April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
What Went Wrong in Hungary
For a time, Hungary looked like it was on the road to democracy. Viktor Orbán’s success derailing it may teach us how to spot a failing democracy before it is too late.
2777 Results
Democracy in Retrograde pdf download
April 2004, Volume 15, Issue 2
East Timor: Elections in the World’s Newest Nation
East Timor, which emerged from a tragic and bloody past to gain full independence in 2002, offers a factinating case of democratization in a small developing country with a shallow history of democracy.
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
The Crisis in Kenya
For years Kenya was regarded as one of Africa’s sturdiest democracies. The fraudulent 2007 presidential election, however, exposed the fragility of Kenya’s democratic framework.
April 1999, Volume 10, Issue 2
Documents on Democracy
Excerpts from: a founding document from the inaugural assembly of the “World Movement for Democracy”; South Korean President Kim Dae Jung’s opening address at a conference entitled “Demcoracy, Market Economy and Development”; the interim report of Nigeria’s Transition Monitoring Group.
April 2013, Volume 24, Issue 2
Defending Democracy Within the EU
Should Brussels intervene to protect democracy within EU member states? Does Europe have the tools it would need to do so effectively? Recent developments in Hungary and Romania show the importance of addressing these questions sooner rather than later.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
How Personalist Politics Is Changing Democracies
Once mostly found in authoritarian regimes, personalism is now putting established democracies in peril—a trend that digital technology will likely make worse.
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.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
The Democracy Barometers (Part II): Surveying South Asia
While the people of South Asia, especially those with higher levels of education and exposure to the media, prefer democracy to authoritarianism, they are willing to relax some of the requirements of liberal democracy.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
The Quality of Democracy: Freedom as the Foundation
Freedom has always been integral to democracy. How to guard liberty is a question every democratic regime must answer.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Is India Still a Democracy?
In this symposium, the Journal of Democracy brings together leading scholars of India to perform a biopsy on the state of that country’s fragile democracy, and to offer us a prognosis for its future.
July 2024, Volume 35, Issue 3
Who Decides What Is Democratic?
The “crisis” of democracy is a crisis of representation. New parties, some of which are populist in troublingly illiberal ways, are arising from this moment. The danger that they pose is not that they are antidemocratic, but that they are antiliberal.
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
From Politics to Protest
The protests that have been erupting around the world may signal the twilight of both the idea of revolution and the notion of political reformism.
January 2023, Volume 34, Issue 1
Italy’s Hard Truths
The government of Giorgia Meloni, the country’s first female prime minister, is popular, scary, and competent. Her far-right party also enjoys greater democratic legitimacy than any other Italian party in a long time.
January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1
Britain After Brexit: Resistance from Scotland
Just two years after voting to stay in the United Kingdom, Scotland voted to remain in the EU while Britain as a whole voted to leave. Is another independence referendum coming?
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Delegative Democracy Revisited: Peru Since Fujimori
After spending the 1990s coping with an overweening president, Peru settled into a more sedate style of politics, but it is one in which parties barely exist, voters feel unhappy with their elected chief executives despite strong economic growth, and technocracy rather than democracy is the key mode of decision making.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Shifting Tides in South Asia: Renewed Hope in Pakistan?
Long prone to coups, Pakistan now for the first time has seen a freely elected government duly serve out its full term and peacefully hand the reins of power to another.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
European Disintegration? Warnings from History
The irony at the heart of Europe’s current crisis is that although the EU originated as part of a post-1945 effort to consolidate democracy in Western Europe, the Union’s travails are now pushing the continent in the opposite direction instead.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Latin America: Democracy with Development
Latin America’s hard-won democratic gains must be defended by addressing he economic disparities fueling a drift toward populism.
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy (II): Aiding Latin America’s Poor
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.
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
The Curious Case of Finland’s Clean Politics
The case of Finland challenges conventional thinking on clean politics. Can it serve as a model for its more corrupt counterparts?