CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 2,699Political Theory and DemocracyPolitical Conflict and GovernancePopulism, Right-Wing Movements

The Rise of Illiberal Democracy

Zakaria, Fareed·1997·Foreign Affairs
DOI 10.2307/20048274
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

The American diplomat Richard Holbrooke pondered a problem on the eve of the September 1996 elections in Bosnia, which were meant to restore civic life to that ravaged country. Suppose the election was declared free and fair, he said, and those elected are racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to [peace and r?int?gration]. That is the dilemma. Indeed it is, not just in the former Yugoslavia, but increasingly around the world. Democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been reelected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms. From Peru to the Palestinian Authority, from Sierra Leone to Slovakia, from Pakistan to the Philip pines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life? illiberal democracy. It has been difficult to recognize this problem because for almost a century in the West, democracy has meant liberal democracy?a political system marked not only by free and fair elections, but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. In fact, this latter bundle of freedoms?what might be termed constitu tional liberalism?is theoretically different and historically distinct

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.2307/20048274

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Zakaria, F.
Corresponding author
Zakaria, Fareed
Venue
Foreign Affairs
Publisher
JSTOR
Published
1997
Volume
76
Issue
6
Pages
22
ISSN
0015-7120 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.2307/20048274
OpenAlex
W132993112
Cited by
2,699
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 94 · 2025: 143 · 2024: 152 · 2023: 140 · 2022: 132 · 2021: 163 · 2020: 207 · 2019: 216 · 2018: 154 · 2017: 85 · 2016: 67 · 2015: 70 · 2014: 79 · 2013: 76 · 2012: 76
FWCI
210.03
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
  • Foreign Affairs (publishedVersion)
  • Virtual Defense Library (Ministerio de Defensa) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political Conflict and Governance
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Populism, Right-Wing Movements
Keywords
illiberal democracy, liberal democracy, constitutional liberalism, rule of law, separation of powers, civil liberties, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism, post-communist states, former Yugoslavia

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review