1545 Results
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The retirement of the country’s longest-serving prime minister leaves in place a “continuity administration,” and with it some troubling questions about whether liberal democracy’s “soft guardrails” are being eroded.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
Universities, publishers, and other knowledge-sector institutions face increasingly sophisticated authoritarian efforts to quash critics and subvert independent inquiry.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
South Africa’s government sought to heed expert advice with its covid lockdown, yet shortcomings in state capacity fatally undermined both the virus response and efforts to address its devastating economic toll.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
Algeria’s massive wave of protesters wanted to put an end to sham elections. While the leaderless movement succeeded for a time, its failure showcased the lengths to which a country’s ruling elite will go to maintain its hold on power.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
The ruling BJP and the prime minister who leads it are now even stronger in the wake of their sweeping 2019 election victory. Voting puts the strength of Indian democracy on display, but the turn away from constitutional liberalism and toward Hindu majoritarianism is alarming.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
It is imperative that artificial intelligence evolve in ways that respect human rights. Happily, standards found in landmark UN documents can help with the task of making AI serve rather than subjugate human beings.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
A crackdown on the opposition, followed by sham parliamentary elections in July 2018, has deepened and extended the decades-long personalist dictatorship of Hun Sen.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
The political turmoil following a journalist’s murder in Slovakia has revealed serious dangers to the country’s democratic institutions.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Bulgaria continues to enjoy free and fair elections, but over the last decade its politics has come to be dominated by Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, who practices a brand of discretionary rule that puts his own priorities above any commitment to legal or constitutional norms.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Despite all its flaws, Iran’s May 2017 presidential balloting amounted to another small but genuine advance for the cause of democracy.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Read the full essay here. The Kremlin’s ability to maintain power and popularity despite an aging leader, an ailing economy, a rallying opposition, and many other domestic and international challenges is puzzling given current theories of authoritarianism. These theories focus on some combination of material interests, institutional engineering, and the charisma and skill of the…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. Seven decades after gaining its independence from the British Empire, India retains all the hallmarks of a functioning democracy: It holds reasonably free and fair elections, has a mostly independent judiciary plus a largely free press, and enjoys a robust and growing civil society. Yet thanks to India’s colonial inheritance…
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Tunisia is a small country, but its influential Islamist party has taken a big step by separating its political wing from its religious activities.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
The post–post-Mao era has now begun. The reforms that brought economic growth and greater openness to China are being unwound, while an assertive new leader strikes off in a populist and nationalist direction.
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth sustains the antidemocratic policies that a nervous royal regime uses to defend against the threats and problems that confront it.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
An opposition victory in this Himalayan kingdom’s second elections in 2013 showed that surprises are possible even in a democratic transition that has been guided from above by the monarchy.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
Although the Chinese Communist Party has tried to institutionalize the political system in the reform era, such efforts have been hampered by the Maoist legacy. To cope with challenges from the society, the CCP mainly relies on a highly centralized and resource-intensive weiwen system, and shows little respect for institutional differentiation and formal procedures.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
The response of the Chinese state (and of Chinese society at large) to the problems of the country’s periphery—Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia, as well as hundreds of counties, prefectures, and townships in Sichuan, Qinghai, Yunnan, and other areas—is piling more tension and misery upon the populations there, but it is not undermining state power.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
A political system in which power is formally divided among ethnic or sectarian groups may seem like a good idea in conflict-ridden societies, but it bears a high price and makes true democratic transition harder to achieve.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
Although in 2011 declines in freedom exceeded gains for the sixth straight year, the uprisings in the Arab world represent the most significant challenge to authoritarian rule since the collapse of Soviet communism.
