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Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash on Sunday. The mullahs may become more repressive in the lead up to the next presidential election. Read about Iran’s most recent wave of unrest, and explore why it may “only [be] a matter of time before a new wave erupts.”

Venezuela’s opposition defeated Nicolás Maduro in the country’s July presidential election, but the Venezuelan strongman refuses to relinquish power. The Journal of Democracy essays below, free for a limited time, chronicle Venezuela’s struggle against Maduro’s authoritarianism — and what makes this election different.

Minxin Pei, a leading expert on Chinese authoritarianism, has been writing for the Journal of Democracy since 1992. Over three decades, the Claremont McKenna political scientist has chronicled China’s transformation into a global superpower and descent into neo-Stalinism. The following ten essays comprise some of Pei’s best.

As artificial intelligence continues to advance at breakneck speed and world powers vie against each other in the AI arms race, democracies are searching for ways to control a technology that is transforming our lives while threatening to break our democratic guardrails.

Romania is the latest example of rising far-right populism across Europe. The essays below examine the forces driving these illiberal political movements.

In the 1991 classic, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Samuel P. Huntington offered a new way of understanding democracy’s global trajectory. Amid rising global populism and increasingly aggressive authoritarian leaders, has Huntington’s framework outlived its usefulness?

Millions of voters are casting ballots in a string of elections across the globe this year. At the midyear point, how well is democracy holding up?

Organized criminal groups in Latin America have money, firepower, and a stranglehold on political life — making them incredibly difficult to defeat. How can countries in the region curb the violence and revive democracy?

How resilient are democracies, really? While many countries have gone from democratic to authoritarian and back again, few have been able to sustain their recovery. The following essays offer strategies for defending and deepening democracy around the world.