October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Debate: Questioning Backsliding
It is no easy feat to agree on how democratic backsliding should be measured. No surprise scholars are coming up with strikingly different results.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Debate: The Value of “Tyrannophobia”
Democratic death has been exaggerated. But fear that a democracy is going to break down may, ironically, be one of the things that protects it.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Debate: Follow the Leader
Democracies are increasingly under attack by the leaders they elect. We may not know the damage until it is too late.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Debate: A Quiet Consensus
We welcome the common ground. The challenge ahead is to protect democracies genuinely in peril, while not losing valuable time and resources chasing authoritarian ghosts.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
The Mandarin in the Machine
Beijing is bent on deploying mass surveillance to eliminate threats to its rule. It is terrifying—and the latest example of its determination to remold society.
October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4
Documents on Democracy
Excerpts from: Burma’s National Unity Government statement on execution of four prodemocracy activists by military junta; UN Human Rights Commission report on the treatment of Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region; international NGO statement on closure of Uganda’s leading LGBTQ rights advocacy organization; the Prague Manifesto for a Free Ukraine; Zov, a Russian soldier’s memoir.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
How Zelensky Has Changed Ukraine
Volodymyr Zelensky is far more than a brave wartime leader. He began changing the tenor and direction of Ukrainian politics long before the people made him their president.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Why Putin Must Be Defeated
The more determined democracies are to avoid war, the greater the risk that autocracies will wage it.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Putin’s Inevitable Invasion
Why did Russia invade Ukraine? And why are Russian forces fighting so poorly? The internal logic of its personalist dictatorship is to blame.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Do Russians Support Putin?
More than window dressing, public-opinion surveys and elections provide a crucial insight into the Russian people’s relationship with their regime.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
How Putin’s War in Ukraine Has Ruined Russia
The first two months of the war alone turned the Russian clock back decades, undoing thirty years of post-Soviet economic gains and reducing the country to an international pariah state.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
How Viktor Orbán Wins
The case of Hungary shows how autocrats can rig elections legally, using legislative majorities to change the law and neutralize the opposition at every turn, no matter what strategy they adopt.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
The Return of the Marcos Dynasty
A half-century after his father declared martial law and made himself a dictator, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has been elected president of the Philippines by a stunning majority. There is little stopping him from dismantling what remains of the country’s democracy.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
How Resilient Is the CCP?
Xi Jinping undercut China’s political norms to cement his own power and brand of rule. But in so doing the “Chairman of Everything” has introduced new vulnerabilities for the regime.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Sri Lanka’s Agony
A group of corrupt authoritarian powerholders has impoverished Sri Lanka and even brought starvation to the island. But behind their misrule lies the deeper and longer-term problem of unconstrained majority rule.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Bread and Autocracy in Putin’s Russia
The Kremlin wields food as a weapon and a shield against Western interference. But Putin’s push for food autarky could backfire, driving up prices and turning Russians against the regime.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Digital Propaganda: The Power of Influencers
Swarms of “nano-influencers,” are rapidly reshaping social-media propaganda campaigns, upending political discourse in democracies around the world.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Combating Beijing’s Sharp Power: How Australia’s Civil Society Led the Way
Influence operations by the People’s Republic of China and its “united front” organs were exposed years ago, but civil society and Chinese-Australians were first in understanding how to counter them.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Combating Beijing’s Sharp Power: Taiwan’s Democracy Under Fire
No state on the planet is more heavily targeted by authoritarians’ information warfare than the Republic of China on Taiwan. And no other state and free society are better at resisting the daily onslaught.
July 2022, Volume 33, Issue 3
Combating Beijing’s Sharp Power: Transparency Wins in Europe
Any open society’s best weapon against Chinese influence operations is its openness—the ability to investigate and expose sharp-power manipulations, diminishing their strength.