April 2025, Volume 36, Issue 2
India’s New Minority Politics
The ruling BJP has long sought to sideline Indian Muslims. But even the opposition is opting to exclude them politically. Muslims’ chances at greater representation remain dim.
Region: South Asia
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
The Return of Politics in Bangladesh
The student movement that toppled Bangladesh’s longtime autocratic ruler wants more than a return to the old order. These young revolutionaries are seizing a chance to start anew. How and by whom will the country’s future be decided?
January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
Sri Lanka’s Peaceful Revolution
The 2024 election led to a dramatic changing of the guard, ushering in new political leaders and ousting dynastic elites. Can a new president correct the corruption and misgovernance of the past?
July 2024, Volume 35, Issue 3
The Rise of India’s Second Republic
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.
July 2024, Volume 35, Issue 3
Pakistan’s Coming Crisis
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.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
Hindu Nationalism and the New Jim Crow
While the histories of white supremacy and Hindu supremacy are different, their political objectives are much the same. The BJP is forging a regime of exclusion and oppression as brutal as the Jim Crow South. Only India’s voters can reverse its advance.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
How to Stop India’s Authoritarian Slide
The BJP is ruling with a heavier hand than ever before, attacking opponents and silencing critics. Ironically, these may be the ideal conditions for a democratic revival—if the opposition seizes the moment.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
Does Democracy Have a Future in Pakistan?
The schism between Pakistan’s military establishment and former prime minister Imran Khan marks a new era of instability. Is the country experiencing the rise of an autocratic deep state or the fall of authoritarian populism?
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Is India Still a Democracy?
In this symposium, the Journal of Democracy brings together leading scholars of India to perform a biopsy on the state of that country’s fragile democracy, and to offer us a prognosis for its future.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Why India’s Democracy Is Dying
Under Narendra Modi, India is maintaining the trappings of democracy while it increasingly harasses the opposition, attacks minorities, and stifles dissent. It can still reverse course, but the damage is mounting.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
The Authoritarian Roots of India’s Democracy
To say that Indian democracy is backsliding misunderstands the country’s history and the challenges it faces: A certain authoritarianism is embedded in India’s constitution and political structures.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Modi’s Undeclared Emergency
Since the beginning of the second Modi government, an emboldened BJP has launched a steady, comprehensive, and unprecedented attack on civil liberties, personal rights, and free speech across India.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
The Exaggerated Death of Indian Democracy
It is true that politics under the BJP is a break from the past. But attempts to reduce the country’s present condition to democratic backsliding misunderstands the moment and is an injustice to India’s journey as a democracy.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
Why India’s Political Elites Are to Blame
India has a long history of elites acting undemocratically. But the current government’s attacks on the media, arrests of opposition, and discriminatory laws are deeper and more alarming.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
How India’s Ruling Party Erodes Democracy
The BJP has won two successive national elections, but it refuses to respect the rights of Muslims. Is democracy on a collision course with liberalism?
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Sri Lanka’s Agony
A group of corrupt authoritarian powerholders has impoverished Sri Lanka and even brought starvation to the island. But behind their misrule lies the deeper and longer-term problem of unconstrained majority rule.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
The Collapse of Afghanistan
The Afghan republic’s destruction was sewn into its founding. The international community’s missteps are more responsible for its failure than the country’s supposedly endemic corruption.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
India’s Endangered Democracy
Shortcomings in governance and electoral administration may be accelerating India’s slide to autocracy. Were these flaws embedded in Indian democracy from the start?
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Sri Lanka: The Return to Ethnocracy
The return to power, via elections, of the Rajapaksa family signals the consolidation of a Sinhalese Buddhist ethnocracy. But there are reasons to hope it will not take a turn toward full despotism.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
The Three Faces of the Indian State
India’s Constitution has long seemed stable, but the rise of an ethnic, absolute, and opaque state is changing the constitutional order in momentous and disturbing ways.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
Covid vs. Democracy: India’s Illiberal Remedy
India’s covid-19 response has accelerated the country’s slide toward competitive authoritarian rule by centralizing decision making, undermining federalism, and providing new pretexts for stifling dissent.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
The Bangladesh Paradox
Despite impressive achievements in socioeconomic development, Bangladesh has struggled with establishing democracy and is now effectively under one-party rule.
January 2020, Volume 31, Issue 1
An Illiberal India?
The country’s hold on electoral democracy is firm, but its claim still to be a liberal democracy is increasingly dubious.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
Modi Consolidates Power: Electoral Vibrancy, Mounting Liberal Deficits
The ruling BJP and the prime minister who leads it are now even stronger in the wake of their sweeping 2019 election victory. Voting puts the strength of Indian democracy on display, but the turn away from constitutional liberalism and toward Hindu majoritarianism is alarming.
