India’s covid-19 response has accelerated the country’s slide toward competitive authoritarian rule by centralizing decision making, undermining federalism, and providing new pretexts for stifling dissent.
Since the return of multipartism in sub-Saharan Africa, open-seat elections have been the most likely to yield opposition victories, suggesting that term limits may significantly contribute to democratic consolidation.
Decentralization, heralded as a means of increasing state efficiency and improving representation, has fragmented Latin America’s already weak party systems