3198 Results
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
Charges that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party threaten liberal-democratic safeguards are best understood as the overheated reaction of an insular elite that is still struggling to come to terms with its democratic displacement from power.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Read the full essay here. The Russian system of personalized power is growing ever more dependent on the same strategies that proved useless in sustaining the USSR. While the system still has the potential to limp along, its survival tactics render the it progressively more dysfunctional. Among the circumstances weighing against the system’s survival are…
April 2017, Volume 28, Issue 2
Since the 1970s, the U.S. presidential-nomination system has become more democratic, making primary elections crucial, reducing the influence of political parties, and making it easier for outsiders to win.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Delegative presidencies have not been a problem in post-Pinochet Chile, but the rise of mass protest movements suggests that the country’s new democracy has gone too far in the direction of demobilizing society.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
The system of personalized power that has long ruled Russia now faces a new crisis, and it is trying to avert decay through the reassertion of empire.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
Given Southeast Asia’s relatively high level of socioeconomic development, we might expect it to be a showcase of democracy. Yet it is not. To grasp why, one must look to deeper factors of history and geography.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
The hardest work of the transition—negotiating political pacts—has not yet begun. Burma’s democrats must help to forge a system of mutual security that can allow democratization to proceed.
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
Strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s suspiciously lopsided 2010 electoral victory—and subsequent crackdown on dissent—may seem like a repeat of the events of 2006, but much has changed in the interval, and his regime is much more precarious today.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
A tribute to Václav Havel, Czech playwright and former dissident, who became not only president but the symbol of the “velvet revolutions.”
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
Although the overall state of freedom in the world has clearly improved over the last two decades, more recent trends are worrisome. In 2009, declines in freedom outnumbered gains for the fourth consecutive year.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
The central problems now blocking democracy in Georgia and other parts of the former USSR are: 1) the use of power in order to gain wealth; 2) the absence of the rule of law; and 3) the passivity of citizens.
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
Latin American social policy has at times worked backwards, widening rather than narrowing economic and social inequalities. But new conditional cash-transfer programs seem to be producing positive outcomes.
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
Indian voters pulled off a surprise by allowing the Congress party to retain power at the head of a more coherent coalition that is far less dependent on a congeries of small regional parties.
January 2007, Volume 18, Issue 1
Mexico’s system of electoral governance and dispute settlement worked reasonably well, yet it created too much noise and too many needless invitations to distrust. The failures observed were less those of institutions than of actors. The loser reacted deplorably, but none of those involved acted in a manner beyond reproach.
July 2025, Volume 36, Issue 3
The most challenging type of diversity for democracy is religious diversity. This also helps explain why modern democracy first took root in Western Europe: Religiously homogenous populations went hand in hand with the early formation of parliaments.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
Reports on elections in Afghanistan, Armenia, Bahrain, Bhutan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Fiji, Gabon, Georgia, Latvia, Madagascar, Maldives, São Tomé and Príncipe, Swaziland, and Togo.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
Communism is gone, but while it was alive and in power it bred profound moral pathologies that still haunt the region.
April 2013, Volume 24, Issue 2
Latin America’s much-discussed political “left turn” has taken two very different forms. Why has the region’s commodities boom led some left-turn states to move toward “plebiscitarian superpresidentialism,” while others have resisted this temptation?
January 2003, Volume 14, Issue 1
October 2002 brought the latest in a series of “critical” elections that have helped to point the way to an independent, more democratic future.
January 1995, Volume 6, Issue 1
Reports on elections in Botswana, Brazil, Macedonia, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, São Tomé and Príncipe, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, Uruguay.
