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.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
Liberal societies are those which offer refuge from the very people they empower—through individual choice, mobility, and the possibility of exit. This is the form of liberty that most clearly elevates the liberal project.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
The power of liberalism—though limited and never revered—enables it to serve as refuge while taming the demons of liberal society.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
The liberal emphasis on unhindered mobility comes with costs, particularly for those unable to leave.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
What distinguishes liberal societies from all others is that they tolerate immoral behavior. It is this tolerance that protects us not just from our leaders but ourselves.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
The belief we can “escape” remains a part of the liberal imagination. In truth, it is realized in the form of detachment from any community, an exodus without refuge.
April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2
A liberal society must reckon the demands of the common good, while offering what we most crave—something worth sacrificing for.
January 2024, Volume 35, Issue 1
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.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Democracy’s meaning has always been contested. Letting that struggle become a battle between existential foes risks upending the whole democratic project.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Does the author of the nineteenth-century classic, Democracy in America, still matter?
October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4
Majorities across the globe claim to support democratic rule, but their definitions of it vary widely. A look at where publics are willing to exchange their democratic principles for better results—and where they will not.
July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3
A look at liberal democracy’s complex historical evolution shows that elite fantasies of liberalism without democracy are ill-founded. Authoritarian legacies and democratic deficits lie at the core of trends that threaten liberal rights.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
Often called for but seldom defined with any precision, “non-Western democracy” could end up giving cover to authoritarianism, but also could allow potentially useful democratic innovations to be tried and tested.
October 2015, Volume 26, Issue 4
A review of Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama.
July 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3
In order to mark democracy’s progress and to inform policy, we need to be able to measure democracy in sufficient detail. The V-Dem Project aims to deliver exactly such a tool.
April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2
How do democracies emerge from monarchies? In an essay that eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz was working on when he passed away in October 2013, he and his coauthors draw lessons from the European experience about whether and how Arab monarchies might aid or resist democratic development.
October 2013, Volume 24, Issue 4
Is democracy threatened by a “reverse wave”? Examining regional patterns and distinguishing between different types of democracy gives us a new basis for assessing this question. Listen to the podcast with authors Jørgen Møller and Svend-Erik Skaaning [mp3]
July 2011, Volume 22, Issue 3
A review of The Quality of Democracy in Latin America, edited by Daniel H. Levine and José E. Molina.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Read the full essay here.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Efforts to do comparative research on political attitudes have been complicated by varying understandings of “democracy.” The Afrobarometer is exploring new techniques to overcome this difficulty.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Over the years, the Asian Barometer Survey has yielded some surprising results. A new typological analysis helps to make sense of them.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
How can Chinese claim strongly to support both democracy and their authoritarian regime? The answer may lie in a Confucian concept of democracy.
October 2010, Volume 21, Issue 4
Arabs express a clear preference for democracy, which they define in ways similar to citizens elsewhere in the world. But their authoritarian regimes are not listening.
April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2
A review of The Handbook of National Legislatures: A Global Survey by M. Steven Fish and Matthew Kroenig, and Legislative Power in Emerging African Democracies edited by Joel D. Barkan.
January 2010, Volume 21, Issue 1
This is a central problem—perhaps the central problem—for classical liberal theory and its crucial distinction between the state of nature and the civil state. Which is better for liberty: nature or the state?
October 2009, Volume 20, Issue 4
The recent global progress of democracy has been accompanied by increasing economic inequality. What are the implications for the quality of democracy and for its ability to endure?
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
The secularization hypothesis has failed, and failed spectacularly. We must find a new paradigm to help us understand the complexities of the relationship between religion and democracy.
April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2
Read the full essay here. Arguably a flawed democracy in the 1990s, Russia took a distinctly authoritarian turn under President Vladimir Putin from 2000 to 2008. The country now lives under a façade democracy that barely conceals the political and administrative dominance of a self-interested bureaucratic corporation. The regime manufactures consent by means of three…
January 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Democracy-aid providers are moving away from one-size-fits-all strategies and are adapting their programs to diverse political contexts. Two distinct overall approaches to assisting democracy have emerged in response.
October 2008, Volume 19, Issue 4
"The Latin American Experience” argues that democratic stability requires policies that limit the society’s degree of substantive economic and social inequality.
