How to Save Democracy

This week, the Journal of Democracy is sharing our July 2025 issue — free to read through the end of September.

Can capitalism save democracy? What does Poland’s escape from illiberal rule teach the rest of the world? Why do hopes for democratic resilience keep falling short? And how do autocrats use the language of democracy to destroy it?

Can Capitalism Save Democracy?
While capitalism is often cast as democracy’s enemy, the free market fosters the pluralism — a strong private sector, robust opposition, and independent civil society — on which democratic resilience depends; yet even wealthy private sectors can fall to state capture.
Semuhi Sinanoglu, Lucan Way, and Steven Levitsky

The Myth of Democratic Resilience
Countries that have gone from democracy to authoritarianism and back again since 1994 almost never sustain their recoveries — the lasting damage of authoritarian episodes and the incentives to keep inherited powers make “U-turns” far more fragile than hoped.
Matías Bianchi, Nic Cheeseman, and Jennifer Cyr

Democracy After Illiberalism: A Warning from Poland
Poland’s attempt to restore liberal democracy after populist rule reveals the “institutional traps” that backsliding leaves behind — traps so deep that undoing them risks resorting to the very decisionist methods that illiberal governments used.
Stanley Bill and Ben Stanley

The Islamic Republic’s War on Iranians
The Woman, Life, Freedom movement posed a direct ideological challenge to the Islamic Republic — and Tehran’s escalating hybrid war on its own people has followed, marking a new phase in the regime’s estrangement from Iranian society.
Ladan Boroumand

The Authoritarian Argument
Authoritarian legality does more than wield force: it claims authority, offering public reasons to justify the turn away from democracy — a discursive strategy visible in both populist and military regimes.
Madhav Khosla

Tanzania’s Autocratic Reform-Washing
Tanzania’s president has been celebrated as a democratic reformer, but her real strategy is performing reform rather than delivering it — promising, delaying, and styling herself a “good governance” leader while muzzling criticism.
Dan Paget and Aikande Clement Kwayu

Secularism, Islamism, and the Future of Turkey
The jailing of Istanbul’s mayor on the very day he won the opposition’s presidential primary by 15 million votes redefines Turkey’s Islamist-secularist divide — and offers a model for resisting authoritarian populism as Erdoğan’s support erodes.
Ahmet T. Kuru

How to Fight Turkey’s Authoritarian Turn
With İmamoğlu’s arrest, Turkey risks sliding from competitive politics into the hegemonic authoritarianism of Russia and Venezuela — yet the regime’s material and coercive limits, and the opposition’s electoral strength, may still prevent it.
Berk Esen and Sebnem Gumuscu

Turkey’s Hard Road to Democratic Renewal
Turkey’s 2024 local elections show democratic resilience under authoritarian rule: the opposition’s grassroots victories disrupted Erdoğan’s patronage networks — and provoked the intensified repression that followed.
Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Toygar Sinan Baykan, Ladin Bayurgil, and Aytuğ Şaşmaz

Bolivia’s Silent Destruction
Bolivia’s authoritarian governments have used fire as a political and economic weapon — burning land for patronage and land grabs while silencing dissent, in a model other authoritarian regimes worldwide are following.
Jhanisse Vaca Daza

The Philippines’ Dynastic Democracy
The May 2025 elections pitted the Duterte and Marcos dynasties against each other — and, indirectly, the world’s two superpowers — with historic turnout led by Gen Z voters shaping the country’s emerging political landscape.
Richard Javad Heydarian

What Kind of State for Syria?
After Assad’s fall, Syria faces the challenge of building a new state rooted in Islamic legitimacy: the essay explores the ideological and constitutional tensions — Islamic jurisprudence, executive power, and civil society — emerging from the transitional Constitutional Declaration.
Andrew F. March

Image credit: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

The Journal of Democracy is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October. Subscribe now for full access to the Journal of Democracy archives.