Dictators seem all-powerful—until they’re not. Those brave enough to challenge autocrats have
scored some impressive victories in recent years. But how did they do it? And how could other
opposition movements succeed where they once failed? The following essays from the Journal
of Democracy examine the tried-and-true strategies, tactics, and lessons that are allowing
political oppositions to square off against the world’s authoritarian regimes and come out ahead.

1. How Oppositions Fight Back
Behind today’s authoritarian wave are democratically elected leaders who use and abuse institutions to undermine their democracies. With the right strategies, opposition forces can slow or stop these would-be autocrats.
Laura Gamboa

2. The Future of Nonviolent Resistance
Nonviolent movements must evolve beyond mass protests and explore alternative tactics to develop smarter, longer-term strategies.
Erica Chenoweth

3. How to Sharpen a Nonviolent Movement
Movements using “dilemma actions”—creative protests that make a regime look foolish—are effective at undermining authoritarians.
Sophia McClennen, Srdja Popovic, and Joseph Wright

4. How to Compete in Unfair Elections
Opposition movements often boycott rigged polls rather than risk legitimizing an autocrat, but there are more effective methods of competition.
Alyena Batura

5. How Guatemala Defied the Odds
The Guatemalan opposition, backed by the international community, exploited the ruling criminal oligarchy’s fissures to elect a little-known candidate.
Rachel A. Schwartz and Anita Isaacs

6. The Opposition Wins in Honduras
The Honduran opposition beat an authoritarian incumbent by unifying, organizing its supporters, and contesting every election—no matter the odds.
Will Freeman and Lucas Perelló

The emergence of AI with superhuman capabilities will come far sooner than previously thought. As AI advances, so does the potential for harm—including grave risks to democracy and human rights. AI’s fast advance could lead to the accumulation of vast amounts of wealth and power in the hands of single individuals, companies, and countries. The following essays from The Journal of Democracy examine how these technological fronts are changing fast and the swift action we must take to prepare for what is to come.

1. AI and Catastrophic Risk
AI with superhuman abilities could emerge within the next few years. We must act now to protect democracy, human rights, and our very existence.
Yoshua Bengio

2. How AI Threatens Democracy
Generative AI can flood the media, internet, and even personal correspondence with misinformation—sowing confusion for voters and government officials alike. If we fail to act, mounting mistrust will polarize our societies and tear at our institutions.
Sarah Kreps and Doug Kriner

3. The Danger of Runaway AI
Science fiction may soon become reality with the advent of AI systems that can independently pursue their own objectives. Guardrails are needed now to save us from the worst outcomes.
Tom Davidson

4. The Authoritarian Data Problem
AI is destined to become another stage for geopolitical conflict. In this contest, autocracies have the advantage, as they vacuum up valuable data from democracies, while democracies inevitably incorporate data tainted by repression.
Eddie Yang and Margaret E. Roberts

5. AI’s Economic Peril
AI will transform work and entire economies. The potential benefits also bring a dire risk of rising inequality and job losses. But the worst outcomes can still be avoided.
Stephanie A. Bell and Anton Korinek

6. Reimagining Democracy for AI
Advances in AI are rapidly disrupting the foundations of democracy and the international order. We must reinvent our democratic infrastructure to ensure our ability to govern in a dramatically different technological world.
Aviv Ovadya

7. The Real Dangers of Generative AI
Advanced AI faces twin perils: the collapse of democratic control over key state functions or the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of the few. Avoiding these risks will require new ways of governing.
Danielle Allen and E. Glen Weyl

8. How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping Repression
Democracies must grapple not only with the proliferation of AI in authoritarian and illiberal regimes, but also with the temptation that AI poses for democratic governments themselves.
Steven Feldstein

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi rose to power in 2014, his government has engaged in what is, by some accounts, a wholesale dismantling of democratic institutions, norms, and practices. Should India’s democracy fail, it will affect not only the lives of 1.4 billion Indians but also democracy movements worldwide. The Journal of Democracy has brought together leading scholars of India to perform a biopsy on the state of that country’s fragile democracy and to offer a prognosis for its future. The authors are united in believing that India’s political condition warrants concern, but they differ in their assessments of the depth and causes of the crisis. The following essays focus on what might be this century’s most consequential fight for a decent, representative, and accountable government.

1. Why India’s Democracy Is Dying
India’s government maintains the trappings of democracy but increasingly harasses the opposition, attacks minorities, and stifles dissent. It can still reverse course, but the damage is mounting.
Maya Tudor

2. The Authoritarian Roots of India’s Democracy
To say that Indian democracy is backsliding misunderstands the country’s history and the challenges it faces: A certain authoritarianism is embedded in India’s constitution and political structures.
Tripurdaman Singh

3. Modi’s Undeclared Emergency
Since the beginning of the second Modi government, an emboldened BJP has launched a steady, comprehensive, and unprecedented attack on civil liberties, personal rights, and free speech across India.
Šumit Ganguly

4. The Exaggerated Death of Indian Democracy
It is true that politics under the BJP is a break from the past. But attempts to reduce the country’s present condition to democratic backsliding misunderstands the moment and is an injustice to India’s journey as a democracy.
Rahul Verma

5. Why India’s Political Elites Are to Blame
India has a long history of elites acting undemocratically. But the current government’s attacks on the media, arrests of opposition, and discriminatory laws are deeper and more alarming.
Vineeta Yadav

6. How India’s Ruling Party Erodes Democracy
The BJP has won two successive national elections but refuses to respect the rights of Muslims. Is democracy on a collision course with liberalism?
Ashutosh Varshney

7. Hindu Nationalism and the New Jim Crow
While the histories of white supremacy and Hindu supremacy are different, their political objectives are much the same. The BJP is forging a regime of exclusion and oppression as brutal as the Jim Crow South. Only India’s voters can reverse its advance.
Ashutosh Varshney and Connor Staggs

8. How to Stop India's Authoritarian Slide
The BJP is ruling with a heavier hand than ever before, attacking opponents and silencing critics. Ironically, these may be the ideal conditions for a democratic revival—if the opposition seizes the moment.
Rahul Mukherji

Latin American democracies are struggling for one simple reason: The region’s voters are aggrieved, impatient, and eager to elect candidates who offer a break with the past—sometimes whatever that break may be. This factor, combined with high crime and middling economic growth, has led to wild swings and shrinking political rights. The Journal of Democracy is following Latin American democracies as they trek this torturous path. The following essays offer a critical, unblinking analysis of what it will take for Latin America to find its way.

