April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
Why Autocracies Fear LGBTQ+ Rights
The battle over rights for sexual minorities has divided countries into opposing camps. But autocrats are lashing out with one aim: countering the liberal international order.
1207 Results
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
The battle over rights for sexual minorities has divided countries into opposing camps. But autocrats are lashing out with one aim: countering the liberal international order.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
The belief we can “escape” remains a part of the liberal imagination. In truth, it is realized in the form of detachment from any community, an exodus without refuge.
October 2023, Volume 34, Issue 4
Science fiction may soon become reality with the advent of AI systems that can independently pursue their own objectives. Guardrails are needed now to save us from the worst outcomes.
October 2023, Volume 34, Issue 4
AI is destined to become another stage for geopolitical conflict. In this contest, autocracies have the advantage, as they vacuum up valuable data from democracies, while democracies inevitably incorporate data tainted by repression.
October 2023, Volume 34, Issue 4
AI will transform work and entire economies. The potential benefits also bring a dire risk of rising inequality and job losses. But the worst outcomes can still be avoided.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
Oppositions in monarchies don’t have to stage revolutions to win freedom: Monarchies are as compatible with democracy as they are with autocracy. The challenge for those who would remove a king is not to fall for the promises of reform that never come.
January 2023, Volume 34, Issue 1
The record shows that movements using “dilemma actions”—creative protests that make a regime look foolish—are often more effective at undermining authoritarians. Activists should add such tactics to their toolkit.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Swarms of “nano-influencers,” are rapidly reshaping social-media propaganda campaigns, upending political discourse in democracies around the world.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
The “democratic deconsolidation” thesis is overblown. Emancipative values continue to spread worldwide, and clearly point to brighter democratic days ahead.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
Comprehensive regulation can strengthen user rights in the face of tech firms’ exploitative practices.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
There is still an opportunity to pull the world out of its democratic slump. What is most needed is democratic conviction and resolve.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Anticorruption has become universally accepted as a norm; that may tell us something about why it struggles in practice.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
The mass protests that have taken place in 2019 in Hong Kong and elsewhere show that people’s desire for liberty cannot be extinguished.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Democratic societies must address the spread of technology developed in authoritarian settings while continuing to uphold democratic norms.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
In May 2018, the people of Malaysia transcended distinctions of class, religion, and ethnicity in order to vote for democracy and reform against a long-ruling party riddled with corruption.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
Politicians increasingly are attacking central bankers—once viewed as bland, faceless technocrats—for wielding too much power.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
There is a growing sense today that democrats worldwide are in a race against time to prevent cyberspace from becoming an arena for surveillance, control, and manipulation.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
Democracies must grapple not only with the proliferation of AI to authoritarian and illiberal regimes, but also with the temptation that AI poses for democratic governments themselves.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
Since their transitions, the democracies of the “third wave” have followed a range of trajectories beyond simple survival or breakdown. Many have stagnated at low levels of democracy and some have suffered democratic erosion, but there also have been cases of democratic deepening against the odds.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
The worldwide popularity of runoff rules for presidential elections has grown strikingly in recent decades. In Latin America, contrary to scholarly expectations, this shift has had important benefits for democracy.