April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
What Went Wrong in Hungary
For a time, Hungary looked like it was on the road to democracy. Viktor Orbán’s success derailing it may teach us how to spot a failing democracy before it is too late.
Subject: Institutions
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
Why Malawi’s Democracy Endures
Malawi is a “hard place” for democracy—its economy struggles and state capacity is weak. So how has it avoided the pitfalls that have doomed so many others?
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
Why Democracy Survives Populism
Populism is a mortal threat to liberal democracy, but it rarely hits the mark. The evidence shows that these would-be strongmen require an extraordinary set of circumstances to succeed, which is why they so rarely do.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
How Latin America’s Judges Are Defending Democracy
Can a strong, independent supreme court serve as a guarantor of democracy? In Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, judges are showing a surprising resolve in fending off their countries’ antidemocratic forces.
October 2023, Volume 34, Issue 4
How Erdoğan Rules Through Crisis
Turkey’s economic and political crises have only worsened, but the autocratic president remains in power. His secret? He uses the levers of the state to shield his supporters from harm, while punishing the rest.
July 2023, Volume 34, Issue 3
The End of Village Democracy in China
Under Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party has wound down local elections and reasserted control in the countryside. But putting these burdens on its own shoulders brings new and significant risks for Beijing.
April 2023, Volume 34, Issue 2
Peru: The Danger of Powerless Democracy
Complaining about parties and politicians is common everywhere, but troubled Peru has devolved into a cautionary tale for what a democracy without established parties and professional politicians can look like.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Local Politics and Democratic State-Building
Future state-building missions must learn from the failure of past U.S. interventions: It is critical to work with local power-brokers rather than relying on a centralized state.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Putin’s Inevitable Invasion
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? And why are Russian forces fighting so poorly? The internal logic of its personalist dictatorship is to blame.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
How Viktor Orbán Wins
The case of Hungary shows how autocrats can rig elections legally, using legislative majorities to change the law and neutralize the opposition at every turn, no matter what strategy they adopt.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
How Resilient Is the CCP?
Xi Jinping undercut China’s political norms to cement his own power and brand of rule. But in so doing the “Chairman of Everything” has introduced new vulnerabilities for the regime.
April 2022, Volume 33, Issue 2
A Blueprint for Europe
Europe appeared ready to turn its back on the pessimistic vision of populists—and then Putin upended the continent. A new book may serve as a textbook for progress, or a signpost of democracy’s dashed hopes.
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.
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
Kyrgyzstan’s Poison Parliament
Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary-style constitution was a democratic bright spot in Central Asia. But the legislature quickly devolved into a corrupt bazaar, dimming its democratic prospects.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
How Authoritarians Win When They Lose
Turkey’s ruling party has developed a new tool: When its local candidates lose, it dismisses them and appoints its own choice under a guise that maintains the veneer of democracy. It is an autocratic innovation that may soon spread.
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
The Age of Political Fragmentation
Just as public frustration with democracy is mounting across the West, social turmoil and new technologies are splintering the very political authority governments need to act.
April 2021, Volume 32, Issue 2
China: Totalitarianism’s Long Shadow
China’s fast economic rise has not dented its dictatorship, but Xi Jinping’s neo-Stalinist strategy has unleashed new challenges and tensions for the Communist Party’s long-term prospects for survival.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Japanese Democracy After Shinzo Abe
The retirement of the country’s longest-serving prime minister leaves in place a “continuity administration,” and with it some troubling questions about whether liberal democracy’s “soft guardrails” are being eroded.
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.
April 2020, Volume 31, Issue 2
The Hard Truths of Brexit
The 2019 election ended years of turmoil over the United Kingdom’s relationship with the EU, but challenges to national unity and parliamentary sovereignty are only beginning to come to a head.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
Rethinking Central-Bank Independence
Politicians increasingly are attacking central bankers—once viewed as bland, faceless technocrats—for wielding too much power.
