2580 Results
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
While many blamed President John Magufuli for throwing the country off its democratizing track, the truth is that the party that has ruled Tanzania for six decades has always been authoritarian.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
Longtime president Yoweri Museveni, his ruling party, and his increasingly militarized regime opened 2021 with a grossly unfair election. But time may be on the side of Uganda’s young voters and their hunger for change.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
Far from being a vulnerability in the struggle against terrorism, democratic freedoms are key to empowering moderate voices and depriving terrorists of popular support.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
Democracies rarely begin with a blank slate. Relics of authoritarian rule typically persist after democratic transitions, and these vestiges are not always harmful to people’s newfound freedom.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Around the world, polarizing political strategies are pushing societies into a vicious cycle of zero-sum politics and eroding democratic norms. If democracies are to escape this trap, wise choices and innovation by prodemocratic politicians will be needed.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Political polarization is not always bad for democracy. What is more, a tendency of major parties to converge into some kind of “grand coalition of the center” poses serious risks for a democratic system.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Faced with the rise of extreme and illiberal political players, mainstream parties have employed strategies of banning, marginalization, and cooptation. Yet to truly heal the underlying democratic ailment, establishment parties will need to look inward.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
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
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.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The return to power, via elections, of the Rajapaksa family signals the consolidation of a Sinhalese Buddhist ethnocracy. But there are reasons to hope it will not take a turn toward full despotism.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The alleged tradeoff between economic development and political democracy-building is more fiction than fact. Indeed, progress toward fuller democratic governance can in fact enhance development.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
Universities, publishers, and other knowledge-sector institutions face increasingly sophisticated authoritarian efforts to quash critics and subvert independent inquiry.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
The People’s Republic of China uses massive amounts of propaganda to influence how it is perceived beyond its borders. “Big data” reveal how that image is carefully and deliberately shaped for different audiences in different places.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
South Africa’s government sought to heed expert advice with its covid lockdown, yet shortcomings in state capacity fatally undermined both the virus response and efforts to address its devastating economic toll.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
The Islamic Republic is in a volatile, even prerevolutionary situation, hammered by foreign opposition and sanctions from the outside, and the disillusionment and discontent of its own people from within. But a catalyst needs to appear.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
No country in the world is more intensely targeted by Beijing’s influence operations than Taiwan. The lead-up to the January 2020 elections saw China putting a full-court press on the island, but Taiwanese democracy broke it.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
The encrypted messaging service WhatsApp has become an increasingly important tool for “fake news” in Nigeria, while weakening government control of information and broadening opportunities for political participation.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
Populists have often turned to referendums to dismantle a democracy. Democrats should be wary of turning to the same tool to rebuild what was lost. It may only pave the way for populism’s return.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
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
In 2019, the global democratic recession deepened, while protest movements proliferated around the world, fighting largely without leaders or support from major democracies.
