3230 Results
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
Recent survey research suggests that most voters disapprove of antidemocratic acts by elected leaders. Yet there are critical exceptions when a significant minority of voters are sympathetic to or even supportive of violations of democratic laws and norms.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
Democracies rarely begin with a blank slate. Relics of authoritarian rule typically persist after democratic transitions, and these vestiges are not always harmful to people’s newfound freedom.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The Editors’ introduction to “Mainstream Parties in Crisis.”
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Around the world, polarizing political strategies are pushing societies into a vicious cycle of zero-sum politics and eroding democratic norms. If democracies are to escape this trap, wise choices and innovation by prodemocratic politicians will be needed.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Political polarization is not always bad for democracy. What is more, a tendency of major parties to converge into some kind of “grand coalition of the center” poses serious risks for a democratic system.
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.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Like the “transition paradigm” before it, the concept of democratic backsliding threatens to flatten our perceptions of complex political realities. Examples from East-Central Europe illustrate the ambiguous dynamics at play in many troubled democracies.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The retirement of the country’s longest-serving prime minister leaves in place a “continuity administration,” and with it some troubling questions about whether liberal democracy’s “soft guardrails” are being eroded.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The return to power, via elections, of the Rajapaksa family signals the consolidation of a Sinhalese Buddhist ethnocracy. But there are reasons to hope it will not take a turn toward full despotism.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The alleged tradeoff between economic development and political democracy-building is more fiction than fact. Indeed, progress toward fuller democratic governance can in fact enhance development.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
In a country where opposition forces were long marginalized and dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka faced little serious threat to his rule, Belarus’s 2020 antirevolutionary protest movement has changed the game.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
Universities, publishers, and other knowledge-sector institutions face increasingly sophisticated authoritarian efforts to quash critics and subvert independent inquiry.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
The People’s Republic of China uses massive amounts of propaganda to influence how it is perceived beyond its borders. “Big data” reveal how that image is carefully and deliberately shaped for different audiences in different places.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
The Editors’ introduction to “Covid vs. Democracy.”
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
India’s covid-19 response has accelerated the country’s slide toward competitive authoritarian rule by centralizing decision making, undermining federalism, and providing new pretexts for stifling dissent.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
South Africa’s government sought to heed expert advice with its covid lockdown, yet shortcomings in state capacity fatally undermined both the virus response and efforts to address its devastating economic toll.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
When asked by presidents to intervene domestically for crime-fighting or civil-order purposes, Latin American militaries face a number of risks and have a degree of freedom to tailor their responses accordingly.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
Hyperlocalized U.S. policing both upholds and corrodes democratic principles. Although some aspects of Europe’s model are nonstarters in the United States, Americans crave centralized enforcement of rules against abusive policing.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
For all the concern over authoritarianism’s advance, the competence of governance may be what determines the next chapter in the struggle between democracy and dictatorship.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
The Islamic Republic is in a volatile, even prerevolutionary situation, hammered by foreign opposition and sanctions from the outside, and the disillusionment and discontent of its own people from within. But a catalyst needs to appear.
