{"title":"The Politics of Enemies","authors":"Michael Ignatieff","doi":"10.1353/jod.2022.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0033","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Democracy's meaning has always been contested. The problem with substantive definitions of democracy is that democrats do not agree on what it is or what it should be. Democracy itself is not just an unruly contest for power, but also the site of an ongoing debate about what democracy is or should be. Yet letting that struggle become a battle between existential foes risks upending the whole democratic project.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"33 1","pages":"19 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44010222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Value of \"Tyrannophobia\"","authors":"Thomas B. Ginsburg","doi":"10.1353/jod.2022.0055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0055","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Jason Brownlee and Kenny Miao offer an important corrective to the current mood of despair about democracy's trajectory. Democratic failure, they argue, is not inevitable, and is not even tightly linked to the phenomenon of democratic backsliding. Wealth, in particular, remains an insulating factor that protects democracies from paying the ultimate price. In response, I have three points to make. First, the distinction between breakdown and backsliding in their account is not as sharp as it could be. This blunts some of the force of the argument. Second, I agree with the authors that erosion—rather than democratic death—is what we should be concerned about. It is easy to imagine significant erosion in the United States, beyond what we have experienced, without a full-fledged collapse. Third, I argue that what some pejoratively call \"tyrannophobia\" is endogenous to democratic survival. Indeed, hand-wringing can be necessary to keep democratic competition alive.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"33 1","pages":"160 - 163"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44451026","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ukraine and Russia: War and Political Regimes","authors":"T. Colton","doi":"10.1353/jod.2022.0044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0044","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Will Russia’s war tip the Kremlin even further toward tyranny while fortifying Ukraine's democracy? That will depend on Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky as much as on the course of the war itself. If, from a democratization perspective, Ukraine prior to the war had been a work in progress, Russia was the inverse: a work in regress. It is an open question whether a debacle in Ukraine would tip Russia toward tyranny, toward a more modern and representative regime, or toward chaos.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"33 1","pages":"20 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46071497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why Ukrainians Are Rallying Around Democracy","authors":"O. Onuch","doi":"10.1353/jod.2022.0045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0045","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In democratizing countries it seems to make sense that any prolonged crisis will turn citizens away from democracy, from its \"rules of the game,\" and from the institutions tasked with upholding them. If ever there was such a country, surely it is Ukraine. Long beset by political instability and corruption, it has in recent years seen its crises become biblical: pestilence (in the form of covid-19) and war (in the form of Russian aggression and later the all-out Russian invasion launched on 24 February 2022). Instead of losing confidence in democracy as the best form of government, however, Ukrainian citizens have done the opposite, survey research from the MOBILISE Project reveals a staggering 35 percentage-point rise in Ukrainians' support for democracy over just three years. Ukrainians moved toward greater support for democracy between 2019 and 2022 precisely because ordinary citizens were able to observe democracy in action and working even in the face of major compounding crises.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"33 1","pages":"37 - 46"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44898897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sri Lanka's Agony","authors":"N. Devotta","doi":"10.1353/jod.2022.0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0042","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Sri Lanka's ongoing economic crisis has led to mass protests demanding the president's resignation and will likely end the Rajapaksa political dynasty. But the sociopolitical and economic transformations that protestors clamor for cannot happen unless the country moves away from its extant embedded ethnocracy.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"33 1","pages":"92 - 99"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48326005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Return of the Marcos Dynasty","authors":"Richard Javad Heydarian","doi":"10.1353/jod.2022.0040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0040","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The essay analyzes the historical relevance, confluence of contributing factors, and broader systemic implications of the emphatic electoral victory of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the 2022 Philippine presidential election. Accordingly, it provides an overview of the structural vulnerabilities of Philippine democracy, the contingent factors that facilitated Marcos Jr.'s electoral success, the personal background and predisposition of the new president, and the likely key features and policy thrusts of his presidency. Overall, the essay frames Marcos Jr.'s victory as the latest victory of authoritarian populism. In historical terms, it represents the latest \"counterrevolution\" in modern history, namely, the successful return to power of the ancien régime through systematic exploitation of the vulnerabilities of postrevolutionary regimes.