January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
With illiberal forces ascendant across the globe, protecting individual liberties and the democratic process is crucial. But when institutions empower minority groups over the majority, can democracy survive?
October 2024, Volume 35, Issue 4
Alongside democratic backsliding is another, more pernicious phenomenon: dictatorial drift, where “soft” authoritarian regimes are opting to become highly repressive dictatorships. The West must develop new strategies to defend democracy across the globe.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Democratic capitalism is in crisis. But if we are looking to salvage liberalism’s ideals, we should look to the course set by postwar Germany. It offers powerful lessons for the present.
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.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Does the author of the nineteenth-century classic, Democracy in America, still matter?
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
A review of The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
Liberal democracy has drawn its share of false indictments. But like any form of government, it has genuine weaknesses that can at best be managed. How well liberals navigate these inherent tensions may help determine the future of freedom.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Robert Michels’s classic work on the “iron law of oligarchy” can help us to understand why there is so much dissatisfaction with representative democracy.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
Anticorruption has become universally accepted as a norm; that may tell us something about why it struggles in practice.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
At present, the key struggle for the future of liberal democracy appears as if it will be unfolding among parties and thinkers on the right.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Thirty years ago in Central and Eastern Europe, belief in an open society and a sense of reasserted national and indeed European identity seemed to go hand-in-hand. But that was then.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
Across the West, economic, demographic, and cultural shifts have spurred the rise of populists who embrace majoritarianism and popular sovereignty while showing little commitment to constitutionalism and individual liberty.
January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1
A review of The Anglo-American Tradition of Liberty: A View from Europe by João Carlos Espada.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
A review of Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
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.
July 2013, Volume 24, Issue 3
The widely hailed writings of Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani, including his latest book, The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World, reveal a remarkably narrow and Manichean worldview.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
A review of The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama.
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
A review of Conversations with Tocqueville: The Global Democratic Revolution in the Twenty-First Century edited by Aurelian Craiutu and Sheldon Gellar and Tocqueville et les frontières de la démocratie by Nestor Capdevila.
October 2006, Volume 17, Issue 4
We should neither be too hasty to discount the prodemocratic political ferment in the Arab world, nor be fooled into thinking that Islamist groups will play a constructive part in democratic transitions.
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
A review of Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy, by John Dunn
October 2002, Volume 13, Issue 4
A review of Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism by Joshua Muravchik.
January 2000, Volume 11, Issue 1
The Editors’ introduction to “Democracy in the World.”
January 2000, Volume 11, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
October 1998, Volume 9, Issue 4
A review of After 1989: Morals, Revolution, and Civil Society, by Ralf Dahrendorf.
April 1998, Volume 9, Issue 2
A review of Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies, by Ronald Inglehart.
January 1998, Volume 9, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
January 1998, Volume 9, Issue 1
A review of Democracy’s Victory and Crisis, edited by Axel Hadenius.
October 1997, Volume 8, Issue 4
Read the full essay here.
July 1997, Volume 8, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1997, Volume 8, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
April 1997, Volume 8, Issue 2
A review of Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe, by Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan.
January 1997, Volume 8, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
October 1996, Volume 7, Issue 4
Read the full essay here.
October 1996, Volume 7, Issue 4
A review of Enlightenment’s Wake: Politics and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age, by John Gray and An Intellectual History of Liberalism, by Pierre Manet.
October 1996, Volume 7, Issue 4
A review of Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America, edited by Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully.
July 1996, Volume 7, Issue 3
A review of Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes, by Giovanni Sartori.
July 1996, Volume 7, Issue 3
A review of Political Legitimacy in Southeast Asia: The Quest for Moral Authority, edited by Muthiah Alagappa.
April 1996, Volume 7, Issue 2
A review of Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, by Francis Fukuyama.
October 1995, Volume 6, Issue 4
Read the full essay here.
April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
Read the full essay here.
April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
A review of The Failure of Presidential Democracy, edited by Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela.
January 1995, Volume 6, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
January 1995, Volume 6, Issue 1
Something happened in America starting in the mid-to-late twentieth century to diminish civic engagement and social connectedness. What could that “something” be? Why were fewer and fewer Americans going the polls, the pews, and town halls?
October 1994, Volume 5, Issue 4
The Editors’ introduction to the Journal of Democracy’s special issue on “Economic Reform and Democracy.”
July 1994, Volume 5, Issue 3
What makes civil society best able to help democracy emerge and endure?
July 1994, Volume 5, Issue 3
A review of The Idea of Civil Society, by Adam B. Seligman and Civil Society and Political Theory, by Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato.
April 1994, Volume 5, Issue 2
A review of Capitalist Development and Democracy, by Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens.
January 1994, Volume 5, Issue 1
A review of Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993, edited by John Dunn.
January 1994, Volume 5, Issue 1
A review of Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe, edited by John Higley and Richard Gunther.
July 1993, Volume 4, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1993, Volume 4, Issue 3
A review of The Ennobling of Democracy: The Challenge of the Postmodern Age, by Thomas Pangle.
April 1993, Volume 4, Issue 2
Read the full essay here.
January 1993, Volume 4, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
July 1992, Volume 3, Issue 3
The Editors’ introduction to the Journal of Democracy‘s special issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy by Joseph Schumpeter.
July 1992, Volume 3, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1992, Volume 3, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1992, Volume 3, Issue 3
Most highly developed societies are also stable democracies. Capitalism and democracy reinforce one another and promote a desire for universal recognition.
April 1992, Volume 3, Issue 2
Read the full essay here.
April 1992, Volume 3, Issue 2
A review of The End of History and the Last Man, by Francis Fukuyama.
Fall 1991, Volume 2, Issue 4
Read the full essay here.
Summer 1991, Volume 2, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
Summer 1991, Volume 2, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
Summer 1991, Volume 2, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
Winter 1991, Volume 2, Issue 1
A review of Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy, by Donald Kagan.
