3264 Results
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
Confidence in all European institutions is at a record low. What explains this lack of trust, and how can it be restored? To begin with, the eurozone needs a workable long-term solution, and the EU as a whole must come to terms with the reality of a two-speed integration process.
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
Once dismissed as an “overcrowded barracoon,” this Indian Ocean island nation has more recently been hailed as one of Africa’s “emerging success stories,” but the truth is that some troublesome shadings haunt this rosy picture.
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
As 2004 began, Afghanistan approved a new constitution that represents a key step forward in its political reconstruction. But it is not yet clear whether this new constitution will enable the country to surmount the many challenges that lie ahead.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Is liberal democracy the endpoint of history? The ongoing democratic recession, growing disaffection among citizens, and rising populism pose new challenges to this view. Yet testing Francis Fukuyama’s much-criticized thesis requires us to consider not only liberal democracy’s internal contradictions, but also those of its authoritarian rivals.
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
Democracy’s unique, flexible, and substantial resources make it better than authoritarianism at confronting climate change.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
Although Saddam fell twenty years ago, the politicians who have come after him still think like Baathists. But a new generation has begun making itself heard. It believes in Iraq as a nation and it understands democracy as more than a source of spoils to be divided among groups.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
Controlling corruption is a huge challenge for Ukraine, especially in the natural-gas industry. The steps needed are well understood, if only the political will to take them can be summoned.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Democracy has been in a global recession for most of the last decade, and committed and resourceful engagement by the established democracies is necessary to reverse this trend.
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
India’s sixteenth general election ushered in a new era in the country’s politics, putting Narendra Modi and the BJP firmly in charge. What accounts for the sharp swing away from the long-dominant Congress party?
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
Will the Modi government focus on the economy, or will it seek to implement a transformational Hindu-nationalist agenda?
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Read the full essay here. Of all of the national republics that emerged out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has had the most profound difficulties in determining its national identity. What is the essence of being Russian, and where are the boundaries of the “Russian World”? There has never been a Russian…
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?
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
The 2005 elections were marked by massive fraud, but the democratic world mostly looked the other way. Azerbaijani society remains receptive to democracy, but the regime clearly has other plans—and will soon have massive oil wealth to fund them.
October 2023, Volume 34, Issue 4
An expansive underworld of hidden wealth lies beneath the everyday economy. This stealth network of tax havens, secret trusts, and offshore accounts is weakening democratic institutions and fueling our worst enemies.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
The resilience of the Chinese authoritarian regime is approaching its limits. A breakthrough moment could be triggered by several kinds of events.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
South Africa’s government sought to heed expert advice with its covid lockdown, yet shortcomings in state capacity fatally undermined both the virus response and efforts to address its devastating economic toll.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
Escaping the populist trap requires reversing the sequence that brings populists to power in the first place. The 2019 triumph of Greece’s liberal New Democracy party shows how victory can be achieved.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Bulgaria continues to enjoy free and fair elections, but over the last decade its politics has come to be dominated by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who practices a brand of discretionary rule that puts his own priorities above any commitment to legal or constitutional norms.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
Europe’s economic crisis has become a crisis of democratic governance that could roll back five decades of integration. The EU may disintegrate because its “commanders” are unable to converge three distinct economic, political and institutional theaters in which the crisis is being played out.
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Read the full essay here. The regime in Moscow mixes key features of a capitalist economy with a political system wherein power is monopolized by a close-knit professional and age cohort whose members often have a background in the secret police. Instead of seeking to base its legitimacy on broad-based, transpersonal institutions with character and…
