April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
Indonesians have just elected a former general accused of human-rights abuses, with little respect for democratic institutions. The country’s democracy has not failed, but it may soon be fighting for its life.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
The battle over rights for sexual minorities has divided countries into opposing camps. But autocrats are lashing out with one aim: countering the liberal international order.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
Autocrats have found a new way to turn citizens against liberal democracy: convincing them that LGBTIQ rights, granted and protected in much of the West, pose a threat to their nation and its values.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
There have been numerous waves of protest against the country’s corrupt theocracy. This time is different. It is a movement to reclaim life. Whatever happens, there is no going back.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
It is imperative that artificial intelligence evolve in ways that respect human rights. Happily, standards found in landmark UN documents can help with the task of making AI serve rather than subjugate human beings.
April 2017, Volume 28, Issue 2
In 2016, established democracies figured prominently on the list of countries experiencing declines in freedom, while emboldened autocracies stepped up their repression at home and interference abroad.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
A few years ago, Europe’s most important intergovernmental human-rights institution, the Council of Europe, crossed over to the dark side. Like Dorian Gray, the dandy in Oscar Wilde’s story of moral decay, it sold its soul. And as with Dorian Gray, who retained his good looks, the inner decay of the Council of Europe remains hidden from view.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
Rwanda under Paul Kagame has been hailed for its visionary leadership, economic progress, and reforms in education, health, and agriculture. Yet the regime’s autocratic rule, human-rights abuses, persecution of the Hutu majority, and growing inequality point to an ominous future.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
The year 2013 featured unprecedented strides for gay rights in some parts of the world, particularly in Western Europe and the Americas, but also startling setbacks elsewhere, as in Russia and some countries in Africa.
January 2013, Volume 24, Issue 1
The response of the Chinese state (and of Chinese society at large) to the problems of the country’s periphery—Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia, as well as hundreds of counties, prefectures, and townships in Sichuan, Qinghai, Yunnan, and other areas—is piling more tension and misery upon the populations there, but it is not undermining state power.
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
In emerging democracies and postconflict countries, improved policing is almost always urgently required. Yet international-assistance efforts in this area pay almost no attention to the crucial need to ensure that the new-model police are not only effective, but democracy-friendly.
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
Iran’s massive protest movement against June’s electoral coup is now moving into a new phase. What are its prospects?
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
The Islamic Republic is struggling, with the Revolutionary Guard Corps more and more the only thing propping it up.
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
When students and other rights activists decided to seize a tactical opening that the regime cynically offered them during the 2009 campaign, they were making a choice that was even more fateful than they knew.
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
Latin American social policy has at times worked backwards, widening rather than narrowing economic and social inequalities. But new conditional cash-transfer programs seem to be producing positive outcomes.
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
In the two decades since the Tiananmen massacre, China has enjoyed rapid economic growth and a measure of political stability. Recently, however, various forms of popular protest have been increasing. Do they represent a potentially serious threat to CCP rule?
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. Despite the suppression of the Tiananmen Uprising of 1989, popular protest in China has by all accounts escalated steadily over the ensuing two decades. These protests have spread to virtually every sector of Chinese society, prompting more than a few observers to proclaim the emergence of a “rising rights consciousness”…
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. The twenty years since 1989 have brought two major developments in worker activism. First, whereas workers were part of the mass uprising in the Tiananmen Movement, there is today hardly any sign of mobilization that transcends class or regional lines. Second, a long-term decline in worker power at the point…
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
A review of Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention by Gary J. Bass.
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
The opposition within Cuba has become more diverse as well as more unified, and the regime, despite its enduring capacity for repression, is showing signs of underlying weakness.
April 2008, Volume 19, Issue 2
In recent years, European aid in support of political development has been on the rise. What kind of programs have these funds been supporting, and where are they being spent?
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
Since the 1990s, Moroccan civil society groups have been proliferating, and they are increasingly influential in addressing society-wide matters including the rights of women, ethnic minorities, and the poor.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
Senegal's 2000 presidential election marked the end of forty years of one-party rule. But the reign of President Wade has been a severe disappointment, dashing hopes for democratic consolidation. *This is a corrected text of the print and original online version of this essay, portions of which drew heavily on Tarik Dahou and Vincent Foucher's…
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
Observers who focus too much on elections have failed to grasp the maturation of Iranian civil society, even as hard-liners have come to dominate the government.
