April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
China in Xi’s “New Era”: Singapore and Goliath?
Despite its tiny size, Singapore has shown that a firm stance can help to resist Chinese encroachment.
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April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
Brazil: The Costs of Multiparty Presidentialism
The massive corruption revealed by Brazil’s “Operation Car Wash” points to fundamental flaws in multiparty presidential systems, where presidents must find ways to build coalitions in fragmented legislatures.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
The Freedom House Survey for 2017: Democracy Beleaguered
In 2017, the state of political rights and civil liberties around the world sunk to its lowest point in more than a decade. While the democratic powers grappled with their own internal problems, leading autocrats expanded their global efforts to undermine democratic institutions.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
Macedonia: A New Beginning?
This small Balkan country has been plagued with crises of identity both internal and external. But recent developments, including a democratic change of government via the ballot box, have created an opportunity to find a better path.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
The Kremlin Emboldened: Paradoxes of Decline
Read the full essay here. The Russian system of personalized power is growing ever more dependent on the same strategies that proved useless in sustaining the USSR. While the system still has the potential to limp along, its survival tactics render the it progressively more dysfunctional. Among the circumstances weighing against the system’s survival are…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
India’s Democracy at 70: The Federalist Compromise
Read the full essay here. The institutionalized recognition of diversity within India’s federal system has been crucial for democratic consolidation. Substantial decentralization since the 1990s has made state governments central actors in shaping economic activity and national-election outcomes. However, since his rise to national office in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has projected an image…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
The Rise of Referendums: Demystifying Direct Democracy
Plebiscites have grown less common in recent decades in authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries, even as the use of referendums in democracies has expanded. Despite their many shortcomings, referendums are, on balance, a mechanism for strengthening democracy.
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
Tanzania: Shrinking Space and Opposition Protest
Since Tanzania’s 2015 elections, rising repression and opposition protest have displaced an older dynamic of comparatively restrained and unchallenged dominance by the ruling party.
January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1
The Fading of the Anti-Coup Norm
Following the end of the Cold War, an international norm against coups began gaining strength, but it seems to have lost momentum in recent years. What has happened?
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Delegative Democracy Revisited: Ecuador Under Correa
One of the first Latin American countries to make a democratic transition as the 1970s ended, Ecuador struggled in its search for political stability. Now it appears to have more stability, but that stability appears more authoritarian than democratic.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
Latin America’s New Turbulence: The End of the Kirchner Era
With a skillfully conveyed message of managerial competence and an electorate disenchanted by a floundering economy and the outgoing incumbent’s confrontational style, Mauricio Macri demonstrated that a non-Peronist can win Argentina’s presidency.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
On Democratic Backsliding
Old-fashioned military coups and blatant election-day fraud are becoming mercifully rarer these days, but other, subtler forms of democratic regression are a growing problem that demands more attention.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
Authoritarianism Goes Global: Election Monitoring vs. Disinformation
Nonpartisan election monitoring has helped to foster democratization over the last thirty years, but now dictators are trying to sabotage it, often by spreading lies and confusion.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
Nigeria’s Hopeful Election
In a surprising turn of events, opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari was able to outpoll incumbent Goodluck Jonathan—and the latter peacefully acknowledged his defeat.
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement: The Protests and Beyond
The demonstrations of late 2014 captured the world’s attention with their scale, passion, and resourcefulness, but in the end were unable to move dug-in local and national authorities. Yet time is still on the side of the demonstrators.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Crisis and Transition, But Not Decline
Rather than being in decline, democracy is in crisis due to the gap between the democratic ideal and how democracy is actually being practiced. It will survive by transitioning into a new, as yet unknown, form.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Has the Door Closed on Arab Democracy?
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, democracy in the Arab world seems farther away today than at any point in the last 25 years. If it is to ever arrive, it will likely be through a more evolutionary and elite-driven process.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
Africa’s Waning Democratic Committment
Since the mid-2000s, democratization in Africa has faltered, in large part due to its elites’ waning commitment to democracy.
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
India’s Watershed Vote: Hindu Nationalism in Power?
Will India under the BJP see a period of renewed communal violence, or will Hindu-nationalist politicians be reined in by constitutional constraints and their desire to stay in power?
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
The Maidan and Beyond: The House That Yanukovych Built
The events surrounding the EuroMaidan cannot be understood apart from the preceding five years of increasingly corrupt and authoritarian rule.