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October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4

The Kremlin Emboldened: What Is Putinism?

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

Reading Russia: Tools of Autocracy

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

Reading Russia: The Dying Mutant

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

Reading Russia: Is There a Key?

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

Reading Russia: The Return of Personalized Power

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

Reading Russia: The Merger of Power and Property

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…

October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4

The Kremlin Emboldened: Why Putinism Arose

Read the full essay here. This essay argues that the sources of the current revival of Russian authoritarianism lie in the country’s economic and political history. Among the major factors behind President Putin’s rise and consolidation of power, it cites an ideological overemphasis on the state that fosters hostility toward human rights and liberties; deeply…

Steven Radelet at NED

Steven Radelet will discuss his essay "The Rise of the World's Poorest Countries" at NED on Oct. 26 at noon.

October 19, 2015

Why Do Militaries Launch Coups?

Coups are a direct assault on democracy. And militaries can be pivotal to whether a coup succeeds or fails. The following Journal of Democracy essays examine what makes coups more likely, and how democracies can keep the military brass from seizing power.

The Top Ten Most-Read Essays of 2021

In 2021, democracy’s fortunes were tested, and a tumultuous world became even more turbulent. Democratic setbacks arose in places as far flung as Burma, El Salvador, Tunisia, and Sudan, and a 20-year experiment in Afghanistan collapsed in days. The world’s democracies were beset by rising polarization, and people watched in shock as an insurrection took…

April 2008, Volume 19, Issue 2

Election Watch

Reports on elections in Armenia, Barbados, Belize, Bhutan, Croatia, Djibouti, Georgia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, Serbia, Taiwan, and Thailand.

April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2

Documents on Democracy

Excerpts from: Russian political activist Alexi Navalny’s final appeal of politically motivated defamation charges; Burmese permanent representative to the UN Kyaw Moe Tun’s denunciation of the coup; lyrics of the prodemocracy Cuban rap “Patria y Vida”; an interview with Ugandan presidential candidate Bobi Wine; statement of the National Episcopal Conference of the Congo.

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April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2

Reading Russia: The Siloviki in Charge

Since Vladimir Putin’s rise to power at the end of the 1990s, siloviki—the people who work for, or used to work for, Russia’s “ministries of force” have spread to posts throughout all the branches of power in Russia.