January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
The 2024 election led to a dramatic changing of the guard, ushering in new political leaders and ousting dynastic elites. Can a new president correct the corruption and misgovernance of the past?
Just a month after its introduction, ChatGPT, the generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, hit 100-million monthly users, making it the fastest-growing application in history. For context, it took the video-streaming service Netflix, now a household name, three-and-a-half years to reach one-million monthly users. But unlike Netflix, the meteoric rise of ChatGPT and its potential for…
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
President Kais Saied’s power grab has crushed Tunisian democracy, returning the country to the old playbook of Arab dictators past and present.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
Xi reads Tiananmen as a cautionary tale, and he has sought to centralize power and reverse years of ideological atrophy. By controlling the past, he is trying to determine how the Chinese will view their present and future.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
The problem for democracy today is not capitalism; it is a decline in public honesty and civility. But there is an opportunity to revive our sense of national community, if we seize it.
January 2000, Volume 11, Issue 1
Excerpts from: a statement by Cuban dissidents entitled “All United”; a letter by former dissidents of the Soviet bloc to the so-called “Group of Four” critics of the Castro regime in Cuba; an address delivered by the Commonwealth’s outgoing secretary-general Chief Emeka Anayaoku; the “Seoul Statement” on human rights in North Korea; Abdurrahman Wahid’s speech…
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
Reports on elections in Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Dominica, Honduras, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, and Ukraine.
April 2008, Volume 19, Issue 2
Reports on elections in Armenia, Barbados, Belize, Bhutan, Croatia, Djibouti, Georgia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, Serbia, Taiwan, and Thailand.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
There have been numerous waves of protest against the country’s corrupt theocracy. This time is different. It is a movement to reclaim life. Whatever happens, there is no going back.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
In February 2014, Salvadorans narrowly elected as president a former FMLN guerrilla commander, but he will have to deal with a dire economy and horrific levels of crime.
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. This article makes a case of the basic distinction between Islam and Islamism and presents three central arguments: 1. through religious reforms and a rethinking of the Islamic doctrine, the cultural system of Islam can be put in harmony with democracy, 2. this (first) argument does not apply to Islamism…
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
Reports on elections in Argentina, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Chile, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Guinea, Honduras, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritania, Nepal, Rwanda, Swaziland, and Tajikistan.
April 1992, Volume 3, Issue 2
Excerpts from: speeches delivered at the signing of the El Salvador peace agreement; an Agreement on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict; Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s address to the UN Security Council.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
Turkey’s ruling party has developed a new tool: When its local candidates lose, it dismisses them and appoints its own choice under a guise that maintains the veneer of democracy. It is an autocratic innovation that may soon spread.
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Reports on elections in Argentina, Bahrain, Bulgaria, Cameroon, The Gambia, Guatemala, Guyana, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Liberia, Morocco, Nicaragua, Oman, Poland, Russia, Tunisia, Zambia.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Volodymyr Zelensky is far more than a brave wartime leader. He began changing the tenor and direction of Ukrainian politics long before the people made him their president.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
Despite high hopes for progress toward democracy, the military’s power remains stubbornly entrenched, while Aung San Suu Kyi seems to lack the skills to run the government effectively.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
For the second straight time, voters rejected a presidential candidate with ties to undemocratic Islamist forces, but victorious incumbent Joko Widodo felt compelled to tone down his support for liberalism.
July 2025, Volume 36, Issue 3
Capitalism is often blamed for democracy’s ills. But much of the blame is misplaced. It is not business capture of the state but rather state capture of business that poses the greatest danger to democracy.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Under Narendra Modi, India is maintaining the trappings of democracy while it increasingly harasses the opposition, attacks minorities, and stifles dissent. It can still reverse course, but the damage is mounting.
