April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
Liberalism as Fortress and Prison
The power of liberalism—though limited and never revered—enables it to serve as refuge while taming the demons of liberal society.
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April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
The power of liberalism—though limited and never revered—enables it to serve as refuge while taming the demons of liberal society.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
A Europe-wide study shows that those who back the incumbent are more likely to oppose democratic norms. The effect is strongest among those who favor right-wing populists.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
Authoritarian propaganda and manipulation are leading democratic publics to see foreign autocracies as more powerful than they actually are.
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.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
The encrypted messaging service WhatsApp has become an increasingly important tool for “fake news” in Nigeria, while weakening government control of information and broadening opportunities for political participation.
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
Data from the latest wave of the Afrobarometer survey show that Africans’ demand for liberal democracy remains high. The problem lies in lagging supply.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
In the world’s largest democracy, liberalism is in retreat, as evidenced by a pattern of assaults on minorities, press freedom, and the independence of key cultural and intellectual institutions.
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 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
Nonpartisan election monitoring has helped to foster democratization over the last thirty years, but now dictators are trying to sabotage it, often by spreading lies and confusion.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
As China’s power grows, will it seek to remake the world in its authoritarian image? For now, China shows no such missionary impulse, but the ways in which it pursues its interests can still threaten the fate of democracy.
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.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
After a decade of upheavals, Nepal elected in November 2013 its Second Constituent Assembly, but it is still unclear whether elites will accept reforms that empower wider sections of society.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
An opposition victory in this Himalayan kingdom’s second elections in 2013 showed that surprises are possible even in a democratic transition that has been guided from above by the monarchy.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
A year after the election that ended the rule of president Mikheil Saakashvili’s National Movement, Georgia has seen further remarkable developments that raise key questions for struggling postcommunist democracies and, indeed, democracies everywhere.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
Must every state be a nation and every nation a state? Or should we look instead to the example of countries such as India, where one state holds together a congeries of “national” groups and cultures in a single and wisely conceived federal republic?
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Read the full essay here. Twenty years ago, there was a more thoroughgoing political pluralism in Russia than there is today. In some respects, the forms of democracy-including party consolidation-have been enhanced, but they have been so manipulated as to deprive them of substance. Either “electoral authoritarianism” of “multiparty authoritarianism” (Juan Linz’s terms) may reasonably…
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization played a key role in safeguarding Western democracy during the Cold War. With that conflict over, NATO must continually adapt and evolve in a fast-changing world.
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
In February 2008, Kosovo broke away from Serbia and declared its independence. But to what extent is it making progress toward its goals of sovereignty and democracy?
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
The military regime opened up the media sector to more competition and private broadcasters in 2002, and the ramifications turned out to be vast.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
Since the 1990s, Moroccan civil society groups have been proliferating, and they are increasingly influential in addressing society-wide matters including the rights of women, ethnic minorities, and the poor.