October 2019, Volume 30, Issue 4
Modi Consolidates Power: Leveraging Welfare Politics
To a degree that is still not widely appreciated, the BJP has replaced Congress as India’s party of welfarism. The carefully crafted political persona of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “leader of the poor” has been crucial to this shift.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
India Under Modi: Threats to Pluralism
In the world’s largest democracy, liberalism is in retreat, as evidenced by a pattern of assaults on minorities, press freedom, and the independence of key cultural and intellectual institutions.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
India Under Modi: The Establishment Overreacts
Charges that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party threaten liberal-democratic safeguards are best understood as the overheated reaction of an insular elite that is still struggling to come to terms with its democratic displacement from power.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
Pakistan: Voting Under Military Tutelage
With its recent electoral turnover of power, Pakistan seemingly passed a milestone of democratic consolidation. But beneath the surface, power remains where it long has been—with the military.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Enrolling India
A review of How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise by Ornit Shani.
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
India’s Democracy at 70: Growth, Inequality, and Nationalism
Of late, Indian democracy has been confronted with a new political economy. Strong economic growth over the last three decades has generated the world’s fourth-largest collection of dollar billionaires and the third-largest middle class, both for the first time in Indian history, while still leaving the single largest concentration of the poor behind. In a…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
India’s Democracy at 70: Toward a Hindu State?
Read the full essay here. While the Constitution of India has not been amended after the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in 2014, BJP-ruled states have passed laws which have reflected the Hindu-nationalist ideology of this party, including those known as “beef bans.” These laws and the activities of Hindu nationalist…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
India’s Democracy at 70: The Federalist Compromise
Read the full essay here. The institutionalized recognition of diversity within India’s federal system has been crucial for democratic consolidation. Substantial decentralization since the 1990s has made state governments central actors in shaping economic activity and national-election outcomes. However, since his rise to national office in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has projected an image…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
India’s Democracy at 70: The Shifting Party Balance
Read the full essay here. This article reviews the state of India’s two major national parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Indian National Congress (INC or Congress party), seventy years after independence in 1947 and three years after the BJP won a majority in the 2014 national election. The article looks at whether…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
India’s Democracy at 70: The Impact of Instant Universal Suffrage
Read the full essay here. When the authors of India’s Constitution took the extraordinarily bold step of establishing universal suffrage, thus giving the right to vote to all adult citizens, India became the world’s first large democracy to adopt universal adult suffrage from its very inception. We call India’s move “instant universal suffrage,” and distinguish…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
India’s Democracy at 70: The Disputed Role of the Courts
Read the full essay here. India’s Supreme Court has played the role of a countermajoritarian check but has also flirted with populism. This essay examines three aspects of India’s higher judiciary: the struggle between the judiciary and the other branches over “custody” of the Constitution; the question of judicial independence and who has the right…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
India’s Democracy at 70: Civil Society and Its Shadow
Read the full essay here. The relationship between democracy and civil society is not straightforward. Angry crowds can stymie the functioning of the democratic process, institutions, and governance. Drawing on recent Indian examples, this article sets out a typology of civil society movements in order to assess their impact on Indian democracy. It shows how…
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
India’s Democracy at 70: The Troublesome Security State
Read the full essay here. Seven decades after gaining its independence from the British Empire, India retains all the hallmarks of a functioning democracy: It holds reasonably free and fair elections, has a mostly independent judiciary plus a largely free press, and enjoys a robust and growing civil society. Yet thanks to India’s colonial inheritance…
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
A Win for Democracy in Sri Lanka
The surprising electoral defeat of President Mahinda Rajapaksa in January 2015 was reinforced by his failed comeback in August parliamentary elections.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
India, Sri Lanka, and the Majoritarian Danger
Does the electoral victory of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party signal that the world’s largest democracy may be following Sri Lanka toward a politics where the will of the majority is exalted above minority rights?
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
India’s Watershed Vote: Behind Modi’s Victory
India’s sixteenth general election ushered in a new era in the country’s politics, putting Narendra Modi and the BJP firmly in charge. What accounts for the sharp swing away from the long-dominant Congress party?
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
India’s Watershed Vote: Hindu Nationalism in Power?
Will India under the BJP see a period of renewed communal violence, or will Hindu-nationalist politicians be reined in by constitutional constraints and their desire to stay in power?
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
India’s Watershed Vote: What It Means for the Economy
Modi promised “good days” to aspiring young Indians, and they voted for him in droves. But he is off to a slow start in carrying out the economic reforms necessary to ensure that better days lie ahead.
October 2014, Volume 25, Issue 4
India’s Watershed Vote: The Risks Ahead
Will the Modi government focus on the economy, or will it seek to implement a transformational Hindu-nationalist agenda?
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Shifting Tides in South Asia: India and Its Neighbors
Home to about a quarter of the world’s people, South Asia presents a murky and not very encouraging picture when it comes to democracy.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Shifting Tides in South Asia: Renewed Hope in Pakistan?
