July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Nicaragua: Progress amid Regress?
Despite increasing authoritarian tendencies at the national level, there are signs that Nicaragua has been making democratic advances at the local level.
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April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Reading Russia: Forms Without Substance
Read the full essay here. Twenty years ago, there was a more thoroughgoing political pluralism in Russia than there is today. In some respects, the forms of democracy-including party consolidation-have been enhanced, but they have been so manipulated as to deprive them of substance. Either “electoral authoritarianism” of “multiparty authoritarianism” (Juan Linz’s terms) may reasonably…
January 2007, Volume 18, Issue 1
The Perpetual Crises of Democracy
Democracy is and always will be in some kind of crisis, for it is constantly redirecting its citizens’ gaze from a more or less unsatisfactory present toward a future of still unfulfilled possibilities.
July 2006, Volume 17, Issue 3
Reforming Intelligence: South Africa After Apartheid
On the surface, intelligence-sector reform since the fall of apartheid has been a model of success, but the growing politicization of security-sector forces by the ruling ANC may pose a threat to the consolidation of South Africa's young democracy.
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
Curbing Central America’s Militaries
Since the end of the Cold War, Central America has seen a regionwide diminution of military influence that bodes well for democratic governance and healthier civil-military relations.
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
How to Confront No Ordinary Danger
Climate change is an urgent and unparalleled threat. Our best hope lies in radical, principled activism — at once more democratic and more authoritarian.
October 2005, Volume 16, Issue 4
Iran’s Peculiar Election: The Struggle Against Sultanism
Given the unaccountable authority of the supreme leader, the Islamic Republic should be classified as a sultanistic regime. In such regimes, democratic change is more likely to come from nonviolent resistance than from internal reform.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Tracking the “Arab Spring”: Yemen Changes Everything… And Nothing
A long-ruling strongman president has been unseated by popular unrest and a negotiated transition is under way, but to many Yemenis this all appears to be a change more of appearance than of substance.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Tracking the “Arab Spring”: Libya Starts from Scratch
Qadhafi is gone after subjecting his country to a brutal dictatorship for more than four decades, but the devastated institutional landscape that he left behind bodes ill for Libya’s democratic prospects.
October 2002, Volume 13, Issue 4
Democratization in the Arab World?: Stirrings in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia would seem to exemplify full-blown authoritarianism. Yet there are trends pushing the country toward more open politics.
October 2002, Volume 13, Issue 4
Democratization in the Arab World?: Yemen’s Aborted Opening
While President Ali ABdallah Salih continues to call Yemen an ’emerging democracy,’ it more closely resembles athe autocracy of the pre-unification North.
October 2002, Volume 13, Issue 4
Pluralism by Default in Moldova
During the 1990s, politics in the small post-Soviet state of Moldova was more competitive than anyone would have expected. Yet there was less to this surprising pluralism than met the eye.
July 2002, Volume 13, Issue 3
Middle East Studies After 9/11: Time for an Audit
Talk about the Middle East and those who study it has become understandably heated. But we can learn more through a calm assessment of the achievements and weaknesses of this field.
July 2002, Volume 13, Issue 3
Middle East Studies After 9/11: Islamists and the Politics of Consensus
Middle Eastern autocracies rely ever more on repression of both their Islamist and secular critics, and therefore increasingly fear that any opening will be uncontrollable. Is there a way out?
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
Exchange: Why the Future Is (Still) Democratic
The “democratic deconsolidation” thesis is overblown. Emancipative values continue to spread worldwide, and clearly point to brighter democratic days ahead.
January 2004, Volume 15, Issue 1
Europe Moves Eastward: Beyond the New Borders
By expanding itself eastward, the EU has not so much settled the questions surrounding the “borders” of Europe as it has displaced them, changing their focus to take in new areas and new issues.
April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
Neoliberalism and the Third Wave
Democracy across the world is being undermined by the very forces that once made it possible: the liberal economic order and political competition. The global concentration of wealth has made democratic governance less effective and stripped the people of their power.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
Power Failure?
A review of The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be by Moisés Naím.
Ecuador’s Democratic Breakdown
The small Latin American country was a brief democratic bright spot. But it appears to have fallen victim to a clash between populists and anti-populists, without a democrat in sight.