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"33 1","pages":"62 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49648659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cancel Tocqueville?","authors":"T. Masoud","doi":"10.1353/jod.2022.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0031","url":null,"abstract":"Does Alexis de Tocqueville—the author of the nineteenth-century classic Democracy in America—still matter? Why should any of us today pay heed to a long-dead French aristocrat and his travelogue of a longdead version of America? Tocqueville (1805–59) is often invoked for his supposedly deep insights into our country (a few of which, like the line that “America is great because she is good,” he never ventured), and for observations that feel like they could have been written yesterday. Who has not spent a few minutes marveling at Tocqueville’s evergreen depiction of a U.S. presidential election season, or at his uncanny prediction that the United States and Russia would one day inherit the world? (Admittedly, that latter prognostication probably does not impress the way it did during and right after the Cold War, and might seem positively bizarre to a Zoomer who knows Russia, if he knows it at all, as the home of a tinpot dictator.) But, regardless of whether bits of Tocqueville still resonate, can there be any doubt that the whites-only settler-colonial project that he toured for nine and a half months in 1831 and 1832 is a far cry from the multicultural, multiracial, raucously democratic, global superpower we call the United States almost two centuries later? Could a young person today be forgiven for wondering what we can possibly glean, aside from a few nuggets of historical interest, about democracy in America from Democracy in America?","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"33 1","pages":"172 - 176"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42235224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The War in Ukraine: Putin's Inevitable Invasion","authors":"Ivan Gomza","doi":"10.1353/jod.2022.0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0036","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The personalist dictatorship, or tyranny, installed in Russia contributed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how Russia has fought. Tyranny is belligerent because the institutional design imposes few constraints on a tyrant's decision-making. Moreover, this regime type exacerbates the ruler's personal beliefs and misconceptions. It has a distinct life cycle, with economic performance giving way to stagnation, which prompts diversionary wars. Finally, Ukraine was especially vulnerable to attack from a personalist dictatorship like Putin's. But due to rampant corruption, lack of information verification, and the ruler's penchant for micromanagement, tyrannies usually fight badly, which explains Russia's strategic failures in the early months of the war.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"33 1","pages":"23 - 30"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43765507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How Resilient Is the CCP?","authors":"Yuen Yuen Ang","doi":"10.1353/jod.2022.0041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0041","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Under President Xi Jinping's personalist rule, the CCP's formula for authoritarian resilience has evolved, and so too have the risks it confronts. While Xi has drastically weakened some dimensions of institutionalization—particularly limits on his own power—he has not eliminated all of them. The CCP still commands a high-capacity and selectively adaptive bureaucracy; it has tightened political control; and U.S. animosity toward China has inadvertently helped Xi rally the party and nation behind him. Yet Xi's concentration of personal power has reintroduced the risk of succession battles and amplifies the effects of his ideology and decisions, which are felt not only within the PRC but around the world.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"33 1","pages":"77 - 91"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42759224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Combating Beijing’s Sharp Power: Taiwan's Democracy Under Fire","authors":"Ketty W. Chen","doi":"10.1353/jod.2022.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2022.0029","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Taiwan, one of Asia's fullest democracies, is the target of China's most aggressive attempts to exert authoritarian influence. Chinese influence operations started to receive special attention by members of civil society and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) after the 2016 national election in Taiwan. China's efforts to penetrate, coopt, and weaken Taiwan's political institutions, society, election integrity, and civic organizations have constituted a major aspect of its overall strategy toward Taiwan. This essay aims to identify influence operations used by the Chinese Communist Party against Taiwan, and to elucidate the responses from Taiwan's robust and vibrant civil society to defend its democracy.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"33 1","pages":"144 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45840110","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}