JOURNAL OF DEMOCRACY, NRO. 21, VOL. 1 (ENERO 2010)

* El número actual del Journal of Democracy está muy recomendable. En general se presenta un balance de cómo se ha estudiado el tema de la democracia en la política comparada y en América Latina (veáse el artículo de O´Donnell y de Schmitter). Por otra parte, Francis Fukuyama, quien se hizo famoso por su libro "El fin de la historia", al parecer está desarrollando la línea de investigación que Leonardo Morlino (2004) y O´Donnell (2005) ya habían abierto con el estudio de la calidad de la democracia (QoD) y la dimensión del Rule of Law. Finalmente, el artículo sobre el populismo de Marc F. Plattner está muy bueno, pues es una entrada que combina la teoría política con la política comparada. A propósito, en julio del 2009 se lanzó el Journal of Democracy en Español, cuyos artículos pueden descargarse online y entre los cuales figura el clásico La Democracia Delegativa del célebre Guillermo O´Donnell.

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Journal of Democracy. January 2010, Volume 21, Number 1

Democracy's Past and Future
The Editors

Still Bowling Alone? The Post-9/11 Split
Thomas H. Sander and Robert D. Putnam
The crisis of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has sparked a surge of increased civic engagement by young people in the United States, but there is also evidence of a growing divide along class lines.

Twenty-Five Years, Fifteen Findings
Philippe C. Schmitter
A coauthor of the pathbreaking study Transitions from Authoritarian Rule reflects on the lessons that he has learned about democratic transition and consolidation since the publication of this work nearly 25 years ago.

Schmitter’s Retrospective: A Few Dissenting Notes
Guillermo O’Donnell
Another coauthor of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule questions whether his former collaborator is underrating the current dangers to democracy.

Transitions to the Rule of Law
Francis Fukuyama
While we have witnessed many transitions to multiparty systems, it has proven much harder for countries to attain a genuine rule of law. We need to know more about the origins of the rule of law in order to promote it successfully today.

The Crash of '08
Laurence Whitehead
The short-term political impact of the economic crisis has been less dramatic than initially expected, but it may have lasting effects on the “quality” of democracy, including the legitimacy of prevailing financial institutions.

Why Democracy Needs a Level Playing Field
Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way
In some countries, democratic competition is undermined less by electoral fraud or repression than by a skewed playing field—unequal access to state institutions, resources, and the media.

Authoritarianism’s Last Line of Defense
Andreas Schedler
The new electoral authoritarian regimes of the post–Cold War era have formally adopted the full panoply of liberal-democratic institutions. Rather than rejecting or repressing these institutions, they manipulate them.

Populism, Pluralism, and Liberal Democracy
Marc F. Plattner
In recent years, scholars have begun to focus on the sources of “authoritarian resilience.” But democracy has also shown surprising resilience, in part because the disorders to which it is prone tend to counteract each other.

Why Are There No Arab Democracies?
Larry Diamond
Democracy has held its own or gained ground in just about every part of the world except for the Arab Middle East. Why has this crucial region remained such infertile soil for democracy?