October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
The Meanings of Democracy: What Arabs Think
Arabs express a clear preference for democracy, which they define in ways similar to citizens elsewhere in the world. But their authoritarian regimes are not listening.
2531 Results
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Arabs express a clear preference for democracy, which they define in ways similar to citizens elsewhere in the world. But their authoritarian regimes are not listening.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Since the return of multipartism in sub-Saharan Africa, open-seat elections have been the most likely to yield opposition victories, suggesting that term limits may significantly contribute to democratic consolidation.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
Must every state be a nation and every nation a state? Or should we look instead to the example of countries such as India, where one state holds together a congeries of “national” groups and cultures in a single and wisely conceived federal republic?
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
The 2010 presidential election shows that Ukraine is both a surprisingly stable electoral democracy and a disturbingly corrupt one. The corruption, moreover, may have a lot to do with the stability.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
Although Ukraine’s regional divisions are often thought to be detrimental to state-building and democratization, they have in fact been a source of strength and helped to prevent tilts to the political extremes.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
For the first time since the fall of Pinochet, the Chilean right has come to power via free elections. The long-ruling center-left coalition leaves behind many achievements, but also disturbing signs of a weakened party system.
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.”
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
Despite its historic 2006 elections, the Democratic Republic of Congo still lacks competent governance, leaving its democratic promise unfulfilled.
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.
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
The 2009 electoral victories of Indonesia’s incumbent president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) and his party reveal a growing sophistication among the electorate and a robust presidency, but also a dangerously weak, highly personalistic party system.
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
Although the overall state of freedom in the world has clearly improved over the last two decades, more recent trends are worrisome. In 2009, declines in freedom outnumbered gains for the fourth consecutive year.
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
Once touted as a regional success story, Mozambique has been backsliding toward one-party-dominant rule, and has now slipped off the Freedom House list of electoral democracies. How and why did this happen?
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
The crisis of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has sparked a surge of increased civic engagement by young people in the United States, but there is also evidence of a growing divide along class lines.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
A coauthor of the pathbreaking study Transitions from Authoritarian Rule reflects on the lessons that he has learned about democratic transition and consolidation since the publication of this work nearly 25 years ago.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
While we have witnessed many transitions to multiparty systems, it has proven much harder for countries to attain a genuine rule of law. We need to know more about the origins of the rule of law in order to promote it successfully today.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
The short-term political impact of the economic crisis has been less dramatic than initially expected, but it may have lasting effects on the “quality” of democracy, including the legitimacy of prevailing financial institutions.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
The new electoral authoritarian regimes of the post–Cold War era have formally adopted the full panoply of liberal-democratic institutions. Rather than rejecting or repressing these institutions, they manipulate them.
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
Today, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is a growing ambiguity about the historical significance of 1989 and about the state of democracy in Europe (particularly Central Europe).
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.