1714 Results
January 2023, Volume 34, Issue 1
Featuring Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland’s remarks on defending democracy; a letter by Chinese and Hong Kong socialists on China’s “zero-covid” protests; Shervin Hajipour’s song “Baraye,” the unofficial anthem of the protests in Iran; Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen’s remarks on shoring up democratic resilience in Taiwan and globally; and Gambian human-rights lawyer Fatou Bensouda’s…
October 2024, Volume 35, Issue 4
Alongside democratic backsliding is another, more pernicious phenomenon: dictatorial drift, where “soft” authoritarian regimes are opting to become highly repressive dictatorships. The West must develop new strategies to defend democracy across the globe.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Read the full essay here. “The pursuit of national glory,” which M. Steven Fish counts among the features of Vladimir Putin’s “populism,” is emerging as central to the regime’s legitimation. Unlike previous instances of patriotic mobilization (around the Second Chechen War and the 2008 Georgia war), the current one appears to have evolved into a…
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
From Putin's Russia to Chávez's Venezuela, regimes that claim to be democracies but act like autocracies are emerging as a major long-term threat to freedom.
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
Even if Vladimir Putin were to lose his grip on office, the “Russian system” might only wind up exchanging one form of personalized power for another in its endless search for self-perpetuation.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ruling class again claims to represent a superior alternative to liberal democracy. How can we theorize this regime? Putinism is a form of autocracy that is conservative, populist, and personalistic. Its conservatism means that Putinism prioritizes maintaining the status quo and avoiding instability. Conservatism also overlaps with Putinism’s populism in crowd-pleasing broadsides against gay rights and feminism, but gives…
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Read the full essay here. Arguably a flawed democracy in the 1990s, Russia took a distinctly authoritarian turn under President Vladimir Putin from 2000 to 2008. The country now lives under a façade democracy that barely conceals the political and administrative dominance of a self-interested bureaucratic corporation. The regime manufactures consent by means of three…
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Read the full essay here. The corporatist kleptocracy being erected by Russian President Vladimir Putin is profoundly misunderstood in the West. This model dooms Russia to economic degradation and margin-alization. The current global crisis has made this truth painfully clear. The artificially created image of a threatening West (and U.S. in particular) is now becoming…
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Read the full essay here. Of all of the national republics that emerged out of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has had the most profound difficulties in determining its national identity. What is the essence of being Russian, and where are the boundaries of the “Russian World”? There has never been a Russian…
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Read the full essay here. In contrast to authoritarian power structures, which rest on a form of bureaucratic corporatism that makes the leader its hostage, the regime in Moscow rests on personalized power, something that signals a return to the traditional Russian political matrix. The regime has fused power and property in a manner that…
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Read the full essay here. The regime in Moscow mixes key features of a capitalist economy with a political system wherein power is monopolized by a close-knit professional and age cohort whose members often have a background in the secret police. Instead of seeking to base its legitimacy on broad-based, transpersonal institutions with character and…
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
Russia's liberal-democratic parties have failed. It is time for a new movement that can gain the trust of the Russian people by putting forward a full reform program based on liberal and democratic principles.
January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1
Prime Minister Theresa May on the U.K. vote to leave the European Union; former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright on Václav Havel; joint statement by U.S. representatives Peter J. Roskam (R-Ill.) and David Price (D-N.C.) on the threat of corruption.
October 2001, Volume 12, Issue 4
The 15 states of the former Soviet fall into three broad categories, largely defined by fault lines of history and culture.
October 2001, Volume 12, Issue 4
To grasp what is happening in the former USSR, we must examine the types of nationalism that flourish there.
October 2001, Volume 12, Issue 4
Despite huge changes, the events of the last ten years raise doubts about the notion of “democratic transition” itself.
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
Reports on elections in Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Dominica, Honduras, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, and Ukraine.
April 2000, Volume 11, Issue 2
Excerpts from: Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s farewell remarks and remarks by his successor, Vladimir Putin; a summary of Chechen foreign minister Ilyas Ahmadov’s remarks at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute; a speech by East Timorese independence leader Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão; a victory speech by Chilean president Ricardo Lagos; a speech by Argentinian president Fernando de…
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
More Russians are rejecting the Kremlin’s corruption and authoritarianism. They—and not the regime—are Russia’s future.
