3207 Results
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
Excerpts from: a communiqué adopted at a postelection Nigerian civil society summit; a report from Abuja from IFES Deputy Director Nathan Dusen; an open letter issued by Chinese human rights defenders before the opening of the 2008 Olympic Games.
October 1994, Volume 5, Issue 4
Excerpts from: the statement of Wangarí Maathai, the founder and head of the Kenyan Greenbelt Movement; recommendations from the First International Conference on the Peoples of the Arab World and the Middle East and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Minorities.
July 2002, Volume 13, Issue 3
Excerpts from: Sierra Leonean president Ahmad Tejan Kabbah’s inaugural address; the Democracy Coalition Project’s “Call to Action to Build Open Democratic Societies”; the Varela Project, a petition circulated by Cuban dissidents; East Timorese president Xanana Gusmao’s inaugural address.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Despite being in a “slump,” democracy shows vivid signs of its persisting appeal.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
For much of its history, Nicaragua has shown a predilection for personalist and populist rule. What explains the persistence and allure of these phenomena, and what obstacles do they pose for democracy in Nicaragua?
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
Torn between populism and those who fail to respect democratic limits in combating it, Thailand badly needs to locate a middle ground where the best of its old traditions can help it adjust to the new challenges that it faces.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
Indonesians have just elected a former general accused of human-rights abuses, with little respect for democratic institutions. The country’s democracy has not failed, but it may soon be fighting for its life.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
A recent wave of wins for abortion rights—the “green tide” in Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia—owes its success to framing the issue as a matter of human rights.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
The military could not bear Aung San Suu Kyi’s enduring popularity and her party’s continued success at the polls. But the generals may have miscalculated how much the people detest them.
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.
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.
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.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
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.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
The military junta that seized power in 2014 finally organized an election in 2019, but with the goal of preventing rather than facilitating a return to civilian rule.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
The massive corruption revealed by Brazil’s “Operation Car Wash” points to fundamental flaws in multiparty presidential systems, where presidents must find ways to build coalitions in fragmented legislatures.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Despite all its flaws, Iran’s May 2017 presidential balloting amounted to another small but genuine advance for the cause of democracy.
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. This article reviews the state of India’s two major national parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC or Congress party), seventy years after independence in 1947 and three years after the BJP won a majority in the 2014 national election. The article looks at whether…
January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1
Just two years after voting to stay in the United Kingdom, Scotland voted to remain in the EU while Britain as a whole voted to leave. Is another independence referendum coming?
January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1
Following the end of the Cold War, an international norm against coups began gaining strength, but it seems to have lost momentum in recent years. What has happened?
