July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Delegative presidencies have not been a problem in post-Pinochet Chile, but the rise of mass protest movements suggests that the country’s new democracy has gone too far in the direction of demobilizing society.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
President Alvaro Uribe’s time in office was marked by disturbing trends that included a spike in extrajudicial killings and an attempt to overthrow term limits, but the country’s institutions of horizontal accountability proved remarkably resilient.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
After spending the 1990s coping with an overweening president, Peru settled into a more sedate style of politics, but it is one in which parties barely exist, voters feel unhappy with their elected chief executives despite strong economic growth, and technocracy rather than democracy is the key mode of decision making.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Latin America has not been witnessing a general trend toward authoritarianism, but accountability—whether horizontal, vertical, or both—has suffered in some countries, and at times has done so as a side-effect or unexpected cost of what must be considered signal democratic advances toward noble goals such as greater social and political inclusion.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Long a standout example of consensus-based politics, prosperous Switzerland has now become a mixed democracy with a good deal of polarization and uncertain prospects.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
A review of Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up by Philip N. Howard
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
Seymour Martin Lipset argued that economic development would enlarge the middle class, and that the middle class would support democracy. To what extent will this general proposition prove true of China?
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
Venezuela’s competitive authoritarian regime now confronts a highly mobilized opposition with a large majority in the legislature. What are the prospects for successful democratic change amidst a deteriorating security situation and an economy in freefall?
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
With a skillfully conveyed message of managerial competence and an electorate disenchanted by a floundering economy and the outgoing incumbent’s confrontational style, Mauricio Macri demonstrated that a non-Peronist can win Argentina’s presidency.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
Public anger at revelations of widespread corruption, along with the rising cost of coalition politics, has brought Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff to the brink of impeachment. Yet the crisis has also revealed the strength of the country’s law-enforcement and judicial institutions.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
The long-ruling PRI staged a comeback in 2012 behind a young president touting a reformist agenda, but Enrique Peña Nieto’s early successes have been eclipsed by government underperformance and a continued failure to restore public security.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are weighed down by high crime, sluggish economies, and heavy reliance on remittances. And when significant political change has taken place, it has resulted in frightening political fragmentation.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
In 2015, the tenth consecutive year of decline in global freedom, the world was battered by overlapping crises, spurring harsh authoritarian crackdowns and revealing the leading democracies’ lack of conviction.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy swept Burma’s November 2015 elections. Will the new NLD-led government be able to live up to high expectations that it will deliver better governance, national reconciliation, and some form of federalism?
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
Even though Burma’s military seems to have accepted the NLD’s stunning election victory, it can still use an array of constitutional provisions to hamstring the incoming NLD government.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
What does public opinion tell us about Burma’s longer-term prospects for democracy? The Asian Barometer Survey reveals contradictory attitudes regarding democracy and democratic values among the citizens of Burma.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
In power since 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seemed as if it might be losing its hold when Turkish voters went to the polls in June 2015. Yet that “hung election” gave way to another contest in November, and the AKP came roaring back.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
Ten of the world’s twelve largest countries are “electoral democracies.” Yet a look at politics beneath the national level reveals patterns of illiberalism that mark out a new frontier for democratic research and activism.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
A review of Making Waves: Democratic Contention in Europe and Latin America Since the Revolutions of 1848 by Kurt Weyland.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
Old-fashioned military coups and blatant election-day fraud are becoming mercifully rarer these days, but other, subtler forms of democratic regression are a growing problem that demands more attention.
