Volume 35, Issue 3
The “crisis” of democracy is a crisis of representation. New parties, some of which are populist in troublingly illiberal ways, are arising from this moment. The danger that they pose is not that they are antidemocratic, but that they are antiliberal.
Democracy is on dangerous ground when its fundamental rules become the main point of political contention. This is where we are today. The truth is that the institutions, not just the players, need to change.
If democracies did a better job “delivering” for their citizens, so the thinking goes, people would not be so ready to embrace antidemocratic alternatives. Not so. This conventional wisdom about democratic backsliding is seldom true and often not accurate at all.
While he did not achieve the sweeping victory many predicted, Narendra Modi led his ruling coalition to a third consecutive victory. In so doing, he is laying the foundation for a new political order in which India is simultaneously more democratic and more illiberal.
Claudia Sheinbaum won Mexico’s presidency in a landslide, but celebration of her election as the country’s first female president was blunted by a deeper concern: Mexico’s deteriorating democracy. In truth, the country’s democratic institutions are highly resilient, and there is reason to be optimistic about what lies ahead.
Pakistani voters sent the military a message in the February elections: They no longer trust the “guardian of the country.” Worse for the generals, they can no longer escape accountability for their corruption and incompetence because everyone knows the military is in charge.
The Salvadoran president’s “iron fist” policies have become one of the most popular political brands in Latin America. But the very reasons that explain his success in El Salvador point to why his repressive approach will not succeed elsewhere.
There is a troubling tension around “people power” in Africa today: African social movements are among the most successful at ousting autocrats. But the continent’s entrenched antidemocratic institutions leave these victories highly vulnerable to reversal.
What some elites in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand portray as “unity” is nothing more than a corrupt bargain meant to cheat voters of their right to decide their country’s political future before a single ballot is cast.
LGBT+ rights are under threat across the globe. Populist leaders stirring fear and animosity for political gain understand how democratic institutions can be harnessed and manipulated to curtail these rights, not enshrine them.
Voters in democratic countries often favor political candidates whose relatives were in office before them. When citizens can choose anyone, why in so many of the world’s democracies do they opt for political dynasties?
A review of The Death of Truth: How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World — and What We Can Do, by Steven Brill, and Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality, by Renée DiResta.
Georgian Luka Gviniashvili on protesting the foreign-agent bill; a speech by Evgenia Kara-Murza to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe; an Iranian rapper denounces Toomaj Salehi’s death sentence; Carl Gershman on Mário Soares and the fiftieth anniversary of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution; a Ugandan political prisoner’s court-martial hearing; María Corina Machado wins the Global…
