
Maduro Can Only Rule Through Fear and Terror
The Venezuelan strongman lost the election and everyone knows it. He has nothing left to offer but violence and repression. It will be his undoing.
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The Venezuelan strongman lost the election and everyone knows it. He has nothing left to offer but violence and repression. It will be his undoing.
The struggle between the Marcos and Duterte clans isn’t just a battle between two houses. It is becoming a proxy fight between the United States and China for the future of the Indo-Pacific.
The CCP is engaged in a sprawling campaign to undermine democracy. Governments too often can be lumbering or weak in response. Look to civil society for the creativity and skill to keep the CCP on its heels.
For years, the Venezuelan opposition has fought hard against a corrupt regime — and come up short. But this time, with four key ingredients in place, we are on the cusp of a historic victory.
The country’s military brass has a larger role governing Mexico than at any time in the past eighty years. It’s creating a dangerous dependency that won’t be easy to break. Can the generals be reined in?
Almost no one thought that an underdog political reformer could defeat Guatemala’s corrupt political machine, but Bernardo Arévalo did just that. Now comes the hard part.
The Venezuelan dictator defied sanctions, international isolation, and massive protests. He appears to have a firmer footing than he’s had in years. Now what?
El presidente saliente del país está determinado a arrasar con el sistema judicial mexicano. Su ataque al Estado de Derecho es aún más preocupante de lo que se piensa.
The country’s outgoing president is determined to bulldoze Mexico’s judicial system. His attack on the rule of law is even worse than most people realize.
A few years ago Anura Kumara Dissanayake led a struggling political party with bleak prospects. Now he is Sri Lanka’s newly elected president. The hardest work may still lie ahead.
The country’s recent elections revealed deep fissures in Iranian society and there is already growing disillusionment with the new president. With mounting economic worries, Iran is in a volatile state.
Founded on 1 October 1949, the People’s Republic of China has entered a new age, as Xi centralizes power in his own hands and abandons the ideological openness of the reform era. Carl Minzner explains why China is entering a dangerous new chapter.
The 2024 International Day of Democracy is spotlighting the potential of artificial intelligence to improve governance while also recognizing the risks it poses. Over the last year, the Journal of Democracy has published some of the world’s leading AI experts on the promise and peril it presents for democracy.
Thousands of supporters of the Pakistan Movement for Justice (PTI) took to Islamabad’s streets this week to demand the release of former prime minister Imran Khan. A crisis of governability is coming and might finally be here.
Hungary’s prime minister has been jet-setting across the globe to hobnob with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Donald Trump, while doing his best to provoke European leaders at home. But Orbán’s grandstanding, argues Hungarian writer Sándor Ésik in a new Journal of Democracy online exclusive, is really just an attempt to mask his growing political weaknesses.
Venezuela’s opposition defeated Nicolás Maduro in the country’s July presidential election, but the Venezuelan strongman refuses to relinquish power. The Journal of Democracy essays below, free for a limited time, chronicle Venezuela’s struggle against Maduro’s authoritarianism — and what makes this election different.
Authoritarians weaponize LGBT+ rights to undermine pluralism and cement their rule. Can democracy still protect and advance these rights? Read about how LGBT+ rights have been both expanded and resisted around the world, and offer ideas for how democracies can defend them.
This year of elections, just over halfway through, has been nothing short of dramatic, with shocks, upsets, protests, and political violence — most notably, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last weekend. Democracy is being tested as increasingly polarized voters head to the polls. Will it succumb to division and distrust, or will it withstand its present trials?
The attack on Donald Trump is one of the worst instances of political violence in recent years. Such violence is the result of a moment in which people begin to see their political opponents as enemies instead of citizens of a different political stripe.
In the 1991 classic, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Samuel P. Huntington offered a new way of understanding democracy’s global trajectory. Amid rising global populism and increasingly aggressive authoritarian leaders, has Huntington’s framework outlived its usefulness?