📝 TLDR
The Carnegie Endowment’s July 2025 paper by Carothers, Kleinfeld, and Youngs presents a clear warning that international democracy support is in crisis. Major disruptions, especially under Trump in the U.S., have gutted funding and dismantled institutions. Meanwhile, authoritarian powers are on the rise, and democratic states are weakening internally. The authors propose a set of adaptive, decentralised, and context-sensitive methods to rescue the field.
New methods, systems, and actions
The paper opens by describing a dramatic collapse in U.S. democracy aid, including an over 80% cut, the closure of USAID’s programs, and a rollback of diplomatic backing for civil society. Institutions like NDI, Freedom House, and IFES have lost funding, staff, and local partnerships. European actors are facing similar pressures due to military spending cuts and the loss of national support.
At the same time, authoritarian regimes—led by China, Russia, and regional powers like the UAE—are providing money, media, and political backing to suppress democratisation globally. Their support ranges from disinformation campaigns to military alliances, influencing both autocracies and democratic societies from within.
Against this backdrop, the authors urge a pivot in methods. They call for:
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Greater strategic differentiation: Aid must adapt to different regime types, from fragile democracies to hardened autocracies.
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Bottom-up support: Rather than top-down institutional reform, empower civic actors, movements, and informal coalitions.
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Flexible networks: Build coalitions with “unlikely allies,” from bar associations to nurses and even parts of the security sector.
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New narratives: Counteract authoritarian propaganda with inclusive, diverse democratic stories and pluralistic models.
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Integrated strategies: Embed democracy into broader policy areas—climate, technology, governance.
🌐 Concluding Reflections
This moment of disruption can be an opportunity. Rather than exporting liberal democracy from above, we must build transnational communities of democratic practice. World needs humility from donors, trust in local actors, and cooperation across borders. To reach that future, the proposal is to act today by combining decentralised civic power with principled public support.
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