January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
The Fear of Shrinking Numbers
Illiberalism can drive away a country’s young people, and with them the future.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Explaining Eastern Europe: Imitation and Its Discontents
For countries emerging from communism, the post-1989 imperative to “be like the West” has generated discontent and even a “return of the repressed,” as the region feels old nationalist stirrings and new demographic pressures.
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
The Specter Haunting Europe: The Unraveling of the Post-1989 Order
What some had thought would be the “end of history” has instead turned out to be the “new world disorder.” Democratic liberalism may have no new ideological rival, but older identities are powerfully reasserting themselves.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
What’s Wrong with East-Central Europe? Liberalism’s Failure to Deliver
Is democracy in East-Central Europe suffering because of a lack of liberal zeal among elites, as Dawson and Hanley contend, or is it because liberal policies have failed to deliver on their promises?
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
From Politics to Protest
The protests that have been erupting around the world may signal the twilight of both the idea of revolution and the notion of political reformism.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
European Disintegration? A Fraying Union
Contrary to the expectations of some democratic theorists, the EU will not collapse because of the “democratic deficit” of European institutions. Nor will it be saved by the democratic mobilization of civil society. Paradoxically, it is widespread disillusionment with democracy—the shared belief that national governments are powerless in the face of global markets—that may be…
July 2012, Volume 23, Issue 3
Putinism Under Siege: An Autopsy of Managed Democracy
Although they have quieted down as quickly as they flared up, the clamorous protests that followed the dishonest Russian legislative elections in December 2011 have essentially destroyed Putin’s regime, the infamous “managed democracy.”
April 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2
Paradoxes of the New Authoritarianism
Why are the unfree regimes of the former Soviet world proving so durable? A lack of ideology and—perhaps surprisingly—a degree of openness are proving to be not so much problems for authoritarianism as bulwarks of it.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
Twenty Years of Postcommunism: Deepening Dissatisfaction
Today, twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is a growing ambiguity about the historical significance of 1989 and about the state of democracy in Europe (particularly Central Europe).
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Reading Russia: The Rules of Survival
The image of Putin’s Russia as an authoritarian oil state attracts many Western analysts because it seems to carry a promise that falling oil prices will bring regime change. Thus, many were convinced that a major economic crisis would force the Kremlin either to open up the system and allow more pluralism and competition, or…
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
Is East-Central Europe Backsliding? The Strange Death of the Liberal Consensus
The paradox of East-Central Europe is that the rise of populism is an outcome not of the failures but of the successes of postcommunist liberalism. *This is a corrected text of the print and original online version of this essay, which lacked proper citation for some of its sources. This is the only version that…
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
New Threats to Freedom: Democracy’s “Doubles”
From Putin's Russia to Chávez's Venezuela, regimes that claim to be democracies but act like autocracies are emerging as a major long-term threat to freedom.
April 2004, Volume 15, Issue 2
The Anti-American Century?
The twentieth century has been called "the American century," but it appears that the twenty-first may be dominated by anti-Americanism, an all-purpose ideology that poses a serious obstacle to the progress of democracy.
July 2002, Volume 13, Issue 3
The Balkans: Democracy Without Choices
The gravest challenges facing democracy in the Balkans are problems not of ethnicity or postcommunism, but of citizen disaffection and disillusionment.