3154 Results
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Read the full essay here. The regime in Moscow mixes key features of a capitalist economy with a political system wherein power is monopolized by a close-knit professional and age cohort whose members often have a background in the secret police. Instead of seeking to base its legitimacy on broad-based, transpersonal institutions with character and…
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
For the past few decades, scholars have been focusing on the causes of democratization. It is now time to devote systematic attention to analyzing the costs and benefits that democracy brings.
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Levels of regime strength and links to the West help to explain authoritarian breakdown, but the ruler’s popularity also matters.
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.
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
Ukraine gained independence in 1991, but its people gained their freedom only in 2004 with the Orange Revolution—an uprising of the human spirit in which Ukrainians joined together to gain a voice in their future.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
Five years after the close of a horrifying civil war, Sierra Leone held the freest elections in its history. Voters turned out the party that had overseen the war's end, blaming it for having mishandled governance since then.
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
This article assesses the historical record and current practice to argue that a form of autonomy that is appropriately grounded in China’s Constitution and international human rights practice may offer a path out of the current dispute.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
Countries taking the initial steps from dictatorship toward electoral politics are especially prone to civil and international war. Yet states endowed with coherent institutions—such as a functioning bureaucracy and the elements needed to construct a sound legal system—have often been able to democratize peacefully and successfully. Consequently, whenever possible, efforts to promote democracy should try…
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
Democracy is facing hard times in the region, but the shape of the problems varies according to the differing informal legacies of communism in individual countries.
April 2007, Volume 18, Issue 2
Closely fought elections are often fraught with conflict, splitting societies asunder. How can democracy survive such rough and close contests?
April 2007, Volume 18, Issue 2
Although the overall state of democracy in the world differed little from that in 2005, a series of worrisome trends seem to be contributing to a stagnation of freedom.
January 2007, Volume 18, Issue 1
The 1997 financial crisis undermined the argument for a putative “Asian-style democracy” that prioritized economic development over political liberalization. Yet recent electoral and other reforms have set the stage for the emergence of a genuine “Asian model” of democracy.
October 2006, Volume 17, Issue 4
Middle Eastern realities and scholarship on democratic transitions both suggest that formally negotiated deals between authoritarian rulers and liberal opposition forces are unlikely to provide the path to change in the Arab world.
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
A wide variety of electoral systems is used around the world, but in recent years the trend has been toward systems based upon greater proportionality.
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
For decades, Japan and Taiwan elected their legislatures using the single nontransferable vote. Recently, however, both countries adopted new electoral systems. What explains this trend?
January 2006, Volume 17, Issue 1
Strategies based on transition pacts that reduce rulers' risks and cushion their retreat from total power may be the most promising route to democracy in the Arab world.
January 2006, Volume 17, Issue 1
After a long and bloody civil conflict, Burundi has established a new democratic regime. Does its tenuous but hopeful example hold lessons that might help its troubled neighbors?
July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3
The regime type known as semipresidentialism became a popular choice during the "third wave" of democratization. But some variations of this constitutional arrangement are more conducive to democracy than others
July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3
At the end of the Cold War, semipresidentialism became the modal constitution of the postcommunist world. In Russia and other post-Soviet states, however, this system of government has impeded consolidation.
April 2004, Volume 15, Issue 2
Long wary of the modern state as such, the Roman Catholic church became a champion of democratic government around the time of Vatican II, and helped to set off the Thrird Wave of democratization.
