2747 Results

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October 2024, Volume 35, Issue 4

The Long Decline of South Africa’s ANC

After thirty years of ANC dominance, the 2024 elections have ushered in multiparty politics in South Africa. Will the party’s centrist shift be enough to stop its descent, or is it destined to fracture further?

April 1992, Volume 3, Issue 2

Election Watch

Reports on elections in Algeria, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Malta.

Free

January 2007, Volume 18, Issue 1

Revolution Reconsidered

The recent "color revolutions" in the former Soviet Union should lead us to reassess the idea of revolution and also to consider the weaknesses of the concept of "democratic transition.

Free

October 2006, Volume 17, Issue 4

Constitutional Courts: A Primer for Decision Makers

Courts empowered to overturn legislative acts have spread rapidly in recent years. If carefully designed and limited, constitutional courts may aid democratic consolidation, but if not, they can become objects of political strife, impediments to democracy, and bad influences on legal development.

July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3

The End of Village Democracy in China

Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party has wound down local elections and reasserted control in the countryside. But putting these burdens on its own shoulders brings new and significant risks for Beijing.

January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1

How Zambia’s Opposition Won

Halting a decade of democratic backsliding, Haikainde Hichilema defeated an increasingly iron-fisted incumbent president. How did he do it and can others learn from his example?

April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2

Tanzania: The Authoritarian Landslide

With brutal resolve, the ruling party sought not merely to win an election, but to annihilate the opposition. Now, with President John Magufuli gone, that strategic rationale will likely only grow stronger.

January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1

Japanese Democracy After Shinzo Abe

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.

April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2

30 Years After Tiananmen: Hong Kong Remembers

It was the impact of Tiananmen that made the democracy movement in Hong Kong a mass phenomenon. Today, the democratic cause in Hong Kong remains linked to the democratic cause in China as a whole.

January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1

India Under Modi: The Establishment Overreacts

Charges that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party threaten liberal-democratic safeguards are best understood as the overheated reaction of an insular elite that is still struggling to come to terms with its democratic displacement from power.

October 2018, Volume 29, Issue 4

Liberal Democracy’s Crisis of Confidence

Public-opinion data from Pew Research Center show that global support for representative democracy is widespread, but often thin. Amid rising economic anxiety, cultural unease, and political frustration, citizens are increasingly open to alternative systems of government.

July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3

India’s Democracy at 70: Toward a Hindu State?

Read the full essay here. While the Constitution of India has not been amended after the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in 2014, BJP-ruled states have passed laws which have reflected the Hindu-nationalist ideology of this party, including those known as “beef bans.” These laws and the activities of Hindu nationalist…