October 2020, Volume 31, Issue 4
By highlighting the deficiencies of authoritarian-populist president Jair Bolsonaro’s rule, the covid-19 pandemic is likely to leave Brazil’s democracy intact but even more brittle.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
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.
July 2020, Volume 31, Issue 3
President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to seize new ground and promote China’s global influence. But their assertive, strong-arm tactics are born from fear and restless insecurity.
Featured News
Journal of Democracy editorial board co-chairs Lucan Way and Steven Levitsky sat down with the Journal‘s Brent Kallmer to discuss the new competitive authoritarianism that has emerged in some countries with relatively strong democratic traditions and institutions.
May 2021
In an interview with The Signal and a Foreign Policy piece based on his April article in the Journal, Christian Welzel argues that the global shift toward democratic values runs deeper than today’s autocratic upswell.
May 2021
Nilay Saiya, whose essay “Why Freedom Defeats Terrorism” appeared in our April issue, argues in a Slate piece based on his article that civil liberties—not crackdowns—are the key to preventing terrorism.
From enhancing physical security to encouraging mutual trust, an inclusive sense of national identity continues to be crucial to the flourishing of modern states.
The swelling pessimism about democracy’s future is unwarranted. Values focused on human freedom are spreading throughout the world, and suggest that the future of self-government is actually quite bright.
The ability of liberal democracies around the world to translate popular views into public policy has been declining. Yet there is no easy way to overcome this trend without weakening the capacity of governments to solve some of the most pressing challenges of…
Democracies are grappling with an era of transformation: Identity is increasingly replacing economics as the major axis of world politics. Technological change has deepened social fragmentation, and trust in institutions is falling. As our most basic assumptions come under question,…
Old-fashioned military coups and blatant election-day fraud are becoming mercifully rarer these days, but other, subtler forms of democratic regression are a growing problem that demands more attention.
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Published By: John Hopkins University Press
Our special thirtieth-anniversary issue (January 2020) is now available free of charge.
