January 2025, Volume 36, Issue 1
With illiberal forces ascendant across the globe, protecting individual liberties and the democratic process is crucial. But when institutions empower minority groups over the majority, can democracy survive?
October 2024, Volume 35, Issue 4
Majoritarian nationalism is a defining feature of our time. If we are to resist ethnonationalist leaders trying to recast our societies into imagined majorities, we must revise our conception of democracy and the exclusion inherent in majority rule.
October 2024, Volume 35, Issue 4
Some liberals attribute the origins of our polarized political era to “identity politics.” But multiculturalism need not provoke majoritarian anxieties — not if national identities can open ways for all citizens to be recognized and heard.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
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.
October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
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.
April 2019, Volume 30, Issue 2
In May 2018, the people of Malaysia transcended distinctions of class, religion, and ethnicity in order to vote for democracy and reform against a long-ruling party riddled with corruption.
January 2019, Volume 30, Issue 1
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 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
Takis Pappas argues that certain nativist parties of the populist right should be counted as liberal-democratic. This is a mistake; these parties do not truly merit that name.
January 2018, Volume 29, Issue 1
Contra Ben Margulies, one can clearly mark the boundaries that separate antidemocrats from democrats (nativists included), and nativists from populists.
January 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1
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?
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.
October 2012, Volume 23, Issue 4
Elections alone will not answer the question of how to build a lasting democracy. Minority rights also must be protected.
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Read the full essay here. Turkish state policy toward the Kurds, the Republic of Turkey’s largest ethnic minority, has evolved from denial and mandatory assimilation to cultural recognition to acknowledgment of the Kurds’ contested status as a political problem demanding political solutions. The election of 36 Kurdish-nationalist lawmakers, most of whom now sit in parliament…
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Contrary to popular wisdom, emerging democracies might be better off with a majoritarian electoral system rather than one based on proportional representation.
January 2012, Volume 23, Issue 1
Evidence from waves of democratization shows proportional election systems, however imperfect, to be the better option in most contexts.
July 2010, Volume 21, Issue 3
Must every state be a nation and every nation a state? Or should we look instead to the example of countries such as India, where one state holds together a congeries of “national” groups and cultures in a single and wisely conceived federal republic?
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
How do democracies deal with the deep divisions created by race, ethnicity, religion, and language? The cases of Canada, India, and the United States show that democratic institutions—notably, competitive elections and independent judiciaries—can bridge divides and build stability, but they must find a way to manage the tension between individual and group equality.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
A coauthor of the pathbreaking study Transitions from Authoritarian Rule reflects on the lessons that he has learned about democratic transition and consolidation since the publication of this work nearly 25 years ago.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
In recent years, scholars have begun to focus on the sources of "authoritarian resilience." But democracy has also shown surprising resilience, in part because the disorders to which it is prone tend to counteract each other.
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
In March 2008, Malaysian voters dealt the long-ruling National Front coalition an enormous shock—pushing that party closer to losing power than it has ever been in Malaysia’s entire history as an independent country.
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
Since its founding out of the partition of British India in 1947, Pakistan has labored in the shadow of critical choices made at that time.
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
After the ethnic violence that marred its 2007 presidential election, Kenya must reform its institutions to better represent its diverse polity.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
Events surrounding Turkey's 2007 elections reveal a country with a vibrantly democratic political sphere and a society badly split over the role of Islam in national life.
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.
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
This article assesses the historical record and current practice to argue that a form of autonomy that is appropriately grounded in China’s Constitution and international human rights practice may offer a path out of the current dispute.
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
Contemporary liberal democracies, especially in Western Europe, face a major challenge in integrating Muslim immigrants as citizens of pluralistic societies.
April 2006, Volume 17, Issue 2
Iraq’s three elections in 2005 highlighted the role—but also the limits—of electoral-system design in managing potentially polarizing divisions.
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
Over the ten years since its first nonracial elections in 1994, South Africa has seen its democratic order become more firmly institutionalized, even as the electoral dominance of the ANC has continued to grow.
July 2003, Volume 14, Issue 3
Almost a half-century after being forced from their homeland, Tibetans abroad, led by the Dalai Lama, have democratized their institutions in hopes that they may one day form the basis for a free and self-governing Tibet.
July 2000, Volume 11, Issue 3
The debate over Russia’s likely course of development under Putin has paid surprisingly little attention to his openly stated goal of reintegrating Russia with other former Soviet republics.
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 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
January 1996, Volume 7, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
Spring 1991, Volume 2, Issue 2
A review of Hidden Nations: The People Challenge the Soviet Union, by Nadia Diuk and Adrian Karatnycky.
