Although Russia's most recent presidential and parliamentary ballots witnessed worrisomely lopsided victories for incumbent president Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin-backed United Russia party, they also demonstrated the extent to which elections in Russia have become thoroughly institutionalized. In December 2003, Russians went to the polls for the fourth time in a decade to select representatives to the lower house of the parliament, the State Duma. Three months later, Russian voters turned up again to select a president for the fourth time in thirteen years. Both of these national elections took place as scheduled and guided by laws approved through a legislative process well before the vote.

For hundreds of years, dictators have ruled Russia. Do they still? In the late 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev launched a series of political reforms that eventually allowed for competitive elections, the emergence of an independent press, the formation of political parties, and the sprouting of civil society. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these proto-democratic institutions endured in an independent Russia.

But did the processes unleashed by Gorbachev and continued under Russian President Boris Yeltsin lead eventually to liberal democracy in Russia? If not, what kind of political regime did take hold in post-Soviet Russia? And how has Vladimir Putin's rise to power influenced the course of democratic consolidation or the lack thereof? Between Dictatorship and Democracy seeks to give a comprehensive answer to these fundamental questions about the nature of Russian politics.

This book reflects the unique collaboration of Russian and American scholars. Additional contributors include: Viktor Sheinis, Mikhail Krasnov, Vladimir Petukhov, and Elina Treyger.

This paper assesses Pan Wei's proposal for a 'consultative rule of law system' for China, finding it a potentially important step along the path of political reform. China urgently needs political reform to deal with the rapidly mounting problems of corruption, abuse of power, financial scandals, rising crime and inequality, and declining legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. A rule of law, with an independent judiciary and other autonomous institutions of horizontal accountability, is vital if China is to rein in these problems and deliver better, fairer, more transparent and effective governance. However, Pan Wei's proposed system goes only part of the way toward addressing the deficiencies of governance in China, and is therefore best viewed as a transitional framework. To work, horizontal accountability must be supplemented with and reinforced by vertical account ability, through competitive elections, which give local officials an incentive to serve the public good and enable bad officials to be removed by the people. Ultimately, I argue, China can only achieve adequate and enduring political accountability by moving toward democracy. Among the other issues addressed in the paper are the architecture and appointment of a system of horizontal accountability for China; the role of the Communist Party (or its successor hegemon) in a 'rule of law' system; and the timing and phasing of the transition to a rule of law.

Reprinted in Suisheng Zhao, ed., Debating Political Reform in China: Rule of Law vs. Democratization, 2006.

Islam and Democracy in the Middle East provides a comprehensive assessment of the origins and staying power of Middle East autocracies, as well as a sober account of the struggles of state reformers and opposition forces to promote civil liberties, competitive elections, and a pluralistic vision of Islam. Drawing on the insights of some twenty-five leading Western and Middle Eastern scholars, the book highlights the dualistic and often contradictory nature of political liberalization. As the case studies of Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and Yemen suggest, political liberalization -- as managed by the state -- not only opens new spaces for debate and criticism, but is also used as a deliberate tactic to avoid genuine democratization. In several chapters on Iran, the authors analyze the benefits and costs of limited reform. There, the electoral successes of President Mohammad Khatami and his reformist allies inspired a new generation but have not as yet undermined the clerical establishment's power. By contrast, in Turkey a party with Islamist roots is moving a discredited system beyond decades of conflict and paralysis, following a stunning election victory in 2002.

Turkey's experience highlights the critical role of political Islam as a force for change. While acknowledging the enduring attraction of radical Islam throughout the Arab world, the concluding chapters carefully assess the recent efforts of Muslim civil society activists and intellectuals to promote a liberal Islamic alternative. Their struggles to affirm the compatibility of Islam and pluralistic democracy face daunting challenges, not least of which is the persistent efforts of many Arab rulers to limit the influence of all advocates of democracy, secular or religious.

When Terry Karl and I were searching for the most generic definition of “modern representative political democracy,” we hit upon the concept of accountability. We wanted a definition that was not dependent upon a specific institution or set of institutions, that was not uniquely liberal or excessively defensive in its presumptions, that was neither exclusively procedural nor substantive in its content, and that could travel well across world cultural regions. None of those in widespread use in the burgeoning literature on democratization fit our, admittedly demanding, bill of particulars, especially not the so-called Schumpeterian definition or the many versions derived from it. All of these focused too single-mindedly on the regular conduct of elections that (allegedly) offered citizens a choice between alternative set of rulers (with no attention to the relations of citizens and rulers leading up to the holding of such presumably “free and fair” elections or to those prevailing after such episodic events). Indeed, many of the more theoretically inclined scholars who relied on such a definition seemed embarrassed in doing so and excused themselves by arguing that, even though elections are not the only manifestation of democracy, they were easy to measure (even to dichotomize!) and/or that alternative, so-called substantive definitions of “it” were subject to partisan manipulation. Terry and I were all too aware that some accountability; indeed, it gives them greater legitimacy when they have to act against immediate popular opinion.

South Korea (Korea hereafter) and Taiwan are widely recognized as the two most successful third-wave democracies in Asia (Chu, Diamond, and Shin, 2001; Diamond and Plattner, 1998; Shin and Lee, 2003). For more than a decade, these two new democracies have regularly held free and competitive elections at all levels of their respective governments. Both nationally and locally, citizens choose the heads of the executive branches and the members of the legislatures thorough regularly scheduled electoral contests. Unlike many countries in the region, moreover, the two countries have peacefully transferred power to opposition parties, the Millennium Democratic Party in Korea and the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan. Accordingly, there is little doubt that the political regimes of Korea and Taiwan fully meet the democratic principle of popular sovereignty featuring free and fair elections, universal adult suffrage, and multiparty competition. Nonetheless, little is known about how well their current regimes meet other important principles of liberal democracy and uphold its basic values such as freedom, equality, and justice.

While the Third Wave of Democracy swept through many African countries in the 1990s, South Africa and Ghana stand out as two of the continent’s real success stories politically. Beginning in the late 1980s, South Africa’s leaders successfully steered the country out of the shadow of apparently irreconcilable conflict and unavoidable racial or ethnic civil war to create a common nation. Since 1994, they have negotiated two democratic constitutions, and held four successful nation-wide elections for national and local government. South Africa’s Constitution has become the darling of liberals and social democrats the world over because of its inclusion of an extensive set of political and socio- economic rights.ii Starting in 1993, Ghana has enjoyed ten years of democratic, constitutional rule, holding three successful multi-party elections (with the third producing a peaceful electoral turnover).

Twice in the winter of 1999-2000, citizens of the Russian Federation flocked to their neighborhood voting stations and scratched their ballots in an atmosphere of uncertainty, rancor, and fear. This book is a tale of these two elections - one for the 450-seat Duma, the other for President.

Despite financial crisis, a national security emergency in Chechnya, and cabinet instability, Russian voters unexpectedly supported the status quo. The elected lawmakers prepared to cooperate with the executive branch, a gift that had eluded President Boris Yeltsin since he imposed a post-Soviet constitution by referendum in 1993. When Yeltsin retired six months in advance of schedule, the presidential mantle went to Vladimir Putin - a career KGB officer who fused new and old ways of doing politics. Putin was easily elected President in his own right.

This book demonstrates key trends in an extinct superpower, a troubled country in whose stability, modernization, and openness to the international community the West still has a huge stake.

Brookings Institution Press