April 2003, Volume 14, Issue 2
What Is Liberal Islam?: The Sources of Enlightened Muslim Thought
There is an emerging current of enlightened thought in the Muslim world today, but it is all too often wrongly labeled and poorly understood.
2135 Results
Electoral Reform Society charter 2025 'good governance charter'
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
Election Watch
Reports on recent elections in Belarus, Burkina Faso, Georgia, Ghana, Kuwait, Lithuania, Montenegro, Romania, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, Ukraine, Vanuatu, and Venezuela.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
The Return of the Marcos Dynasty
A half-century after his father declared martial law and made himself a dictator, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been elected president of the Philippines by a stunning majority. There is little stopping him from dismantling what remains of the country’s democracy.
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
Aspirations and Realities in Africa: Nigeria’s Emerging Two-Party System?
Election officials made strides toward secure voter identification, and a two-party system appears to be emerging, but the 2019 elections revealed continuing problems with vote-buying and violence.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Has Liberia Turned a Corner?
The retirement of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and George Weah’s election as her successor open a new chapter for a country that has made great strides since its brutal civil war, but where progress remains tenuous.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
Brazil: The Costs of Multiparty Presidentialism
The massive corruption revealed by Brazil’s “Operation Car Wash” points to fundamental flaws in multiparty presidential systems, where presidents must find ways to build coalitions in fragmented legislatures.
April 2017, Volume 28, Issue 2
The 2016 U.S. Election: The Nomination Game
Since the 1970s, the U.S. presidential-nomination system has become more democratic, making primary elections crucial, reducing the influence of political parties, and making it easier for outsiders to win.
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
India’s Watershed Vote: Behind Modi’s Victory
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?
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
The Politics of Personality in Brazil
Dilma Rousseff won the 2010 presidential election as the handpicked successor of a towering political personality. Now she must assert firm sway over a ruling party and coalition to which she has remarkably slender ties, and face new challenges that her country cannot meet with “more of the same.”
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
Documents on Democracy
Excerpts from: a speech by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian; a letter by Bernard-Henri Lévy, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie, Elfriede Jelinek, and Orhan Pamuk; tributes to Lyudmila Alexeyeva; and the Parliamentary Call for Global Democratic Renewal.
July 1994, Volume 5, Issue 3
Documents on Democracy
Excerpts from: South African President Nelson Mandela’s inaugural speech; Salvadoran president Armando Calderón Sol’s inaugural speech; a presentation speech by Yelena Bonner, the widow of Andrei D. Sakharov.
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 2003, Volume 14, Issue 1
The Deadlock in Iran: Constitutional Constraints
The vast obstacles to democratic reformism include basic provisions in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic itself.
October 2002, Volume 13, Issue 4
Democratization in the Arab World?: Depoliticization in Morocco
Since the 1950s, Morocco has engaged in reforms that have established a relatively open political and economic system, but democracy has not gained much in the bargain.
October 2001, Volume 12, Issue 4
Why Direct Election Failed in Israel
Israel began directly electing its prime minister in 1992, only to abandon this change less than ten years later. What came between was a series of hard lessons in the unintended consequences or reform.
October 2001, Volume 12, Issue 4
How Burma Could Democratize
How can Burma peacefully move away from military rule and toward a stable democratic system based on sound electoral and federal arrangements?
July 2001, Volume 12, Issue 3
Francophone Africa in Flux: Political Turnover and Social Change in Senegal
In 2000, Senegal experienced its first-ever electoral victory by an opposition candidate. Yet the social foundations that have supported one of Africa’s most liberal regimes are shifting, with unpredictable consequences.
July 2000, Volume 11, Issue 3
Russia Under Putin: Can Electoral Autocracy Survive?
Vladimir Putin soon must make a fundamental choice: whether to hold on to monolithic power or to adopt a reformist course that could leave him at the center of a battle without any guarantee of success.
How Women Make the World Safe for Democracy
The suffragists imagined that a greater role for women in democratic politics would lead to a more peaceful world. Few realize how right they were.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Documents on Democracy
Excerpts from: Burma’s National Unity Government statement on execution of four prodemocracy activists by military junta; UN Human Rights Commission report on the treatment of Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region; international NGO statement on closure of Uganda’s leading LGBTQ rights advocacy organization; the Prague Manifesto for a Free Ukraine; Zov, a Russian soldier’s memoir.