830 Results
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
To say that Indian democracy is backsliding misunderstands the country’s history and the challenges it faces: A certain authoritarianism is embedded in India’s constitution and political structures.
July 2024, Volume 35, Issue 3
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.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Democracy’s meaning has always been contested. Letting that struggle become a battle between existential foes risks upending the whole democratic project.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
Vladimir Putin’s reputation as a skillful leader was buoyed by years of economic good fortune. But when his regime faltered, his rule quickly descended into the fearful, repressive, and paranoid state we see today.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
The Kremlin wields food as a weapon and a shield against Western interference. But Putin’s push for food autarky could backfire, driving up prices and turning Russians against the regime.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
Xi reads Tiananmen as a cautionary tale, and he has sought to centralize power and reverse years of ideological atrophy. By controlling the past, he is trying to determine how the Chinese will view their present and future.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
The Afghan republic’s destruction was sewn into its founding. The international community’s missteps are more responsible for its failure than the country’s supposedly endemic corruption.
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
Why do ordinary people vote to return to office undemocratic incumbents? New survey experiments in several countries suggest that many voters are willing to put their partisan interests above democratic principles—a finding that may be key to understanding democratic backsliding.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
Autocrats have found a new way to turn citizens against liberal democracy: convincing them that LGBTIQ rights, granted and protected in much of the West, pose a threat to their nation and its values.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Is liberal democracy the endpoint of history? The ongoing democratic recession, growing disaffection among citizens, and rising populism pose new challenges to this view. Yet testing Francis Fukuyama’s much-criticized thesis requires us to consider not only liberal democracy’s internal contradictions, but also those of its authoritarian rivals.
April 2022, Volume 33, Issue 2
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has done something for the world’s democrats they could seemingly not do for themselves—given them renewed unity, purpose, and resolve.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
Amid mass protests, the personalist autocracy of longtime Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir fell to an April 2019 coup. With the country now being governed by a council composed of both opposition leaders and powerful security-service coupmakers, prospects for democratization remain uncertain.
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
What makes elected leaders step down at the appointed hour, and what do they have to look forward to once their terms end? A look at the political afterlives of world leaders tells us that the future prospects of presidents and premiers may well affect their behavior while in office.
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
Many pundits cry for a negotiated settlement to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. But they misunderstand Vladimir Putin’s motives. The only just end to the war will be in the trenches, not at the bargaining table.
July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3
The recognition of democracy as a universally relevant system is a major revolution in thinking, and one of the main contributions of the twentieth century. While not yet universally practiced, democracy is now being taken as generally right.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Courage Tribute acceptance speeches from the World Movement for Democracy’s Ninth Assembly in Dakar, Senegal; Organization of American States (OAS) statement on Cuba’s presidential succession; French president Emmanual Macron’s address before the European Parliament; report by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.K. Parliament on Russian money laundering
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
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 2022, Volume 33, Issue 2
Excerpts from: letter from the Editors of Novaya Gazeta; Speech by Ukraine’s UN Ambassador, Sergiy Kyslytsya; statement by former Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė; statement by the Russian Anti-War Committee; transcript of an interrogation of an antiwar protester by Russian police; speech by Ukrainian president Volodymr Zelensky to the U.K. Parliament
January 2023, Volume 34, Issue 1
Featuring Canadian deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland’s remarks on defending democracy; a letter by Chinese and Hong Kong socialists on China’s “zero-covid” protests; Shervin Hajipour’s song “Baraye,” the unofficial anthem of the protests in Iran; Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen’s remarks on shoring up democratic resilience in Taiwan and globally; and Gambian human-rights lawyer Fatou Bensouda’s…
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
The National Endowment for Democracy’s founding president made enormous contributions to the fight for freedom and human rights. Reflections on what his 37-year tenure meant for the democratic cause—and this journal.
