July 2000, Volume 11, Issue 3
Election Watch
Reports on elections in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Georgia, Haiti, Iran, Peru, Russia, Senegal, South Korea, Suriname, Taiwan, Thailand, and Venezuela.
1485 Results
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April 1996, Volume 7, Issue 2
Documents on Democracy
Excerpts from: Sergei Kovalev’s letter of resignation from the President’s Human Rights Commission in Russia; Haitian president René Préval’s inaugural address; the initial declaration of the Cuban Council (Concilio Cubano).
April 2000, Volume 11, Issue 2
Election Watch
Reports on elections in Chile, Croatia, Dominica, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Mozambique, Russia, Senegal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009)
A tribute in remembrance of Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009).
July 2021, Volume 32, Issue 3
The Future of Platform Power: Solving for a Moving Target
Despite the challenges, middleware offers a legally and politically feasible answer to platforms’ influence over speech.
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.
April 2015, Volume 26, Issue 2
Election Watch
Reports on elections in Comoros, Croatia, El Salvador, Estonia, Lesotho, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Tunisia, and Zambia.
October 1999, Volume 10, Issue 4
Debating Democracy Assistance: Sometimes Less Is More
Read the full essay here.
April 2002, Volume 13, Issue 2
Elections Without Democracy: Thinking About Hybrid Regimes
Many countries have adopted the form of democracy with little of its substance. This makes the task of classifying regimes more difficult, but also more important.
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.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
The Rise of Kleptocracy: Power and Plunder in Putin’s Russia
Russia’s ruling elite have used corruption not only to line their own pockets, but also as a tool of domestic political control and global power projection.
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…
July 2013, Volume 24, Issue 3
Putin versus Civil Society: The Long Struggle for Freedom
Today’s Russian protest movement in many ways resembles past civil-rights and civil-resistance efforts in other parts of the world, from its commitment to nonviolence to its key demands—a vote that counts and equality under the law. Listen to the podcast.
July 2012, Volume 23, Issue 3
Putinism Under Siege: An Autopsy of Managed Democracy
Although they have quieted down as quickly as they flared up, the clamorous protests that followed the dishonest Russian legislative elections in December 2011 have essentially destroyed Putin’s regime, the infamous “managed democracy.”
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
Russian Democracy in Eclipse: What the Polls Tell Us
The first flush of democratic hopes has faded, as the recent elections have emphasized. But the democratic idea has a foothold, and the presidential machine that swept those elections will not have an easy time retaining its sway.
July 2024, Volume 35, Issue 3
Who Decides What Is Democratic?
The “crisis” of democracy is a crisis of representation. New parties, some of which are populist in troublingly illiberal ways, are arising from this moment. The danger that they pose is not that they are antidemocratic, but that they are antiliberal.
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
Documents on Democracy
A Hong Kong prodemocracy activist’s statement upon her sentencing; Georgia’s president denounces the election results; Alaa Abd el-Fattah was named Writer of Courage and joint recipient of the 2024 PEN Pinter Prize; an open letter for Xu Zhiyong; and a Nigerian senator condemns the arrests of youth protesters.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Why India’s Democracy Is Dying
Under Narendra Modi, India is maintaining the trappings of democracy while it increasingly harasses the opposition, attacks minorities, and stifles dissent. It can still reverse course, but the damage is mounting.
January 2011, Volume 22, Issue 1
Latin America: A Surge to the Center
The left-right ideological divide has begun to narrow in Latin America as citizens and leaders increasingly choose a pragmatic approach to politics and embrace the rules of the democratic game.