2848 Results
July 2012, Volume 23, Issue 3
On 9 December 2011, incumbent president Joseph Kabila was declared the official winner of the DRC’s deeply flawed presidential election, resulting in a legal president without legitimacy and an uncertain political future.
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Read the full essay here. In the West, Turkey is considered a model for a secular democracy in the Muslim world, yet the country finds itself mired in a crisis of civil rights and liberties under a third term of the pro-Islamic AKP government. Ironically, while the government maintains a discourse on political reform—including constitutional…
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Saudi Arabia looked for a time in early 2011 as if it too would become swept up in the Arab uprising. Yet it never quite happened—why?
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
Widely reported as “Facebook revolutions,” the upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt show that social media not only can ignite protests but also can help to determine their political consequences.
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
Despite improvements in South Africa’s socioeconomic landscape and the expansion of the black middle class since the end of apartheid, the country’s levels of poverty and inequality remain high and heavily correlated with race.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Latin America’s hard-won democratic gains must be defended by addressing he economic disparities fueling a drift toward populism.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
The lines between the development-aid and democracy-aid communities have been blurring, in terms of both organizational boundaries and activities on the ground, but the convergence is far from complete.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
A tribute to Václav Havel, Czech playwright and former dissident, who became not only president but the symbol of the “velvet revolutions.”
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
Indonesia is widely lauded as a democratic success story for rolling back the military, keeping radical Islam in check, and institutionalizing democratic freedoms. But this success has had costs in terms of democratic quality.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
In the twenty years since 1989, acute excitement over democratic transition and consolidation gave way to symptoms of “democracy fatigue” and elite exhaustion; successful economic transition away from state socialism fell victim to a crisis of the free-market model; and the EU’s transformative power has reached its geopolitical limits. The nations of Central and Eastern…
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
The 1989 revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe were the triumph of civic dignity over Leninism. The first decade of postcommunism saw the project of an open society strongly challenged by ethnocratic temptations. The most important new idea brought about by the revolutions of 1989 was the rethinking and the restoration of citizenship.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
By any measure, democratization has achieved remarkable advances over the past twenty years. Why, then, have so many of the leading works written on the topic during this period been so full of gloom?
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. Online activism is an integral part of the broader landscape of citizen activism in contemporary China. It assumes a variety of forms, from cultural and social activism to cyber-nationalism and online petitions and protests. Technological development and social transformation provide the basic structural conditions. A fledgling civil society of online…
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Levels of regime strength and links to the West help to explain authoritarian breakdown, but the ruler’s popularity also matters.
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Western pressure can be decisive, but it is not always easy to forecast when and how it will be applied.
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
The military is currently showing signs of wanting to back away from overt political involvement, but this should not be confused with a rejection of praetorianism or an acceptance of the principle of civilian supremacy.
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
The journalistic and policy communities have been alive with speculation as to whether Islamist groups involved in politics—including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Palestine’s Hamas— are true believers in democracy or calculating pragmatists who, in Steven Cook’s words, are “seeking to use democratic procedures in order to advance an antidemocratic agenda.”
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.
April 2008, Volume 19, Issue 2
Despite sweeping political and constitutional changes in Africa, a notable feature of the ancien régime survives—the imperial presidency. African presidents may be term-limited, but they have not been tamed.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
By world standards, Latin Americans ideologically are slightly to the right. But their attitudes are moving leftward, a trend with potential implications for democratic stability in the region.