October 2018, Volume 29, Issue 4
Democracy’s “Near Misses”
What factors help a democracy to survive a crisis? A study of cases in which democracy suffered a steep decline, yet ultimately recovered and endured, offers new insights. In moments of crisis, unelected and nonmajoritarian actors can play a pivotal role.
July 2018, Volume 29, Issue 3
Modernization and Authoritarianism
Embracing a new model of capitalist authoritarianism, a number of nondemocratic regimes have made startling gains in state capacity, posing a new challenge to the appeal and advance of liberal democracy.
April 2018, Volume 29, Issue 2
Brazil: The Costs of Multiparty Presidentialism
The massive corruption revealed by Brazil’s “Operation Car Wash” points to fundamental flaws in multiparty presidential systems, where presidents must find ways to build coalitions in fragmented legislatures.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
The Rise of Kleptocracy: Laundering Cash, Whitewashing Reputations
To safeguard their ill-gotten gains, kleptocrats rely on a web of transnational relationships and the complicity of Western fixers.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Globalization Chinese-Style
A review of China’s Eurasian Century? Political and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative by Nadège Rolland.
January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1
The Fading of the Anti-Coup Norm
Following the end of the Cold War, an international norm against coups began gaining strength, but it seems to have lost momentum in recent years. What has happened?
October 2016, Volume 27, Issue 4
Iraq’s Year of Rage
Iraqis of all ethnic and sectarian stripes are fed up with the ineptitude and corruption of their political leaders, parties, and government institutions.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
25 Years After the USSR: What’s Gone Wrong?
A quarter-century after the Soviet breakup, democracy has hardly fared well across the vast Eurasian landmass. Why has this seemingly promising gain for freedom produced such disappointing results?
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
The Assault on Postcommunist Courts
A number of countries in East-Central Europe are facing a grave crisis of constitutional democracy. As their governments seek to undermine the institutional limits on their power, constitutional courts have become a central target.
April 2016, Volume 27, Issue 2
Burma Votes for Change: The New Configuration of Power
Even though Burma’s military seems to have accepted the NLD’s stunning election victory, it can still use an array of constitutional provisions to hamstring the incoming NLD government.
January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1
The Quest for Good Governance: Learning from Virtuous Circles
Are the “virtuous circles” crucial to good governance always the product of long-term developments under unique historical circumstances, or can they be started or accelerated by wise policies?
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
Decentralizing for a Deeper, More Supple Democracy
Can decentralization deepen democracy or is it doomed to weaken the state? If well designed, decentralization can have a positive impact on national unity, conflict mitigation, policy autonomy, service delivery, and social learning.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
The Evolution of Political Order
A review of Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
The Medieval Roots of Democracy
Europe in the Middle Ages was hardly democratic, but it did have law-based institutions that could and did stay the hands of kings, laying a crucial basis for future state-building and democracy-building alike.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
Comment on Møller: The Importance of Equality
It is fine to acknowledge the importance of law-based rule to the eventual rise of modern democracy, but we must not overlook the even greater contribution of the idea of equality.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
Weighing the Asian Model
A review of The Nature of Asian Politics by Bruce Gilley.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
Ethnic Power Sharing: Three Big Problems
In severely divided societies, ethnic cleavages tend to produce ethnic parties and ethnic voting. Power-sharing institutions can ameliorate this problem, but attempts to establish such institutions, whether based on a consociational or a centripetal model, face formidable difficulties.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
A New Twilight in Zimbabwe? The Perils of Power Sharing
After four years of sharing power with the opposition, Zimbabwe’s longtime president Robert Mugabe and his party claimed a huge victory in the 2013 elections. What accounts for the opposition’s stunning electoral decline?
January 2014, Volume 25, Issue 1
Georgian Democracy: Seizing or Losing the Chance?
A year after the election that ended the rule of president Mikheil Saakashvili’s National Movement, Georgia has seen further remarkable developments that raise key questions for struggling postcommunist democracies and, indeed, democracies everywhere.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Democracy and the Quality of the State
What is the relationship between high-quality state administration and democracy? A look back at modern Greece and Italy, along with Germany and the United States, provides some insights.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Paraguay and the Politics of Impeachment
The phenomenon of the “interrupted presidency” remains a key source of democratic instability in Latin America, as was demonstrated once again by the 2012 impeachment of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo.
