Subject: Defining democracy

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October 2024, Volume 35, Issue 4

Majoritarianism Without Majorities

Majoritarian nationalism is a defining feature of our time. If we are to resist ethnonationalist leaders trying to recast our societies into imagined majorities, we must revise our conception of democracy and the exclusion inherent in majority rule.

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July 2024, Volume 35, Issue 3

Who Decides What Is Democratic?

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.

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April 2024, Volume 35, Issue 2

The Liberalism of Refuge

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

A Refuge from Liberalism?

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 Reply to My Critics

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

Why Democracy Survives Populism

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.

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October 2022, Volume 33, Issue 4

The Politics of Enemies

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

Cancel Toqueville?

Does the author of the nineteenth-century classic, Democracy in America, still matter?

October 2021, Volume 32, Issue 4

Trading Democracy for Governance

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.

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July 2017, Volume 28, Issue 3

The Pipe Dream of Undemocratic Liberalism

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

Exploring “Non-Western Democracy”

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.

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April 2014, Volume 25, Issue 2

Democratic Parliamentary Monarchies

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.

April 2010, Volume 21, Issue 2

What Makes Legislatures Strong?

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

Twenty Years of Postcommunism: Freedom and the State

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?

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April 2009, Volume 20, Issue 2

Religion and Democracy

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

Reading Russia: Tools of Autocracy

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…

July 2008, Volume 19, Issue 3

Islamist Parties and Democracy: Are They Democrats? Does It Matter?

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.”

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April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2

Scholarship and Statesmanship

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.

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April 2005, Volume 16, Issue 2

The Rise of “Muslim Democracy”

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

Freedom’s Edge

A review of The Democratic Advantage: How Democracies Promote Prosperity and Peace by Morton H. Halperin, Joseph T. Siegle, and Michael M. Weinstein.

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April 2004, Volume 15, Issue 2

The Anti-American Century?

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

Christianity and Democracy: The Global Picture

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

Constitutional Design for Divided Societies

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

Europe Moves Eastward: Challenges of EU Enlargement

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.

July 2001, Volume 12, Issue 3

Two Models of Democracy

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.

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July 1999, Volume 10, Issue 3

Democracy as a Universal Value

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 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3

India Defies the Odds: Enduring Another Election

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

Octavio Paz (1914-1998)

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…

July 1996, Volume 7, Issue 3

Is the Third Wave Over?

Democracy’s global advance is facing headwinds, but there are still opportunities for progress in pseudodemocratic and authoritarian states.