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Why the Future Will Be Democratic
In the Journal of Democracy‘s April 2021 issue, expert contributors consider what shifting world values mean for the future of democracy, how enduring China’s dictatorship will be, and the mixed legacies of the 2020 U.S. election.
Highlights include:
- The persistent party-state: Minxin Pei asks whether Xi Jinping’s “neo-Stalinist political revolution” disproves the link between modernization and democracy.
- Time to rethink democratic decline? Christian Welzel argues that shifting values around the world actually bode well for liberal democracy’s long-term fortunes.
- Voting amid the covid-19 crisis: Nathaniel Persily and Charles Stewart III assess fact and fiction around the successful administration of the 2020 U.S. election.
- The problem with platforms: Francis Fukuyama outlines a plan for diluting internet giants’ outsized power over public discourse.
Also in the April issue:
- How has democracy weathered the pandemic? Sarah Repucci and Amy Slipowitz report on Freedom House’s global survey for 2020.
- Michael Albertus and Guy Grossman show how voter attitudes in the Americas may offer politicians a chance at getting away with antidemocratic acts.
- Zoltan Barany explains how a ballot-box loss by Burma’s generals set the stage for their February coup.
- Nilay Saiya demonstrates why rights-respecting policies are crucial to the struggle against terrorism.
- Rita Abrahamsen and Gerald Bareebe describe how a militarized regime, popular demands for change, and the abuse of covid-19 restrictions collided in Uganda’s January elections.
- Dan Paget analyzes why Tanzania’s last election may mark the end of competitive politics there, while Nic Cheeseman, Hilary Matfess, and Alitalali Amani argue that the ruling party’s authoritarian methods represent continuity rather than change.
- James Loxton explores the complex impacts of authoritarian legacies in fledgling democracies.
- Larry Diamond reviews Ronald J. Deibert’s Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society.
View the full table of contents at www.journalofdemocracy.org.