July 2013, Volume 24, Issue 3
Kishore’s World
The widely hailed writings of Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani, including his latest book, The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World, reveal a remarkably narrow and Manichean worldview.
April 2013, Volume 24, Issue 2
Lessons from Latin America: Building Institutions on Weak Foundations
A particular pattern of institutional change—“serial replacement”—is dominant in Latin America and other developing countries with weak institutional contexts. This pattern is characterized by institutional change that is both frequent and radical.
April 2013, Volume 24, Issue 2
Lessons from Latin America: The Rise of Rentier Populism
Latin America’s much-discussed political “left turn” has taken two very different forms. Why has the region’s commodities boom led some left-turn states to move toward “plebiscitarian superpresidentialism,” while others have resisted this temptation?
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
European Disintegration? Markets, Institutions, and Legitimacy
There is a lively public debate in Europe over how to deal with the current crisis. Among the obstacles to overcome, economic diversity, populism, and the distribution of costs figure prominently. Although most now agree on what needs to be done, whether it will be politically feasible remains uncertain.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
Southeast Asia: Strong-State Democratization in Malaysia and Singapore
The strong state in Malaysia and Singapore best explains why their authoritarian regimes have proved so stable and enduring. That is also the reason why democratization would go smoothly in both countries—yet, paradoxically, might never happen there at all.
April 2012, Volume 23, Issue 2
Discovering the “State-Nation”
A review of Crafting State-Nations: India and Other Multinational Democracies by Alfred Stepan, Juan J. Linz, and Yogendra Yadav.
October 2011, Volume 22, Issue 4
Fukuyama’s Grand Vision
A review of The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama.
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
Islamist Parties and Democracy: Institutions Make the Difference
Read the full essay here. Political Islam is often cited as the key challenge to democratization in Muslim nations, but deep currents of authoritarianism may prove more of an obstacle. Traditions of monarchy, military rule, and weak civic institutions block the path of democratic transition throughout the Muslim world. Political Islam does of course present…
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
Has the Northern Ireland Problem Been Solved?
The 1998 Good Friday Agreement provided a framework for peace and democracy in Northern Ireland. But it was a particular set of internal circumstances that allowed for the pact’s successful implementation.
January 2006, Volume 17, Issue 1
Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies
Evidence from the postcommunist countries shows that the strength of the legislature may be the institutional key to democratic consolidation.
January 2006, Volume 17, Issue 1
Postcommunist Central Banks: A Democratic Deficit?
Independent central banks throughout the former Soviet Union suffer from a dual democratic deficit. How can they gain greater democratic legitimacy without compromising their countries' economic health?
January 2006, Volume 17, Issue 1
Russia: Authoritarianism Without Authority
Vladimir Putin has pulled the plug on democracy in Russia in an effort to strengthen the authority of the central state. But a look at Russian federal relations shows that the state is growing weaker rather than stronger.
January 2005, Volume 16, Issue 1
Building Democracy After Conflict: Introduction
In the 15 years since the Journal of Democracy‘s inception, democracy has made extraordinary progress. But no challenge is greater than building democratic institutions in postconflict situations.
July 2003, Volume 14, Issue 3
Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovinia: The Limits of Electoral Engineering
This troubled corner of Europe has become a test of the ability of outside experts and carefully designed institutions to overcome a legacy of intense ethnocommunal conflict. How are they faring?
July 2003, Volume 14, Issue 3
Lessons from Bosnia and Herzegovina: Travails of the European Raj
Like liberals in the British East India Company more than a century ago, European and international officials have become stewards of a people's fate. The intentions are good, but will self-government result?
April 2003, Volume 14, Issue 2
The Cracked Foundations of the Right to Secede
The claim that ethnic minorities have a moral and legal right to secede from states is a dangerous fiction with perilous implications for divided societies.