July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3
The journalistic and policy communities have been alive with speculation as to whether Islamist groups involved in politics—including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Palestine’s Hamas— are true believers in democracy or calculating pragmatists who, in Steven Cook’s words, are “seeking to use democratic procedures in order to advance an antidemocratic agenda.”
April 2008, Volume 19, Issue 2
Do young democracies have to "deliver the goods" economically in order to win political legitimacy in their citizens' eyes? Public opinion data from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Arab world suggest some fascinating answers.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
While the people of South Asia, especially those with higher levels of education and exposure to the media, prefer democracy to authoritarianism, they are willing to relax some of the requirements of liberal democracy.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
Findings from the Arab Barometer say little about whether there are likely to be transitions to democracy in the Arab world in the years ahead, but they do offer evidence that citizens' attitudes and values are not the reason that authoritarianism has persisted.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
Attitudes toward democracy in Latin America vary from country to country, and within countries between left and right. Public opinion is strongly affected by the success or failure of political leaders in delivering social and economic change.
January 2008, Volume 19, Issue 1
In order for a country to move beyond mere electoral democracy, ordinary people must acquire resources and values that allow them to pressure elites. Human empowerment is essential for the development of "effective democracy."
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
On 7 June 2007, the National Endowment for Democracy commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the "Westminster Address" with a panel discussion and reception in Madison Hall at the Library of Congress.
October 2007, Volume 18, Issue 4
Some skeptics have asked whether ordinary people possess an understanding of democracy that allows them to evaluate it as a form of government. Our research yields three generalizations about popular understanding of democracy.
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.
October 2005, Volume 16, Issue 4
Recent works on regime types have led to confusion and a tendency to overstate the differences between established and newer democracies.
July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3
Even after its successful elections, Iraq remains a divided society. Democracy did not create these divisions, but it could be the key to managing them.
July 2005, Volume 16, Issue 3
The regime type known as semipresidentialism became a popular choice during the "third wave" of democratization. But some variations of this constitutional arrangement are more conducive to democracy than others
April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2
Seymour Martin Lipset’s contributions to political science and sociology are not theoretical achievements alone, but reflect his keenly practical moral awareness, his understanding of leadership, and his great love of democracy as the finest form of government ever devised.
April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2
The incentives created by competitive elections in a number of Muslim-majority countries are fueling a political trend that roughly resembles the rise of Christian Democracy in twentieth-century Europe
April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2
In three of the six democracies surveyed by the East Asia Barometer, a majority of respondents prefer democracy to its alternatives. In the other three, however, a lingering nostalgia for authoritarianism stands in the way of democratic consolidation.
April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2
A review of The Democratic Century by Seymour Martin Lipset and Jason M. Lakin.
April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2
A review of The Democratic Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace by Morton H. Halperin, Joseph T. Siegle, and Michael M. Weinstein.
January 2005, Volume 16, Issue 1
Modest progress in the muslim-majority countries is complemented by mass mobilization for democracy and freedom in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia ranks as Not Free for the first time since the fall of communism.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
Since most of the world’s sovereign states are now democracies, there is a growing scholarly focus on “good” or “better” democracy, and on how improvements can not only be measured, but encouraged.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
Freedom has always been integral to democracy. How to guard liberty is a question every democratic regime must answer.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
Democracy requires robust political equality, but the persistence of social, economic and cultural inequality complicates its realization.
October 2004, Volume 15, Issue 4
Asking what makes a good democracy is a noble and sensible enterprise, but it will always point beyond the borders of empirical political science.
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
President Vladimir Putin's lopsided election victory was assisted by an unlevel electoral playing field, but elections still matter in Russia and they will make more difficult the consolidation of authoritarianism.
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
Vladimir Putin aspires to be a classic authoritarian modernizer, but in today's globalized world Russia faces challenges that bureaucratic centralization and a traditional strong hand cannot meet.
July 2004, Volume 15, Issue 3
Three leading French political thinkers reflect on why modern democracies tend to forget their own natures, even to the point of encouraging an assertive "identitarianism" that could undermine liberal democracy itself.
