2394 Results
October 2018, Volume 29, Issue 4
A disconnect between Bolivia’s old party system and the country’s deeper social-cleavage structure led to a massive shift in politics there. What lessons might be drawn for other nations?
October 2018, Volume 29, Issue 4
Democracy is enduring in Latin America, but it cannot be said to be prospering. Illiberalism and polarization are rising. Yet core democratic institutions remain firmly in place, and therein lies hope.
October 2018, Volume 29, Issue 4
In Malaysia’s May 2018 general election, a grand bargain between ex–prime minister Mahathir Mohamad and reform leader Anwar Ibrahim produced a political earthquake that ended 61 years of rule by the United Malays National Organization (UMNO).
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
Sophisticated technology could not keep Kenya’s August 2017 presidential election from leading to renewed ethnic tensions and a painful standoff from which the country appears only now to be emerging. What went wrong?
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Read the full essay here. “The pursuit of national glory,” which M. Steven Fish counts among the features of Vladimir Putin’s “populism,” is emerging as central to the regime’s legitimation. Unlike previous instances of patriotic mobilization (around the Second Chechen War and the 2008 Georgia war), the current one appears to have evolved into a…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. When the authors of India’s Constitution took the extraordinarily bold step of establishing universal suffrage, thus giving the right to vote to all adult citizens, India became the world’s first large democracy to adopt universal adult suffrage from its very inception. We call India’s move “instant universal suffrage,” and distinguish…
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Once the poster child for successful postcommunist transitions to democracy, Poland is now governed by populist nationalists. What happened?
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Latin America has not been witnessing a general trend toward authoritarianism, but accountability—whether horizontal, vertical, or both—has suffered in some countries, and at times has done so as a side-effect or unexpected cost of what must be considered signal democratic advances toward noble goals such as greater social and political inclusion.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
Across East-Central Europe, the political center ground has long been characterized by the uneasy cohabitation of liberal and illiberal norms, but the latter have been gradually overpowering the former.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
Islamic political parties were not especially popular with voters in Muslim-majority countries before the Arab Spring. Has that changed?
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
The great achievements of Hungary’s 1989–90 transition—including democracy, rule of law, market-oriented reform, and pluralism in intellectual life—are being dismantled as the world looks the other way.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
How are trends in global democratization likely to be shaped by the distribution of such key structural factors as income, ethnic or religious diversity, and the quality of the state?
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
The Iranian regime has sought to recast conventional principles of human rights and political participation by forging alliances with like-minded regimes and by broadcasting its narrative to an international audience.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
Despite the spirit of participation that characterized the Maidan, organized civil society groups were not a key factor.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
After a half-century of brutal communist rule and two decades of troubled postcommunist life, this small Balkan state surprised many by achieving a successful turnover of power by means of the ballot.
April 2013, Volume 24, Issue 2
Why do democracies survive or fail? An empirical study of Latin America finds that the fate of democracies depends largely on the regional political context, as well as the level of actors’ commitment to democracy and policy moderation.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
When it comes to backing democracy and human rights in international forums, the behavior of the world’s six most influential rising democracies ranges from sympathetic support to borderline hostility.
January 2011, Volume 22, Issue 1
African politics is often characterized as a realm of “informality,” but formal rules and institutions actually loom large, especially with regard to overweening executive power and the reforms that may help to rein it in.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
The development community now agrees with the democracy community that politics matters, but the two communities still differ in their understanding of what drives changes in institutions.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
The 2009 vote for the presidency and local councils was marred by fraud, provoking a political crisis and casting a deep shadow over upcoming parliamentary elections. The Afghan experience calls into question whether voting should occur before other essential reforms are in place.