April 2003, Volume 14, Issue 2
Latin America’s Lost Illusions: The Future of Structural Reform
As Latin America suffers from its worst economic crisis in decades, the reform of political institutions remains the region’s best hope.
January 2003, Volume 14, Issue 1
China’s Changing of the Guard
The Editors’ introduction to “China’s Changing of the Guard.”
January 2003, Volume 14, Issue 1
China’s Changing of the Guard: Authoritarian Resilience
Successful institutionalization will help the regime survive the pressures of advanced modernization and integration with the global economy.
January 2003, Volume 14, Issue 1
Afghanistan’s Long Road to Reconstruction
To forestall a worst-case scenario, the U.S. and the world must make a deeper commitment to peacekeeping and decentralized government.
April 2002, Volume 13, Issue 2
A New Look at Federalism: The Import of Institutions
A new research project suggests that federalism enhances the ability of regimes to accommodate territorially based minorities. Federal systems, except when imposed by an outside power, significantly help to preserve the peace.
July 2001, Volume 12, Issue 3
Francophone Africa in Flux
The Editors’ introduction to “Francophone Africa in Flux.”
January 2001, Volume 12, Issue 1
Democracy as a Starting Point
Democracy by itself does not put an end to injustice or inequality, but it establishes the most favorable conditions for making progress in the struggle to achieve a just society.
January 2001, Volume 12, Issue 1
How People View Democracy: Between Stability and Crisis in Latin America
Across Latin America, public support for democracy has been remarkably stable and consistently higher than satisfaction with the way that democracy works. Low institutional trust reflects even lower levels of interpersonal trust.
January 2001, Volume 12, Issue 1
Politics and Development
A review of Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World 1950-1990, by Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi.
April 2000, Volume 11, Issue 2
Trouble in the Advanced Democracies? A Quarter-Century of Declining Confidence
A quarter-century after the classic study The Crisis of Democracy was published, three distinguished political scientists find that, though the “crisis” may have disappeared, public confidence is on the decline in almost all the world’s advanced democracies.
July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3
Latin America’s Imperiled Progress: Fujimori and Post-Party Politics in Peru
Read the full essay here.
January 1998, Volume 9, Issue 1
Will China Democratize? The Halting Advance of Pluralism
Read the full essay here.
January 1998, Volume 9, Issue 1
Consolidation and Public Opinion in South Africa
Read the full essay here.
October 1997, Volume 8, Issue 4
Mexico’s New Politics: The Weight of the Past
Read the full essay here.
October 1997, Volume 8, Issue 4
Mexico’s New Politics: The Shape of the Future
Read the full essay here.
October 1996, Volume 7, Issue 4
Democratic Consolidation: Debate–O’Donnell’s “Illusions”: A Rejoinder
Read the full essay here.
July 1995, Volume 6, Issue 3
The Western Allies 50 Years Later: Malaise and Resiliency in America
Read the full essay here.
July 1995, Volume 6, Issue 3
The Western Allies 50 Years Later: France—Consensus Without Vision
Read the full essay here.
July 1995, Volume 6, Issue 3
Venezuela Falters
A review of Strong Parties and Lame Ducks: Presidential Partyarchy and Factionalism in Venezuela, by Michael Coppedge and Democracy for the Privileged: Crisis and Transition in Venezuela, by Richard S. Hillman.
April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
Reexamining Russia: Institutions and Incentives
Read the full essay here.
April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
Economic Reform and Democracy: Can the Middle East Compete?
Read the full essay here.
April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
Economic Reform and Democracy: Crisis and Opportunity in Africa
Read the full essay here.
April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
Economic Reform and Democracy: The Politics of Safety Nets
Read the full essay here.
April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
Parliaments Over Presidents
A review of The Failure of Presidential Democracy, edited by Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela.
April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
“Civil” and Other Societies
A review of Civil Society and the State in Africa, edited by John W. Harbeson, Donald Rothchild, and Naomi Chazan.