João AlÃpio Correa
The concept of 'illiberal democracy' is well-founded, but João AlÃpio Correa argues that it fails to convey what is happening in regimes described as such. To gain a more incisive understanding of the current deterioration in democratic regimes, he proposes the umbrella definition 'autocratisation' Read more
Kathleen McCrudden Illert
Jean-Paul Gagnon has argued that the most promising way of approaching the total texture of democracy is through words. But, asks Kathleen McCrudden Illert, what’s in a name? Many theories that we would recognise today as democratic were not, due to their historical context, associated with the signifier ‘democracy’ – and these concepts will be missing from Gagnon’s data mountain. Read more
Eva Krick
Eva Krick is sympathetic to Gagnon’s collection of ‘democracies with adjectives’ but does not fully share his optimism that this will finally make us grasp democracy’s ‘total texture’. It is but one little building block of an infinite and eclectic science of democracy. Read more
Ramin Jahanbegloo
Ramin Jahanbegloo explores how Mahatma Gandhi’s non-western democratic theory prescribes empathetic emancipation through nonviolent action. Gandhi sought to bring about a truly democratic transformation of society, thereby securing an ethical social order Read more
Haakon Gjerløw
In a new book, Haakon Gjerløw, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Tore Wig and Matthew C. Wilson challenge conventional wisdom. Building state institutions before democratisation does not help long-term economic development, after all Read more
Gergana Dimova
In the 🦋 Science of Democracy series, Jean-Paul Gagnon has started an intra-disciplinary debate between democratic theory and comparative politics. The reasons to overcome this disciplinary clash are better than the reasons to embrace it, writes Gergana Dimova Read more
Frank Hendriks
Jean-Paul Gagnon takes biology as a model but overlooks that it is driven by variation as well as selection. The study of it, therefore, is sensitive to both. The study of democracy and innovation must be too, asserts Frank Hendriks Read more
Benjamin Abrams
Democracy is in danger, and autocrats are becoming bolder and bolder. Benjamin Abrams argues that our failure to understand democracy stops us from effectively defending it. To protect democracy, we need to understand what it means, what kind we have, and what it can become Read more
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