January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Democracy’s Inevitable Elites
Robert Michels’s classic work on the “iron law of oligarchy” can help us to understand why there is so much dissatisfaction with representative democracy.
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July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008)
A tribute in remembrance of Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008).
A Dangerous Façade
Marine Le Pen has remade her image to obscure her far-right populism. There is a real risk French voters won’t see through it. April 2022 By Agneska Bloch On April 24, French voters will go to the polls in a rematch of the 2017 presidential election: now President Emmanuel Macron versus far-right populist Marine Le…
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
Authoritarianism Goes Global: Election Monitoring vs. Disinformation
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.
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
Uganda: Museveni’s Triumph and Weakness
Despite signs of a cautious willingness to allow more political competition, the regime of newly reelected president Yoweri Museveni fell back on familiar habits of brutal repression when public unrest followed a sudden spike in the cost of living.
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
A New Look at Ethnicity and Democratization
Conventional scholarly wisdom holds that ethnic diversity within a given society generally dims democracy’s prospects. Careful reflection on the experience of many post-Soviet states, however, suggests that this need not be so.
January 2002, Volume 13, Issue 1
The End of the Transition Paradigm
Must countries where authoritarian regimes have fallen therefore be “in transition” to democracy? Many democracy promoters seem to think so. Yet trends on the ground in country after country are raising doubts about whether it is true or useful to think of democracy’s prospects in this way.
October 2005, Volume 16, Issue 4
Iran’s Peculiar Election: The Struggle Against Sultanism
Given the unaccountable authority of the supreme leader, the Islamic Republic should be classified as a sultanistic regime. In such regimes, democratic change is more likely to come from nonviolent resistance than from internal reform.
January 2004, Volume 15, Issue 1
Putin’s Deep Freeze
A review of Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 by Timothy J. Colton and Michael McFaul; Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State by David Satter; and Putin's Russia by Lilia Shevtsova.
October 2002, Volume 13, Issue 4
Post-Election Blues in Ukraine
In March 2002, three-fifths of Ukraine’s voters chose a party or coalition opposed to the overbearing presidential apparatus of Leonid Kuchma, but the antipresidential forces found themselves frozen out in the new parliament.
April 2002, Volume 13, Issue 2
Elections Without Democracy: Africa’s Range of Regimes
Today, Africa south of the Sahara has a relatively small number of both democracies and full-blown dictatorships,along with a large number of hard-to-define regimes that fit neither category.
April 2002, Volume 13, Issue 2
Electoral Systems for Divided Societies
Political scientists have long theorized that the use of “preferential” election systems can help promote successful conflict management in divided societies. As it turns out, evidence from five real-world cases supports this conclusion.
July 2001, Volume 12, Issue 3
Romania’s Politics of Dejection
The elections of 2000 reflected the profound disillusionment of the Romanian electorate with the performance of the centrist government of the past four years, rather than a turn away from democracy itself.
October 2000, Volume 11, Issue 4
Mexico’s Victory: The Democratic Revelation
Vicente Fox’s victory in Mexico’s July 2000 presidential election revealed the fundamental changes that had been taking place under the veil of governmental continuity.
April 2000, Volume 11, Issue 2
Electoral Reform and Stability in Uruguay
In the November 1999 presidential election, Uruguayans reaffirmed their strong commitment to democracy, while adjusting to a set of constitutional reforms that profoundly altered the electoral system.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
The Era of Manipulation
A review of The People vs. Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (and How We Save It) by Jamie Bartlett.
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Democratization by Elections? Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East
Legislative elections in the Middle East often become contests over patronage and wind up reinforcing authoritarian regimes.
April 2007, Volume 18, Issue 2
Voting for Change in the DRC
The holding of competitive elections in this vast, strife-torn country must count as a significant achievement, even though voters signaled their disaffection with the entire array of political elites that had been ruling them.
April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2
Ukraine’s Orange Revolution: Kuchma’s Failed Authoritarianism
Desperate to secure victory for its own candidate in the 2004 presidential election, the incumbent regime undertook an unprecedented campaign of blatant election fraud. But it had underestimated the citizenry that it was trying to deceive.