April 2004, Volume 15, Issue 2
The twentieth century has been called "the American century," but it appears that the twenty-first may be dominated by anti-Americanism, an all-purpose ideology that poses a serious obstacle to the progress of democracy.
April 2004, Volume 15, Issue 2
That modern democracy first arose with the ambit of Western Christianity is far from an accident. Today, the major Christain communions largely support democracy, even while necessarily retaining the right to criticize democratic decisions in the name fo religious truth claims.
April 2004, Volume 15, Issue 2
Constitution writers in ethnically or otherwise divided countries should focus on designing a system of power-sharing rules and institutions. Studies by political scientists point to a set of basic recommendations that should form a starting point for constitutional negotiations.
January 2004, Volume 15, Issue 1
As it prepares to go from 15 to 25 member states, the EU has improved the prospects for democracy in the East, but nothing about enlargement promises to resolve the vexing issue of democracy within the EU structure itself.
January 2004, Volume 15, Issue 1
The advanced democracies are shifting from a reliance on representation toward a mixed repertoire that includes greater reliance on “direct” and “advocacy” democracy, creating new problems that will require new solutions.
January 2004, Volume 15, Issue 1
It has been claimed in the pages of this journal that a homogeneous society is an advantage when it comes to democratization. How might this suggestion be empirically tested, and with what (perhaps preliminary) results?
October 2003, Volume 14, Issue 4
The EU was founded partly for the purpose of strengthening democracy, but it has been created in a way that is intrinsically not democratic.
October 2001, Volume 12, Issue 4
Direct democracy has come in for praise as being closer to the people’s will than representative democracy. A closer look at the sources of public support, however, reveals some surprises.
July 2001, Volume 12, Issue 3
A review of Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries by Arend Lijphart and Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Views, by G. Bingham Powell, Jr.
October 1999, Volume 10, Issue 4
Read the full essay here.
July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3
In the summer of 1997, I was asked by a leading Japanese newspaper what I thought was the most important thing that had happened in the twentieth century. I found this to be an unusually thought-provoking question, since so many things of gravity have happened over the last hundred years. The European empires, especially the…
July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
January 1999, Volume 10, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
January 1999, Volume 10, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
January 1999, Volume 10, Issue 1
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October 1998, Volume 9, Issue 4
Read the full essay here.
October 1998, Volume 9, Issue 4
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October 1998, Volume 9, Issue 4
A review of After 1989: Morals, Revolution, and Civil Society, by Ralf Dahrendorf.
July 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3
Read the full essay here.
July 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3
Indians appear to love the practice of democracy so much that they are in danger of overdoing it. In February and March of 1998, the world's largest democracy held its twelfth general election since gaining its independence a half-century ago. The voting was largely fair and peaceful. New, right-of-center rulers led by the Bharatiya Janata…
July 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3
The death of Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz on April 20 was (in the words of Mexico’s president Ernesto Zedillo) “an irreplaceable loss for contemporary thought and culture—not just for Latin America but for the entire world.” Born in Mexico City on 31 March 1914, Paz published his first book of poetry while still…
April 1998, Volume 9, Issue 2
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April 1998, Volume 9, Issue 2
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January 1998, Volume 9, Issue 1
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January 1998, Volume 9, Issue 1
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January 1998, Volume 9, Issue 1
A review of Democracy’s Victory and Crisis, edited by Axel Hadenius.
October 1997, Volume 8, Issue 4
A review of Islam and Democracy, by John L. Esposito and John O. Voll.
April 1997, Volume 8, Issue 2
The Editors’ introduction to “Hong Kong, Singapore, and ‘Asian Values.'”
April 1997, Volume 8, Issue 2
Read the full essay here.
April 1997, Volume 8, Issue 2
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April 1997, Volume 8, Issue 2
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April 1997, Volume 8, Issue 2
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January 1997, Volume 8, Issue 1
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July 1996, Volume 7, Issue 3
Democracy’s global advance is facing headwinds, but there are still opportunities for progress in pseudodemocratic and authoritarian states.
January 1996, Volume 7, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
October 1995, Volume 6, Issue 4
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April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
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April 1995, Volume 6, Issue 2
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January 1995, Volume 6, Issue 1
The Editors’ introduction to “Democracy’s Future.”
January 1995, Volume 6, Issue 1
Read the full essay here.
