As Tanzania’s October 2025 sham election got underway, protests broke out across the country, sparking a brutal regime crackdown. That brief reign of terror marks a turning point for both the ruling party and the Tanzanian people. There is no going back.
Days after the election and no one knows who the next president will be. Even worse, none of the likely winners offer much hope for the country’s democracy.
The South American country may be on the verge of real change. But it isn’t going to descend into civil-war chaos like Libya. It will be difficult, imperfect, and far better than what Venezuelans have had to endure.
Last month Rio’s police conducted the deadliest police operation in Brazil’s history, killing 117 people. It is one episode in a long history of state violence. Not only are such iron-fisted methods ineffective, they pose a danger for democracy itself.
Faith in democracy is fading, as citizens increasingly find self-rule slow, tired, and opaque. It’s time for democratic institutions to lean into the tech revolution. Digital governance isn’t a gadget; it’s democracy’s lifeline.
Autocrats around the world have been innovating new ways to steal elections, manipulating rules and revising laws to keep themselves in power for as long as possible.
Nicolás Maduro’s regime has long relied on support from China, Cuba, Russia, and other authoritarians to stay afloat. But now that the United States is stepping up the pressure, will his fellow autocrats leave him high and dry?
Why are would-be strongmen so unlikely to succeed in undoing democracy? What steps can we take to protect democracies from advanced AI? Should we be worried about the Gulf states’ growing influence?
Cameroonians just reelected the 92-year-old Paul Biya in an election that voters rightly view with suspicion. The tensions under the surface don’t bode well for the country or its people.
With democracy in trouble across the globe, it’s easy to forget how and why a steady succession of dictatorships fell in the last half of the twentieth century. Democracy’s strengths, and its record, should give cause for hope at a moment when autocracy appears ascendent.
Last week, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to adopt a resolution condemning the United States’ “commercial and financial embargo” against Cuba. The outcome came as no surprise.
President Hassan promised Tanzanians freedom, transparency, and reform. Instead, she has delivered repression, violence, and arrests as she bars anyone who dares challenge her.
When María Corina Machado was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize earlier this month, she made sure to emphasize that her accomplishments were not hers alone — they were shared with countless other activists agitating for democracy in Venezuela.
America’s promotion of democracy has always been highly imperfect. But the superiority of democracy—and the ideas that animate it—make it essential to securing America’s future.
The Cuban regime has created a narrative of victimhood as a smoke screen for its gross incompetence and corruption. I should know. I once believed it, too.
María Corina Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize has made her the face of the struggle for democracy in Venezuela. But throughout the opposition, women are the backbone of the fight against Nicolás Maduro’s corrupt authoritarian regime.
When democracies are clearly outperforming autocracies in so many ways, why the widespread disenchantment with democratic government? Why are democracy and human-rights activists across the globe turning to Bitcoin?
In Bolivia’s presidential runoff on Sunday, center-right senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira defeated right-wing former interim president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga.
It’s impossible to make peace with someone who doesn’t want it. But if there is any chance of stopping the killing in Ukraine, this is the path forward.
The election of Rodrigo Paz Pereira as Bolivia’s new president signals the end of the MAS era. But it is more than an end to Evo Morales’s leftist party. It showcases how Indigenous political power has transformed the country’s political landscape.
