3264 Results
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.
January 2005, Volume 16, Issue 1
World events-recent, current, and almost certainly to come-drive home the truth that before there can be a democratic state, there must first be a functioning state, period. Creating workable states where they have been destroyed or have barely existed yields to none among the challenges of our time.
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.
January 2004, Volume 15, Issue 1
Mexico’s 2003 congressional elections confirmed both the transition to fully competitive politics and the persistence of structural deficiencies associated with a multiparty presidential system.
October 2003, Volume 14, Issue 4
The EU represents an opportunity not only to fashion a postnational welfare state capable of responding to a postnational economy, but to lay a groundwork that will ultimately make possible a global domestic policy.
July 2003, Volume 14, Issue 3
Gauging electoral competitiveness relative to economic development reveals not only that Arab countries “underperform” but, strikingly, that non-Arab Muslim-majority countries tend to “overperform.”
April 2003, Volume 14, Issue 2
There is an emerging current of enlightened thought in the Muslim world today, but it is all too often wrongly labeled and poorly understood.
April 2003, Volume 14, Issue 2
An “Islamic Reformation” is not a necessary condition for the emergence of democracy in the Muslim world; what is most needed is a political reformation.
January 2003, Volume 14, Issue 1
Holding regular, free elections may not be enough to stop turbulence that threatens both the quality of democracy and the coherence of the state.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Despite a brutal thirteen-year civil war, Syrians are not building from scratch. In fact, Syria has a long and rich history of state-building to guide them.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Democratic backsliding is usually seen as something driven by presidents, but under certain circumstances elected legislatures can cause it, too. Legislative hegemony is a growing danger.
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
The demonstrations of late 2014 captured the world’s attention with their scale, passion, and resourcefulness, but in the end were unable to move dug-in local and national authorities. Yet time is still on the side of the demonstrators.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Excerpts from: a statement condemning the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces' campaign against the country's civil society organizations and human-rights groups; a statement by two top EU officials on the arrest of former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko; an address given by Mongolian president Tsakhia Elbegdorj; the OAS resolution "Promotion of the Rights…
April 1992, Volume 3, Issue 2
Excerpts from: speeches delivered at the signing of the El Salvador peace agreement; an Agreement on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict; Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s address to the UN Security Council.
