3266 Results
July 2025, Volume 36, Issue 3
The most challenging type of diversity for democracy is religious diversity. This also helps explain why modern democracy first took root in Western Europe: Religiously homogenous populations went hand in hand with the early formation of parliaments.
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
Are laws guaranteeing citizens freedom of access to public information (FOI laws) among the most important democratic innovations of the last century?
Winter 1990, Volume 1, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
The escalating conflict between Iran and Israel now includes the United States, and fears are growing that it could become a regional war. But there’s another war that people aren’t talking about: the Islamic Republic’s brutal campaign against its own people.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
In recent years, Mexico has stumbled into an encounter with collective violence, this time in the form of the “drug war.” Among its many harms is the damage it is doing to Mexican democracy.
April 2008, Volume 19, Issue 2
Despite key improvements during Néstor Kirchner's presidency, Argentine democracy remains vulnerable to crisis. The near collapse of the party system and weakness of political and economic institutions continue to threaten stability.
January 2007, Volume 18, Issue 1
A crucial requirement of government by consent is the willingness of defeated candidates and parties to concede when the voters' verdict goes against them. Events in Mexico following its July 2006 presidential election have sorely tested that country's young democracy in this regard.
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
The failure of the elections has been partly mitigated by the hope of judicial review of electoral malfeasance, the stabilizing ingenuity of ethno-regional power-sharing, and renewed national discussions of electoral reforms.
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
Iraq’s three elections in 2005 highlighted the role—but also the limits—of electoral-system design in managing potentially polarizing divisions.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
Democracy requires robust political equality, but the persistence of social, economic and cultural inequality complicates its realization.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
The global democratic decline of the last two decades is rarely discussed in the same breath with the 2003 decision by the United States and Britain to invade Iraq. But the roots of our present disorder can be traced to that disastrous and foolhardy war of choice.
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.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
The program of carefully controlled reform-from-above that King Mohamed VI began almost a decade ago may now have reached an impasse amid signs of growing disaffection.
April 2001, Volume 12, Issue 2
The mass demonstrations that ousted President Joseph Estrada recalled those that had brought down dictator Ferdinand Marcos 15 years earlier. Yet the return of “People Power” raises some concerns about the health of Filipino democracy.
January 2003, Volume 14, Issue 1
With both reformists and leftists pushed aside, political center-stage now belongs to new pragmatists both inside and outside the Communist Party.
July 1992, Volume 3, Issue 3
The Editors’ introduction to the Journal of Democracy‘s special issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter.
As 2024 draws to a close, democracy faces urgent threats: increasing aggression from Russia and China, rapidly advancing AI, heightened polarization, and populist leaders in India and elsewhere bending democracy to their will. Here are the Journal of Democracy’s ten most-read essays over the past month.
After losing a confidence vote and triggering snap elections, can Olaf Scholz lead mainstream parties back to power, or will more radical forces prevail?
Winter 1991, Volume 2, Issue 1
A review of Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy, by Donald Kagan.
