#Democracy

Podcasts

Crime, Crackdowns, and Democracy in Ecuador

Ecuador has experienced one of the most dramatic surges in criminal violence in Latin America, alongside growing pressure on democratic institutions. In this episode of the Review of Democracy podcast—produced in cooperation with the Journal of Democracy—Gabriel Pereira speaks with Galo Mayorga and Kai M. Thaler about how state weakness, militarized security policies, and public fear are reshaping Ecuador’s democracy.

2.02.2026

Book Reviews

Five Books on Democracy and Culture in 2025

In 2025, our book coverage aimed to explain the long historical processes behind today’s anxieties: environmental breakdown, wars, revolutions and democratic backsliding. These books revisit settled historical narratives and brought into sight systemic invisibilities. They show how crises rarely arrive unannounced. Instead, they accumulate quietly, sustained by myths and convenient misunderstandings.

7.01.2026

Book Reviews

Five Ideas Books in 2025

The five titles below are a snapshot of the works we covered in the History of Ideas section at RevDem over the past year. They share a common ambition: to reopen settled stories about democracy, political thought, and crisis by recovering neglected traditions, reframing canonical figures, and widening the conceptual and geographical horizons of our disciplines. Rather than offering neat solutions, each invites us to rethink what democracy and politics have been, and what they still might become.

6.01.2026

News

Contestation and Consolidation of Democracies Will Never End

This letter seeks to draw attention to the growing tendency among voters to label political decisions and practices as democratic or undemocratic based on ad hoc judgments. This trend signals the emergence of what might be called “folk theories of democracy,” or intuitive, and at times contradictory, conceptualizations of democracy that often diverge from academic definitions. It risks fragmenting our shared understanding of democratic norms and complicating meaningful public discourse.

2.09.2025