Latin America Erupts: Ecuador’s Return to the Past
Reformist leaders offered order, stability, and progress. But the country’s deep-seated political pathologies have proven far more durable than their promises.
July 2021
Volume 32, Issue 3
Latin America Erupts
Latin America Erupts: Millennial Authoritarianism in El Salvador
Nayib Bukele has developed a blend of political tactics that combines populist appeals and classic autocratic behavior with a polished social-media brand. It poses a dire threat to the country’s democratic institutions.
Latin America Erupts: Re-founding Chile
Chilean democracy has opted to throw off a constitution written by a dictator, and has chosen an assembly to craft a new one. Can Chile begin anew?
Latin America Erupts: Peru Goes Populist
Instead of ending the instability that has seen the country have four presidents in three years, Peru’s presidential election has left the country on a razor-thin edge.
Latin America Erupts: When Does Competitive Authoritarianism Take Root?
It is not easy to build a stable hybrid regime. Elected autocrats may try, but comparing Bolivia, Brazil, and Venezuela shows how difficult it is to succeed.
Latin America Erupts: The Danger of Democratic Delinquency
Recent high-profile scandals have laid bare persistent shortcomings of Latin American democracy that, if unaddressed, could prove fatal.
How Personalist Politics Is Changing Democracies
Once mostly found in authoritarian regimes, personalism is now putting established democracies in peril—a trend that digital technology will likely make worse.
How Authoritarians Inflate Their Image
Authoritarian propaganda and manipulation are leading democratic publics to see foreign autocracies as more powerful than they actually are.
China at the UN: Choking Civil Society
Beijing is using red tape, procedural rules, and a little help from its authoritarian allies to strangle NGOs seeking to participate in the world body.
Africans’ Durable Demand for Democracy
The latest survey wave finds Africans with a still-robust demand for democratic governance, unblunted by covid or Chinese influence. Can governments deliver?
The Future of Platform Power
The Future of Platform Power: Quarantining Misinformation
With or without middleware, the basic challenge of responding to bad actors online remains.
The Future of Platform Power: Fixing the Business Model
To stop surveillance capitalism, take aim at the targeted advertising that fuels it.
The Future of Platform Power: Reining in Big Tech
Comprehensive regulation can strengthen user rights in the face of tech firms’ exploitative practices.
The Future of Platform Power: Making Middleware Work
Bringing middleware from theory to practice will require addressing thorny questions about revenue, cost, feasibility, and privacy.
The Future of Platform Power: Solving for a Moving Target
Despite the challenges, middleware offers a legally and politically feasible answer to platforms’ influence over speech.
How the Putin Regime Really Works
Is Russia formidable? The answer, two new books argue, lies in the highly centralized inner workings of Putin’s autocracy.
Election Watch
Reports on elections in Algeria, Benin, Cape Verde, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Djibouti, Mongolia.
Documents on Democracy
Excerpts from: Maria Ressa’s comments on social media at the 2021 Copenhagen Democracy Summit; NGO statement on the arrest of Algerian human-rights defenders; statement denouncing the dismissal of Constitutional Court judges and the attorney general; letter on the sentencing of a Saudi man for allegedly running a satirical Twitter account.