January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
Turkey Divided
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.
2740 Results
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.
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
Read the full essay here. India’s Supreme Court has played the role of a countermajoritarian check but has also flirted with populism. This essay examines three aspects of India’s higher judiciary: the struggle between the judiciary and the other branches over “custody” of the Constitution; the question of judicial independence and who has the right…
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
Despite South Korea’s messy democratic trajectory, it has miraculously achieved consolidation. Though far from perfect, South Korea’s democracy has turned obstacles into opportunities for reform and development.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
Law-based rule means a set of basic conditions that make civic life possible. A democratic rule of law requires all that and more, however.
January 2017, Volume 28, Issue 1
Ennahda has long felt an especially strong kinship with Turkey’s AKP, which has seen as representing a combination of piety, prosperity, and democratic credibility. How might their relationship be affected by the AKP's more recent authoritarian turn?
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?
April 2000, Volume 11, Issue 2
Recent disappointments have led to excessive pessimism about Latin America’s economic and democratic prospects. International recognition of the region’s diversity and a sense of perspective about its setbacks will improve its chances for further success.
July 2016, Volume 27, Issue 3
Is democratic deconsolidation underway in the United States and Europe? In recent years, support for democracy, especially among millennials, has been dwindling in a number of established democracies.
January 2021, Volume 32, Issue 1
Like the “transition paradigm” before it, the concept of democratic backsliding threatens to flatten our perceptions of complex political realities. Examples from East-Central Europe illustrate the ambiguous dynamics at play in many troubled democracies.
October 2017, Volume 28, Issue 4
Read the full essay here. The Russian system of personalized power is growing ever more dependent on the same strategies that proved useless in sustaining the USSR. While the system still has the potential to limp along, its survival tactics render the it progressively more dysfunctional. Among the circumstances weighing against the system’s survival are…
January 2022, Volume 33, Issue 1
Christian Welzel’s case for a democratic future is based on the mistaken notion that opinion surveys can see the future. It is no more true today than it ever was.
October 2003, Volume 14, Issue 4
The rules that govern voting will always be of vital importance in any democracy. The beginning of wisdom is to turn from the usual focus on electoral systems in order to reflect on larger goals and the trade-offs among them that may be necessary.
July 2009, Volume 20, Issue 3
Like all contemporary nondemocratic systems, the Chinese system suffers from weak legitimacy at the level of regime type. The most likely form of transition for China remains the model of Tiananmen, when three elements came together: a robust plurality of disaffected citizens, a catalytic event, and a split in the leadership. Had China chosen the…
April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2
Desperate to secure victory for its own candidate in the 2004 presidential election, the incumbent regime undertook an unprecedented campaign of blatant election fraud. But it had underestimated the citizenry that it was trying to deceive.
July 2019, Volume 30, Issue 3
Following the settlement of the revolutionary conflicts that long plagued the region, the left was able to reach power through elections. But the results have been discouraging.
July 2015, Volume 26, Issue 3
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.
October 2006, Volume 17, Issue 4
Progressive politics in Latin America inevitably draws from the legacies of socialism and populism, but these categories are not very useful today. Can we find better tools for differentiating Latin America's "multiple lefts"?
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
The wave of unrest that swept through the Arab world at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 originated in Tunisia. What happened— and what are the prospects that Tunisia will make a successful transition to democracy?
October 2006, Volume 17, Issue 4
Over the past decade, a series of "electoral revolutions" has taken place from Slovakia to Kyrgyzstan. Why has this path to democratization been especially common in the postcommunist region?