July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Do Russians Support Putin?
More than window dressing, public-opinion surveys and elections provide a crucial insight into the Russian people’s relationship with their regime.
2036 Results
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July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
How Putin’s War in Ukraine Has Ruined Russia
The first two months of the war alone turned the Russian clock back decades, undoing thirty years of post-Soviet economic gains and reducing the country to an international pariah state.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
Is Mexico Falling into the Authoritarian Trap?
A weakened mandate from voters and perennial state dysfunction are putting Mexico’s populist president in a bind. Will he further damage democracy to fulfill his promises for change?
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
The Age of Political Fragmentation
Just as public frustration with democracy is mounting across the West, social turmoil and new technologies are splintering the very political authority governments need to act.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
The Future of Platform Power: Quarantining Misinformation
With or without middleware, the basic challenge of responding to bad actors online remains.
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
Latin America Erupts: Ecuador’s Return to the Past
Reformist leaders offered order, stability, and progress. But the country’s deep-seated political pathologies have proven far more durable than their promises.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The End of the Backsliding Paradigm
Like the “transition paradigm” before it, the concept of democratic backsliding threatens to flatten our perceptions of complex political realities. Examples from East-Central Europe illustrate the ambiguous dynamics at play in many troubled democracies.
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 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
The Pushback Against Populism: The Rise and Fall of Greece’s New Illiberalism
Escaping the populist trap requires reversing the sequence that brings populists to power in the first place. The 2019 triumph of Greece’s liberal New Democracy party shows how victory can be achieved.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
Argentina: Peronism Returns
Out of power and with promises to jumpstart a lagging economy, the fractured Peronists reunified and reclaimed the presidency. Now they must deliver what voters want.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
The Freedom House Survey for 2019: The Leaderless Struggle for Democracy
In 2019, the global democratic recession deepened, while protest movements proliferated around the world, fighting largely without leaders or support from major democracies.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
The Failure of Europe’s Mainstream Parties
Beyond the commonly cited economic and cultural anxieties afflicting many Europeans, a key factor enabling the rise of populism across Europe has been the failure of mainstream parties on both the left and the right to offer clear and credible policy alternatives.
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
Free Speech in a Time of War
Within Ukraine, Russia’s 2014 invasion has generated unprecedented pressures to impose restrictions on speech. While international norms allow some censorship during wartime, some of Ukraine’s new media and cultural policies raise risks not only for its democracy, but for its security as well.
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
Aspirations and Realities in Africa: Nigeria’s Emerging Two-Party System?
Election officials made strides toward secure voter identification, and a two-party system appears to be emerging, but the 2019 elections revealed continuing problems with vote-buying and violence.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
30 Years After Tiananmen: Dissent Is Not Dead
The Chinese Communist Party wields highly effective means to quash dissent, but Chinese intellectuals and interest groups continue to push for change.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
Bolsonaro and Brazil’s Illiberal Backlash
The triumph of far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil’s October 2018 presidential election was made possible by a series of economic, social, and political crises that have shaken Brazilian democracy.
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
The Surprising Instability of Competitive Authoritarianism
Most competitive authoritarian regimes have proven strikingly unstable over recent decades. Quasi-democratic institutions, rather than serving authoritarians as useful instruments of manipulation, have frequently contributed to the breakdown of these systems.
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.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
The Rise of Kleptocracy: The Dark Side of Globalization
The grand corruption enabled by the rise of offshore finance has come to follow a recurring pattern: steal, obscure, and spend.