2024 Results
July 2025, Volume 36, Issue 3
We must face an uncomfortable truth: Democracies often fail to reverse the damage after an authoritarian lapse, if they manage to recover at all. If we are to make our political systems more resilient, we must steel democracy against authoritarianism before it is too late.
October 2025, Volume 36, Issue 4
After a turbulent election cycle, with an incumbent leader postponing the vote and putting his thumb on the scale, voters elected a new president and, for the third time in Senegalese history, a new ruling party. How did the country keep its democracy from crumbling?
October 2025, Volume 36, Issue 4
When Israel’s democratic safeguards came under attack, Israeli political scientists felt they had a duty to spread a shared, nonpartisan understanding of the dangers of democratic backsliding. Here is how they organized, built channels of communication, and reached the public.
October 2025, Volume 36, Issue 4
Although an island of stability and democracy in a region often short of both, Costa Ricans’ faith in government is declining as the challenge of financing its costly welfare state grows. This democratic stalwart is no longer immune to the appeal of populism.
October 2025, Volume 36, Issue 4
When the Soviet Union fell, Cuba did not democratize but instead was turned into a raw kleptocracy by Communist Party insiders. Decades later, this “mafia” has driven the country into the worst crisis in its history.
January 2007, Volume 18, Issue 1
Reports on elections in Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Congo (Kinshasa), Ecuador, Gabon, The Gambia, Latvia, Madagascar, Montenegro, Nicaragua, Saint Lucia, Tajikistan, Venezuela, Yemen, and Zambia.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
The Arab experience shows that the same media that facilitate the toppling of dictators can make it harder to build democracy.
The election of Rodrigo Paz Pereira as Bolivia’s new president signals the end of the MAS era. But it is more than an end to Evo Morales’s leftist party. It showcases how Indigenous political power has transformed the country’s political landscape.
April 2007, Volume 18, Issue 2
The Putin regime is plunging Russia into a deepening crisis. It is time to end the fiction that today's Russia is a democracy.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Delegative presidencies have not been a problem in post-Pinochet Chile, but the rise of mass protest movements suggests that the country’s new democracy has gone too far in the direction of demobilizing society.
January 2011, Volume 22, Issue 1
For the first time ever in the history of Hong Kong, local democratic leaders and Chinese officials have forged a pact on limited democratic reforms. That may have marked a step forward for the cause of democracy in Hong Kong, but it has also led to a sharp split in the democratic camp.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
A tribute to Václav Havel, Czech playwright and former dissident, who became not only president but the symbol of the “velvet revolutions.”
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
As countries emerge from war and embark on recovery, the risk of corruption is high and the consequences are dire. International aid must be accompanied by an anticorruption strategy that incorporates community-driven accountability.
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Western pressure can be decisive, but it is not always easy to forecast when and how it will be applied.
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Fernando Lugo’s victory in the 2008 presidential election ended 61 years of one-party rule in Paraguay. How did the Colorado Party lose power?
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
Elections set the stage for the General’s exit after nearly a decade in power, yet Pakistan still faces deep-seated structural problems that cannot be remedied merely by a return to competitive electoral politics.
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
Despite South Korea’s messy democratic trajectory, it has miraculously achieved consolidation. Though far from perfect, South Korea’s democracy has turned obstacles into opportunities for reform and development.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
The most important aspects of Morocco's September 2007 parliamentary election may have been things that did not happen: The Islamists did not win, and many citizens either did not vote or spoiled their ballots.
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
The failure of the elections has been partly mitigated by the hope of judicial review of electoral malfeasance, the stabilizing ingenuity of ethno-regional power-sharing, and renewed national discussions of electoral reforms.
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.
