As 2024 draws to a close, democracy faces urgent threats: increasing aggression from Russia and China, rapidly advancing AI, heightened polarization, and populist leaders in India and elsewhere bending democracy to their will.
The Journal of Democracy strives to keep you up to date on the latest developments in global democracy and autocracy. Here are our ten most-read essays over the past month.
What Putin Fears Most
Forget his excuses. Russia’s autocrat doesn’t worry about NATO. What terrifies him is the prospect of a flourishing Ukrainian democracy.
Robert Person and Michael McFaulMisunderstanding Democratic Backsliding
If democracies did a better job “delivering” for their citizens, so the thinking goes, people would not be so ready to embrace antidemocratic alternatives. Not so. This conventional wisdom about democratic backsliding is seldom true and often not accurate at all.
Thomas Carothers and Brendan HartnettWhy India’s Democracy Is Dying
Under Narendra Modi, India is maintaining the trappings of democracy while it increasingly harasses the opposition, attacks minorities, and stifles dissent. It can still reverse course, but the damage is mounting.
Maya TudorHow AI Threatens Democracy
Generative AI can flood the media, internet, and even personal correspondence with misinformation — sowing confusion for voters and government officials alike. If we fail to act, mounting mistrust will polarize our societies and tear at our institutions.
Sarah Kreps and Doug KrinerWho Decides What Is Democratic?
The “crisis” of democracy is a crisis of representation. New parties, some of which are populist in troublingly illiberal ways, are arising from this moment. The danger that they pose is not that they are antidemocratic, but that they are antiliberal.
Adam PrzeworskiChina’s Age of Counterreform
The People’s Republic of China has entered a new age, abandoning the ideological openness of the reform era and the socialist legacy of the revolutionary period. Under Xi Jinping, regime stability trumps all — and the PRC is weaker and less stable as a result.
Carl MinznerWhy Russia’s Democracy Never Began
People obsess over where Russia’s democracy went wrong. The truth is it did not fail: Russia’s democratic transition never got off the starting blocks.
Maria SnegovayaPolarization versus Democracy
Why do ordinary people vote to return to office undemocratic incumbents? New survey experiments in several countries suggest that many voters are willing to put their partisan interests above democratic principles — a finding that may be key to understanding democratic backsliding.
Milan W. SvolikThe 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.
Jennifer Brick MurtazashviliDemocracy as a Universal Value
The recognition of democracy as a universally relevant system is a major revolution in thinking, and one of the main contributions of the twentieth century. While not yet universally practiced, democracy is now being taken as generally right.
Amartya Kumar Sen
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