1. Why Latin America’s Democracies Are Stuck
Latin American democracies struggle as democratic stagnation makes them targets for illiberal populists and other would-be authoritarians.
Scott Mainwaring and Anibal Pérez-Liñán

2. The Danger of Powerless Democracy
Troubled Peru has devolved into a cautionary tale for what a democracy without established parties and professional politicians can look like.
Rodrigo Barrenechea and Alberto Vergara

3. Chile’s Constitutional Chaos
Chileans rejected the progressive charter they had claimed to want. Right-wing attacks and voter anxiety are to blame.
Jennifer M. Piscopo and Peter M. Siavelis

4. Chile’s Failed Constitution: Democracy Wins
Chilean voters overwhelmingly rejected a draft constitution that did not reflect their values. They want a new charter, not a new country.
Eduardo Alemán and Patricio Navia

5. Lula’s Second Act
Brazil’s charismatic former president is back, but he won by a sliver and his opponents on the right were also empowered by the election.
Wendy Hunter and Timothy J. Power

6. Millennial Authoritarianism in El Salvador
Nayib Bukele combines populist appeals, classic autocratic behavior, and a polished social-media brand to threaten democratic institutions.
Manuel Mélendez-Sánchez

7. How Guatemala Defied the Odds
Almost no one expected a little-known candidate to defeat the ruling antidemocratic regime at the ballot box. But the Guatemalan opposition, backed by the international community, exploited the criminal oligarchy’s fissures to halt the country’s authoritarian slide.
Rachel A. Schwartz and Anita Isaacs

8. How Latin America's Judges Are Defending Democracy
Can a strong, independent high court serve as a guarantor of democracy? In Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, judges are showing a surprising resolve in fending off their countries’ antidemocratic forces.
Diego A. Zambrano, Ludmilla Martins da Silva, Rolando Garcia Miron, and Santiago P. Rodriguez

More than 4 billion people will cast ballots in what is being dubbed the “year of elections.” Seven of the 10 most populous countries in the world, including India, Indonesia, and the United States, will hold national elections. Voters in dozens of other countries, ranging from Mexico and South Africa to Pakistan and South Korea, will also deliver verdicts this year. Will democracy survive this test, especially in states where authoritarian populists are on the ballot? The truth is that for all the worry, democracy has shown remarkable durability across the globe. The following collection of essays reveals why democracy usually comes out on top.

1. Why Democracy Survives Populism
Populism is a mortal threat to liberal democracy, but it rarely hits the mark. The evidence shows that these would-be strongmen require an extraordinary set of circumstances to succeed, which is why they so rarely do.
Kurt Weyland

2. Democracy’s Surprising Resilience
Despite worry of an authoritarian resurgence, the vast majority of “third wave” democracies are enduring. Democracy, buoyed by economic growth and urbanization, is outperforming most people’s expectations and fears.
Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way

3. Democracy's Devout Defenders
When Africa’s leaders act undemocratically, they face an unexpected opponent—the power of the pulpit. Within civil society, church leaders and their faithful have become leading defenders of liberal democracy.
Kate Baldwin

4. Why Democracies Survive
Democracies are under stress, but they are not about to buckle. The erosion of norms and other woes do not spell democratic collapse. With incredibly few exceptions, affluent democracies will endure, no matter the schemes of would-be autocrats.
Jason Brownlee and Kenny Miao

5. Why the Future Is Democratic
The swelling pessimism about democracy’s future is unwarranted. Values focused on human freedom are spreading throughout the world, and suggest that the future of self-government is actually quite bright.
Christian Welzel

Liberalism is being assailed from left and right, but it has not failed. Understanding liberalism’s power, effect, contradictions, and potential offers insight into the perils facing contemporary democracy. In this Journal of Democracy subject guide, five authors grapple with questions of liberalism’s lasting relevance and its challenges for the future.

1. The Liberalism of Refuge
Liberal societies are those that offer refuge from the very people they empower—through individual choice, mobility, and the possibility of exit. This is the form of liberty that most clearly elevates the liberal project.
Bryan Garsten

2. Liberalism as Fortress and Prison
The power of liberalism—though limited and never revered—enables it to serve as refuge while taming the demons of liberal society.
Nadia Urbinati

3. The Limits of Liberalism
The liberal emphasis on unhindered mobility comes with costs, particularly for those unable to leave.
William A. Galston

4. Liberal Tolerance for an Intolerant Age
What distinguishes liberal societies from all others is that they tolerate immoral behavior. It is this tolerance that protects us not just from our leaders but ourselves.
Jason Brennan

5. A Refuge from Liberalism?
The belief we can “escape” remains a part of the liberal imagination. In truth, it is realized in the form of detachment from any community, an exodus without refuge.
Patrick J. Deneen

6. A Reply to My Critics
A liberal society must reckon the demands of the common good, while offering what we most crave—something worth sacrificing for.
Bryan Garsten