Declining US democracy emboldens global authoritarians

The fall of US democracy indicators to their lowest level in half a century is inspiring hardline leaders around the world, a leading global inter-governmental political institute said Tuesday.

“Major indicators of US democracy from press freedom to judicial independence hit their lowest levels in 50 years, and this is reverberating worldwide,” the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) said in a report.

“Washington’s retreat from the rules-based international order has weakened confidence in multilateralism and emboldened authoritarian leaders and populists,” added the institute.

About 57% of the countries studied by IDEA had seen a fall in at least one indicator of their democratic health between 2020 and 2025. The areas assessed include judicial independence, credible elections, freedom of speech and access to justice.

“Of course, patient zero of this global epidemic is the current president of the United States,” IDEA secretary general Kevin Casas-Zamora, a former vice president of Costa Rica, told AFP, referring to President Donald Trump.

“I think what happened in the US in 2020 has really had a global impact in terms of legitimising this kind of attack on the credibility of the electoral process,” he said of Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump returned to office after a 2024 election.

The trend accelerated with the attack on the US Congress building on Jan 6, 2021, by Trump supporters, Casas-Zamora added.

This encouraged riots in Brasilia on Jan 8, 2023, when thousands of followers of conservative ex-leader Jair Bolsonaro looted Brazil’s parliament, demanding a military intervention against leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a week after he took office.

The IDEA chief said that “arguments that were used to gut and eventually close down USAID (the US foreign aid agency) were used in Serbia by the government to clamp down on civil society organisations”.

International IDEA was set up by 14 founding states in 1995 to help with elections and monitor democracies. There are currently more than 30 member states. The US had been an observer member but left this year.

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