are well understood, if only the political will to take them can be summoned.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
The Criminal Subversion of Mexican Democracy
In recent years, Mexico has stumbled into an encounter with collective violence, this time in the form of the “drug war.” Among its many harms is the damage it is doing to Mexican democracy.
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Reading Russia: The Siloviki in Charge
Since Vladimir Putin’s rise to power at the end of the 1990s, siloviki—the people who work for, or used to work for, Russia’s “ministries of force” have spread to posts throughout all the branches of power in Russia.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
China at the Tipping Point? Foreseeing the Unforeseeable
The resilience of the Chinese authoritarian regime is approaching its limits. A breakthrough moment could be triggered by several kinds of events.
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
China Since Tiananmen: Authoritarian Impermanence
Like all contemporary nondemocratic systems, the Chinese system suffers from weak legitimacy at the level of regime type. The most likely form of transition for China remains the model of Tiananmen, when three elements came together: a robust plurality of disaffected citizens, a catalytic event, and a split in the leadership. Had China chosen the…
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
Authoritarianism Goes Global (II): The Leninist Roots of Civil Society Repression
East European communists inherited the Bolshevik obsession with repressing any genuinely independent civil society groups.