Long prone to coups, Pakistan now for the first time has seen a freely elected government duly serve out its full term and peacefully hand the reins of power to another.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Shifting Tides in South Asia: Bangladesh’s Failed Election
After two decades of elections that produced a number of alternations in power, an impasse over “caretaker government” crippled the 2014 contest and has made single-party rule all too real a prospect.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Shifting Tides in South Asia: Reform and Resistance in Nepal
After a decade of upheavals, Nepal elected in November 2013 its Second Constituent Assembly, but it is still unclear whether elites will accept reforms that empower wider sections of society.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Shifting Tides in South Asia: Sri Lanka’s Postwar Descent
With the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in a 26-year civil war, Sri Lanka had a chance for genuine reconciliation, but that chance is being squandered by the government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Shifting Tides in South Asia: Bhutan’s Deferential Democracy
An opposition victory in this Himalayan kingdom’s second elections in 2013 showed that surprises are possible even in a democratic transition that has been guided from above by the monarchy.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Shifting Tides in South Asia: Tumult in the Maldives
After a brief era of political opening, the authoritarian old guard has ridden a dubiously conducted presidential election back into power.
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
What Can Constitutions Do? The Afghan Case
January 2014 marks the tenth anniversary of Afghanistan’s constitution. In what areas has it succeeded or failed? Judging by its achievements with respect to four midrange goals, the document has a record that is decidedly mixed.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Separated at Birth?
A review of The Promise of Power: The Origins of Democracy in India and Autocracy in Pakistan by Maya Tudor.
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy: Growth and Hunger in India
Despite India’s impressive achievements in democracy, economic development, and the rule of law, it remains home to a third of the world’s poor. Although it has successfully averted famine since independence, it still struggles to prevent chronic hunger.
January 2006, Volume 17, Issue 1
Soldiers and Islamists in Pakistan
Read the full essay here. A review of Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military, by Hussain Haqqani.
January 2002, Volume 13, Issue 1
South Asia Faces the Future
The Editors’ introduction to “South Asia Faces the Future.”
October 2001, Volume 12, Issue 4
How Burma Could Democratize
How can Burma peacefully move away from military rule and toward a stable democratic system based on sound electoral and federal arrangements?
April 2001, Volume 12, Issue 2
Revisiting Florida 2000: Insights from India
Read the full essay here.
July 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3
India Defies the Odds: Enduring Another Election
Indians appear to love the practice of democracy so much that they are in danger of overdoing it. In February and March of 1998, the world's largest democracy held its twelfth general election since gaining its independence a half-century ago. The voting was largely fair and peaceful. New, right-of-center rulers led by the Bharatiya Janata…
July 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3
India Defies the Odds: Making Federalism Work
To understand how India’s democracy works, and how it manages demands from social groups for greater power, resources, autonomy, and respect, it is essential to understand Indian federalism. That, in turn, requires us to address two questions. First, why have relations between New Delhi and the various state governments (there are at present 25) usually…
July 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3
India Defies the Odds: Why Democracy Survives
India has long baffled theorists of democracy. Democratic theory holds that poverty, widespread illiteracy, and a deeply hierarchical social structure are inhospitable conditions for the functioning of democracy. Yet except for 18 months in 1975-77, India has maintained its democratic institutions ever since it became independent of Britain in 1947. Over those five decades, there…
July 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3
India’s Cold-Eyed Introspection
A review of Fifty Years of Indian Parliamentary Democracy, 1947-1997, by the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
January 1998, Volume 9, Issue 1
India: Running the World’s Biggest Elections
Read the full essay here.
October 1993, Volume 4, Issue 4
The Challenge of Ethnic Conflict: India—The Dilemmas of Diversity
Read the full essay here.
July 1992, Volume 3, Issue 3
India: Liberalism vs. Nationalism
A review of Democracy and Discontent: India’s Growing Crisis of Governability, by Atul Kohli and The Politics of India Since Independence, by Paul Brass.
January 1992, Volume 3, Issue 1
Burma’s Quest for Democracy: An Introduction
Read the full essay here.
Did Muhammad Yunus Sign Up for Mission Impossible?
The famed economist and Nobel laureate is charged with repairing what remains of Bangladesh’s democracy. But is someone even as accomplished as Yunus up to the task?
India Remains More Democratic Than Not
For all the warning signs, India held the line after a decade of backsliding.
The Man Who Would Oust a Dynasty
A few years ago Anura Kumara Dissanayake led a struggling political party with bleak prospects. Now he is Sri Lanka’s newly elected president. The hardest work may still lie ahead.
The BJP Claimed This Financial Tool Would Clean Up Indian Politics. It Did the Opposite.
“Electoral bonds” were supposed to make political contributions transparent. Instead they became a form of legalized corruption, funneling huge sums and making the political playing field even more uneven.
Why This Election Is India’s Most Important
Voters are choosing more than the parties and politicians who will represent them. It is something more basic: The future of India’s secular democracy is on the ballot.
Inside Pakistan’s Deeply Flawed Election
The country’s polls were marred by delayed results and charges of rigging. Worse, they might plunge Pakistan into an even deeper political crisis.
The Most Important Elections You Just Missed
India just held five state elections that did more than declare winners and losers: They offered a roadmap for how to win the national contest in the world’s most populous democracy next year.