Tag: The Journal of Democracy

Persuade or Perish: ‘Pandemic Propaganda and the Global Democracy Crisis’

     

Whether stated explicitly or implied, the theme that binds much of the pandemic malign influence currently targeting western nations is that democracy, both as a system of government and a set… Read more »

Is the West losing the fight for democracy?

     

Coronavirus-related pressures are having a detrimental effect on democracies around the world, argues Steven Feldstein, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. “Pandemic-fueled… Read more »

Autocratic assertion meets democratic dereliction

     

The coronavirus pandemic must not be used as a pretext for authoritarian states to trample over individual human rights, or repress the free flow of information, the UN secretary general… Read more »

China’s ‘biological Chernobyl’ exposes absurdities of autocracy

     

The death of Li Wenliang has shaken China like an earthquake. He was a young doctor who was reprimanded by Chinese police for alerting colleagues to a new virus that has… Read more »

How technology strengthens digital dictators

     

As autocracies have learned to co-opt new technologies, they have become a more formidable threat to democracy. In particular, today’s dictatorships have grown more durable. Between 1946 and 2000—the year… Read more »

Competitive authoritarianism ‘inching westward’

     

In the nineteen-thirties, authoritarian regimes were on the rise around the world—as they are again today—and democratic governments that came into existence after the First World War were toppling. “American… Read more »

How to fix democracy

     

Democracy has many advantages, but its pitfalls include a tendency toward short-term return over longer-term interests, being reactive rather than proactive, and being geared towards internal competition rather than cooperation,… Read more »

‘Maximalist campaigns’: How nonviolent uprisings succeed

     

  Democracies are dying at the hands of elected authoritarian populists who neuter or take over the institutions meant to constrain them, notes Stanford’s Larry Diamond. Yet mass prodemocracy protests… Read more »

‘Powder keg’ or ‘pressure cooker’? Iran’s unprecedented legitimacy crisis

     

Iran’s president warned Monday of threats to the Islamic Republic’s “democracy and national sovereignty,” after a body dominated by his ultra-conservative rivals disqualified thousands of candidates, weeks before elections, AFP… Read more »