1498 Results
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
Emerging from one of the world’s most notorious failed states, Somaliland has become an oasis of relative democratic stability in the troubled Horn of Africa. What does its story teach us about democratic state-building?
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.
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
In certain circumstances, both liberalism and popular rule can obstruct rather than promote state-building.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
The history of many of today’s established democracies shows that “out-of-sequence” democratization can lead to eventual success.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
For more than two decades, President Yoweri Museveni has been building an authoritarian regime that answers closely to his personal will.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
East Asia’s “third-wave” democracies are in distress, and the economic success of nondemocratic regimes in the region creates a tough standard for comparison.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
By world standards, Latin Americans ideologically are slightly to the right. But their attitudes are moving leftward, a trend with potential implications for democratic stability in the region.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
After a decade and a half, how do citizens of postcommunist Europe now feel toward their new governing regimes?
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
Since the early 1990s, many African countries have undergone political liberalization, and so far this trend has been accompanied by a significant drop in the incidence of military coups.
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.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
Despite a significant expansion of citizenship over the last few decades, the Andean nations face a severe crisis of democratic representation. The root of the problem lies not in the mechanisms of representation but in poor state performance.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
Reforming national intelligence communities is a critical, if often overlooked, task facing democratizing countries. Happily, intelligence agencies brought under civilian, democratic control may also becomes better at their core job of protecting free nations from deadly threats.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
On the surface, intelligence-sector reform since the fall of apartheid has been a model of success, but the growing politicization of security-sector forces by the ruling ANC may pose a threat to the consolidation of South Africa's young democracy.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
As Taiwan has slowly democratized, so has its intelligence and security system been transformed—yet issues of national identity and the conflict with China present continuing challenges.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
Much like other institutions in post-Soviet Russia, the intelligence and security services have yet to make a transition to real democratic control, and remain infused with the authoritarian tendencies of their Soviet predecessors.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
By graciously accepting the defeat of a constitutional amendment that would have enabled him to seek a third term, President Olusegun Obasanjo has solidified his contribution to Nigerian democracy, but much remains to be done.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
By giving Hamas a parliamentary majority, Palestinian voters were neither endorsing extremism nor rejecting the peace process. Other Palestinian institutions have the potential to restrain Hamas, but there is a risk that it will turn to Iran or Syria for help.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
January’s remarkably free and fair parliamentary elections broke the PLO’s longstanding monopoly over Palestinian politics. Given Fatah’s disarray and the difficulties facing Hamas, there is now a window of opportunity for a third and avowedly liberal-democratic option to emerge.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
Authoritarian regimes around the world hold elections and manipulate them every step of the way. How do we understand and work around the challenges these regimes pose to what should be a clean and democratic electoral process?
