Journal of Democracy最新文献

{"title":"The End of Village Democracy in China","authors":"Ben Hillman","doi":"10.1353/jod.2023.a900433","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900433","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Since Xi Jinping became China’s paramount leader in 2012, his top domestic priority has been the strengthening of the Chinese Communist Party’s power over government, economy, and society. This extends to village life, where a decades-long experiment with direct elections is being unwound by new efforts to establish Party control at the rural grassroots level. This essay draws on first-hand observation and Chinese sources to examine the ongoing CCP strategy for reestablishing party dominance over village affairs.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":" ","pages":"62 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49502447","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 Russia’s Democracy Never Began","authors":"Maria Snegovaya","doi":"10.1353/jod.2023.a900436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900436","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Scholars often blame Russia”s recent re-autocratization on mistakes of individual leaders: Yeltsin or Putin. This essay casts doubt on such accounts. It argues instead that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia experienced not a democratic transition but a temporary weakening of the state (incumbent capacity). This is evidenced by a lack of elite rotation and the preservation of the same type of formal and informal institutions that characterized Russia’s political system in the past. Accordingly, subsequent re-autocratization of Russian politics was just a matter of time.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"34 1","pages":"105 - 118"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41824759","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":"Kuwait’s Democratic Promise","authors":"Sean Yom","doi":"10.1353/jod.2023.a900432","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900432","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Kuwait is a democratic outlier in the Middle East. In this oil-rich Muslim Arab state, the ruling Sabah monarchy claims considerable executive authority, but it also coexists with a powerful, elected parliament and well-mobilized civil society. This oft-overlooked hybrid system is rooted in liberal norms of pluralism and openness, and enables opposition blocs to advance democratic reforms and rebuff the threat of repression. A transition towards parliamentary democracy, a rarity in the Arab world, is possible. However, this will require overcoming intense cleavages within the royal family, across social groups, and between the royal autocracy and society itself.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"34 1","pages":"46 - 61"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43223117","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 Erdoğan’s Populism Won Again","authors":"Berk Esen, Sebnem Gumuscu","doi":"10.1353/jod.2023.a900430","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900430","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won a third presidential term in May 2023 in a close race that constituted the opposition’s best chance ever to defeat the long-serving president at the polls. The election was neither free nor fair, but it was real. Erdoğan coupled sophisticated strategies with ethnoreligious themes to win the race against a backdrop of rampant inflation and disastrous relief efforts following the massive earthquakes that struck Turkey in early 2023. The opposition rallied behind a joint candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, but failed to capitalize on Erdoğan’s vulnerabilities. Their campaign remained weak and uncoordinated, giving little reason to long-time Erdogan supporters to defect.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"34 1","pages":"21 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44594922","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":"Is India Still a Democracy?","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/jod.2023.a900437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900437","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48848143","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 Israeli Democracy Is in Crisis","authors":"Noam Gidron","doi":"10.1353/jod.2023.a900431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900431","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In January 2023, massive protests erupted in Israel against the right-wing government's proposed reforms to restructure the country's democracy--reforms that mirror the types of institutional changes that populist parties on the right in Hungary and Poland have used to steer their countries away from liberal democracy. Concern that the proposed reforms would lead to a concentration of power in the executive and a weakening of the courts sparked protests throughout Israel. These protests in turn led to the suspension of the proposed reforms. Analysis suggests that the erosion of democracy is driven by conservative elites rather than far-right parties. Likud, the establishment center-right party, exhibits intense populism but its voters do not overwhelmingly reject liberal democracy. Israel's case highlights the need to consider both mass and elite attitudes and challenges traditional distinctions in understanding democratic backsliding.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"34 1","pages":"33 - 45"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45748303","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":"Documents on Democracy","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/jod.2023.a900444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900444","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135265569","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":"Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Paul Scharre (review)","authors":"Divya Siddarth","doi":"10.1353/jod.2023.a900443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900443","url":null,"abstract":"Reimagining Democracy’s Defense Divya Siddarth (bio) Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. By Paul Scharre. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2023. 496 pp. It seems that we are in the throes of an AI arms race. A recent open letter calling for a pause in artificial-intelligence research, with signatories from Elon Musk to Yoshua Bengio, states that “AI labs [are] locked in an outof-control race to develop and deploy AI” that they cannot “understand, predict, or reliably control.” Responses to the letter included exhortations from U.S. senators and CEOs for the United States to instead “step up” its AI arms race against China for fear of being left behind, safety risks from corporate competition notwithstanding. Paul Scharre, a vice-president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, takes the latter position, although he carefully sidesteps using the term “arms race.” In his comprehensive Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Scharre makes the case that the United States is locked in a “race . . . to lead in AI and write the rules of the next century to control the future of global power and security” (p. 8). While the United States is currently in a favorable position, the stakes are too high and the outcome too uncertain for complacency. Scharre calls for a renewed program of AI investment, innovation, and diffusion to cement a U.S. lead. Of course, races to control technology among rival powers are nothing new. The sixteenth century B.C.E. saw the first use of the chariot as a weapon, altering the balance of power in Egypt’s favor and sparking a centuries-long arms race from Anatolia to Mesopotamia. The Roman [End Page 173] ballista, itself derived from earlier Greek designs, set off its own race among rival states in the ancient world. The modern era has seen its share of such races, each more destructive, from the Anglo-German naval arms race, which contributed to the tensions that sparked World War I, to the destruction unleashed and threatened by the development of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. But as technology becomes more powerful, the consequences of these arms races rise commensurately, as does the risk—increasingly borne not only by combatants, but by the world at large. Nowhere is this clearer than in the race to lead in AI, both on and off the battlefield (but mostly on). Scharre’s focus is on the risk that falling behind on AI would be a death blow to democracy. As Scharre puts it: “If the United States and other democracies do not work together to lead in AI and shape the rules for how it is used, they risk a creeping tide of techno-authoritarianism that undermines democracy and freedom around the globe” (p. 7). This is very much a Biden-era book, framing this global conflict as one between democracies and autocracies that the United States must focus on winning. If there were any doubts as to the purveyors of this techno-authoritarianism, Scharr","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135265570","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 India’s Democracy Is Dying","authors":"M. Tudor","doi":"10.1353/jod.2023.a900438","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900438","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:India exemplifies the global democratic recession. India’s recent downgrade to a hybrid regime is a major influence on the world’s autocratization. And the modality of India’s democratic decline reveals how democracies die today: not through a dramatic coup or midnight arrests of opposition leaders, but instead, it moves through the fully legal harassment of the opposition, intimidation of media, and centralization of executive power. By equating government criticism with disloyalty to the nation, the government of Narendra Modi is diminishing the very idea that opposition is legitimate. India today is no longer the world’s largest democracy.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":"34 1","pages":"121 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46538589","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 Origins of Military Supremacy in Dictatorships","authors":"D. Slater, Lucan Way, Jean Lachapelle, Adam E. Casey","doi":"10.1353/jod.2023.a900429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900429","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Militaries play dramatically different roles in different autocracies. At one extreme, the military remains the supreme political actor for generations. At the other extreme, militaries long remain subordinate to authoritarian leaders. We argue that the roots of this variation—from military supremacy to subordination—lie in military origins. Where authoritarian mass parties created militaries from scratch, the armed forces have generally remained subservient. Where militaries emerged separately from authoritarian parties, they enjoyed the autonomy necessary to achieve and maintain military supremacy. The core lesson is simple: Unless an autocratic regime created the military, it will struggle to control the military.","PeriodicalId":48227,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Democracy","volume":" ","pages":"20 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47864412","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}