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Democracy’s Frontline Defenders
Across the globe, the people who run our elections are being undermined, targeted, and attacked. Here is how to shore them up—and protect democratic institutions, too.
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Across the globe, the people who run our elections are being undermined, targeted, and attacked. Here is how to shore them up—and protect democratic institutions, too.
Vladimir Putin has become a one-stop shop for authoritarians around the world, providing them whatever they need to advance their cause. Democracy’s defenders don’t get the same support — but it’s time for that to change.
Taiwan’s voters rewarded the ruling party with an unprecedented third consecutive term, despite the mainland’s attempts to intimidate. Expect Beijing to find new ways to threaten the democracy off its coast.
There is no clear roadmap. But Poland may be setting out on its first steps in stamping out populism and holding those responsible for the worst violations of the rule of law.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants the public to see his efforts to overhaul the Israeli judiciary as a “reform.” But people have seen it for what it is: a struggle over the very future of democracy itself.
Chinese citizens from Urumqi to Shanghai took to the streets, blank sheets of white paper in hand, to denounce the CCP and call for change. Xi Jinping’s repression and zero-covid lockdowns has united the public in empathy and anger.
Across Latin America, former leaders are keeping a chokehold on their countries’ politics. It’s time their successors break free.
Drawing on their essays in the October 2011 and January 2012 issues of the Journal of Democracy, Andrew Reynolds and John Carey discussed the constitutional and electoral designs chosen by Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt.
March 29, 2012
ABOUT THE EVENT A populist and illiberal tide is gaining strength across the globe, posing a serious threat to liberal democracy. Prominent political scientists and commentators William A. Galston and Yascha Mounk discussed the factors fueling populism’s rise and how democracies can effectively respond. Both Galston and Mounk have written articles addressing these questions that appear in the April…
April 3, 2018
At the Chinese Communist Party’s Twentieth National Congress last week, Xi Jinping secured a third term as Party secretary. But the most important development wasn’t Xi extending his rule or the Party’s elevation of new leaders. Rather, Xi made clear that the era of Chinese economic growth above all else was over. Now the Party’s…
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.
Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash on Sunday. The mullahs may become more repressive in the lead up to the next presidential election. Read about Iran’s most recent wave of unrest, and explore why it may “only [be] a matter of time before a new wave erupts.”
Hungary’s prime minister has been jet-setting across the globe to hobnob with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Donald Trump, while doing his best to provoke European leaders at home. But Orbán’s grandstanding, argues Hungarian writer Sándor Ésik in a new Journal of Democracy online exclusive, is really just an attempt to mask his growing political weaknesses.
Our rising levels of inequality have put its ideals in crisis. These are the simple principles that can help bring it back from the edge.
The democratic icon’s path to prime minister has been tortuous and long. But is Malaysia’s pluralism slipping away precisely when Anwar is getting his shot to lead the nation?
The Venezuelan strongman is attempting to steal the country’s presidential election and daring the people to stop him. But even if military leaders are backing him, Maduro is already weaker than he appears.
Democracy is more resilient than many people realize, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t worrying signs on the horizon.
On 4 June 1989, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of peaceful pro-democracy protesters were killed when the Chinese military opened fire on them in Tiananmen Square. The following are some of our most powerful essays on the meaning of the massacre.
In the 1991 classic, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century, Samuel P. Huntington offered a new way of understanding democracy’s global trajectory. Amid rising global populism and increasingly aggressive authoritarian leaders, has Huntington’s framework outlived its usefulness?