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
Where indigenous peoples constitute a smaller share of the electorate, their recent inclusion denotes a more generalized opening of the political system to excluded and vulnerable sectors of society.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
For more than two decades, President Yoweri Museveni has been building an authoritarian regime that answers closely to his personal will.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
No one should underrate the will and skill that the ruling Chinese Communist Party will put into keeping its grip on power.
July 2007, Volume 18, Issue 3
China is gradually changing. In the coming years, the pursuit of individual dignity and human rights will increasingly come to the fore.
January 2006, Volume 17, Issue 1
The gains for freedom in the Middle East were the most significant seen since the Freedom House survey began in 1972.
July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3
If Iraq is to become the free and self-governing country that an overwhelming majority of its citizens want it to be, a "useable past" made accessible by historical memory will be vital.
January 2005, Volume 16, Issue 1
Modest progress in the muslim-majority countries is complemented by mass mobilization for democracy and freedom in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia ranks as Not Free for the first time since the fall of communism.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
Freedom has always been integral to democracy. How to guard liberty is a question every democratic regime must answer.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
Democracy requires robust political equality, but the persistence of social, economic and cultural inequality complicates its realization.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
A review of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa by Howard W. French.
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
A review of Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: The Citizenry and the Breakdown of Democracy by Nancy Bermeo.
July 2001, Volume 12, Issue 3
The evidence clearly points to the growing incorporation into international law of the right to democratic governance.
April 2001, Volume 12, Issue 2
Despite recent progress in the government’s negotiations with rebel groups, Colombia’s problems remain acute: continued violence, growing human rights abuses, severe income inequality, and a depressed economy.
October 2000, Volume 11, Issue 4
An Egyptian civil-society leader responds to the closing down of his organization and the allegations against him by state prosecutors.
October 2000, Volume 11, Issue 4
Once again, a reformist electoral victory has been followed by political setbacks. The key to understanding this paradoxical pattern lies in the unique theocratic constitutional structure of the Islamic Republic.
July 2000, Volume 11, Issue 3
Democracy is spreading everywhere except in the Arab world. Arab elections are an immense masquerade. Corrupt dictatorships seek to stifle freedom of thought and to control the flow of information.
July 2000, Volume 11, Issue 3
One of the greatest obstacles to democratic consolidation in Turkey has been the country's treatment of its Kurdish citizens. The root of the problem lies in the very nature of the Turkish state, which confuses unity with uniformity.
July 2000, Volume 11, Issue 3
As the experience of Latin America makes clear, a strong civil society is not necessarily a democratic one. Democratic deficits within civil society jeopardize its ability to perform its proper social functions.
April 2000, Volume 11, Issue 2
A country's political regime, regardless of its level of development, affects its social performance. Fewer children die in democracies than in dictatorships.
April 2000, Volume 11, Issue 2
A major question in the consolidation of Eastern Europe’s new democracies is whether women will participate fully in the political process. One key indicator is the representation of women in the region’s parliaments.
January 2000, Volume 11, Issue 1
For Tocqueville, democracy’s inevitability is not merely providential. Economic growth, property rights, technology, conflict, and enlightenment all push the march toward democracy. Such a powerful idea cannot be bound to a single religious community.
October 1998, Volume 9, Issue 4
Read the full essay here.
April 1997, Volume 8, Issue 2
The Editors’ introduction to “Hong Kong, Singapore, and ‘Asian Values.'”
April 1997, Volume 8, Issue 2
Read the full essay here.
January 1997, Volume 8, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
Read the full essay here.
October 1993, Volume 4, Issue 4
The Editors’ introduction to “The Challenge of Ethnic Conflict.”
July 1993, Volume 4, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1993, Volume 4, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1993, Volume 4, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1993, Volume 4, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1993, Volume 4, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
January 1993, Volume 4, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
January 1993, Volume 4, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
Winter 1990, Volume 1, Issue 1
The following text is based upon remarks presented by Wuer Kaixi in Washington, D.C. on 2 August 1989 at a meeting cosponsored by the Congressional Human Rights Foundation and the National Endowment for Democracy.
Winter 1990, Volume 1, Issue 1
Our goal at present is the thorough modernization of China. We all have a compelling sense of the need for this. There is a widespread feeling of dissatisfaction with the status quo among people in all walks of life.
