Global Trends in Democracy: Background, U.S. October 16, 2018
Policy, and Issues for Congress
Michael A. Weber
Widespread concerns exist among analysts and policymakers over the current trajectory of
Analyst in Foreign Affairs
democracy around the world. Congress has often played an important role in supporting and

institutionalizing U.S. democracy promotion, and current developments may have implications
for U.S. policy, which for decades has broadly reflected the view that the spread of democracy

around the world is favorable to U.S. interests.
The aggregate level of democracy around the world has not advanced for more than a decade. Analysis of data trend-
lines from two major global democracy indexes indicates that, as of 2017, the level of democracy around the world has not
advanced since around the year 2005 or 2006. Although the degree of democratic backsliding around the world has arguably
been modest overall to this point, some elements of democracy, particularly those associated with liberal democracy, have
receded during this period. Declines in democracy that have occurred may have disproportionately affected countries with
larger population sizes. Overall, this data indicates that democracy’s expansion has been more challenged during this period
than during any similar period dating back to the 1970s. Despite this, democratic declines to this point have been
considerably less severe than the more pronounced setbacks that occurred during some earlier periods in the 20th century.
Numerous broad factors may be affecting democracy globally. These include (but are not limited to) the following:
 The growing international influence of nondemocratic governments. These countries may in some instances
view containing the spread of democracy as instrumental toward other goals or as helpful to their own
domestic regime stability. Thus they may be engaging in various activities that have negative impacts on
democracy internationally. At the same time, relatively limited evidence exists to date of a more affirmative
agenda to promote authoritarian political systems or norms as competing alternatives to democracy.
 The state of democracy’s global appeal as a political system. Challenges to and apparent dissatisfaction
with government performance within democracies, and the concomitant emergence of economically
successful authoritarian capitalist states, may be affecting in particular democracy’s traditional instrumental
appeal as the political system most capable of delivering economic growth and national prestige. Public
opinion polling data indicate that democracy as a political system may overall still retain considerable
appeal around the world relative to nondemocratic alternatives.
 Nondemocratic governments’ use of new methods to repress political dissent within their own societies.
Tools such as regulatory restrictions on civil society and technology-enhanced censorship and surveillance
are arguably enhancing the long-term durability of nondemocratic forms of governance.
 Structural conditions in nondemocracies. Some scholars argue that broad conditions in many of the world’s
remaining nondemocracies, such as their level of wealth or economic inequality, are not conducive to
sustained democratization. The importance of these factors to democratization is complex and contested
among experts.
Democracy promotion is a longstanding, but contested, element of U.S. foreign policy. Wide disagreements and well-
worn policy debates persist among experts over whether, or to what extent, the United States should prioritize democracy
promotion in its foreign policy. Many of these debates concern the relevance of democracy promotion to U.S. interests, its
potential tension with other foreign policy objectives, and the United States’ capacity to effectively promote democratization.
Recent developments pose numerous potential policy considerations and questions for Congress. Democracy promotion
has arguably not featured prominently in the Trump Administration’s foreign policy to this point, creating potential continued
areas of disagreement between some Members of Congress and the Administration. Simultaneously, current challenges
around the world present numerous questions of potential consideration for Congress. Broadly, these include whether and
where the United States should place greater or lesser emphasis on democracy promotion in its foreign policy, as well as
various related questions concerning the potential tools for promoting democracy.
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Introduction
For decades U.S. policymakers have connected U.S. national security and other core interests
with the spread of democracy around the world. Reflecting this, the promotion of democracy has
been a longstanding and multifaceted element of U.S. foreign policy, and one often interrelated
with U.S. efforts to promote human rights. Congress has often played an important role in
supporting and institutionalizing U.S. democracy promotion by passing key legislation,
appropriating funds for foreign assistance programs and other democracy promoting activities,
and conducting oversight of aspects of U.S. foreign policy relevant to democracy promotion.
Widespread concerns exist among analysts and policymakers over the current trajectory of
democracy around the world and multiple hearings in the 115th Congress reflected bipartisan
concern over this issue.1 For the past decade, experts have debated whether, and to what extent,
the heretofore global expansion of democracy has halted or even begun to reverse. Many argue
that the world has been in the midst of what has been termed a global “democratic recession” that
began around 2006.2 Proponents of this view cite data from global measures of democracy as well
as qualitative trends that have heightened concerns over the state of democracy, particularly in
recent years. Frequently cited concerns include the rise of authoritarian populist and nationalist
leaders, the potential negative influence on democracy from internationally assertive authoritarian
states, questions over the enduring appeal of democracy as a political system, new tools
nondemocratic governments are using to stifle potential democratizing forces, and others.
Experts vary in their assessment of the impact of these and other perceived trends and in their
appraisal of what current conditions may portend for the future trajectory of democracy around
the world. With regard to U.S. policy, there are disagreements over the extent to which the United
States should respond to negative trends, as well as over the U.S. capacity to influence them
meaningfully and effectively.
This report aims to provide Congress information, analysis, and a variety of perspectives on these
issues. In particular, it provides brief conceptual background on democracy and on democracy
promotion’s historical role in U.S. policy, analyzes aggregate trends in the global level of
democracy using data from two major democracy indexes, and discusses some of the key factors
that may be broadly affecting democracy around the world. Finally, the report includes a
synthesis of debates over democracy promotion in U.S. foreign policy and a selection of related
policy issues and questions for Congress in the current period and beyond.

1 U.S. Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democracy Promotion in a Challenging World, hearings, 115th
Congress, 2nd sess., June 14, 2018; U.S. Congress, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on Western
Hemisphere, Transnational Crime, Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, and Global Women’s Issues,
Democracy and Human Rights: The Case for U.S. Leadership, hearings, 115th Congress, 1st sess., February 16, 2017.
2 Larry Diamond, “Facing up to the Democratic Recession,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1 (January 2015), pp.
141-155.
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Background
Varying Definitions of Democracy
In the most basic sense, democracy means “rule by the people.”3 Attempts to elaborate on this
definition in ways useful to policymakers and political scientists are longstanding and contested.4
Conceptions of democracy may vary across cultural contexts and across time, and ideological
biases (conscious or otherwise) as well as the broader “political zeitgeist” of the times may play a
significant role in influencing what features are considered essential to the definition of
democracy.5
While competing conceptions of democracy vary in numerous ways, many can be differentiated
by their relative “thickness” or “thinness.” Relatively “thin” definitions generally emphasize
minimum elements of electoral political competition and participation, such as free and fair
elections, universal suffrage, and the right to join political organizations.6 More expansive “thick”
definitions may include these minimum elements as well as broad protections for individual
rights and civil liberties (and corresponding constraints on government power and majority rule),
the rule of law, well-functioning and transparent government institutions, and/or a democratic
political culture, among other elements.7 These more expansive definitions reflect the notion that
democracy consists of more than just basic elements of democratic political competition, such as
elections, a contention that is now generally accepted even as the outer boundaries of the concept
of democracy remain unsettled.8 Thus while minimalist, “thin” definitions may suffer criticism
for excluding elements that are thought by many to be essential to democracy, broader “thick”
definitions may conversely be criticized for including elements that to some are beyond the
bounds of its core conception.9
Various adjectives are also frequently employed to denote different conceptions or levels of
democracy. The term electoral democracy, for instance, is typically understood to align with
more minimalist conceptions of democracy, while liberal democracy refers to those minimalist
elements plus elements found in more expansive definitions.10 As well, while democracy is

3 The term democracy derives from the Greek words demos, “the people,” and craits, “to rule.”
4 The academic literature includes oft-repeated variations of the phrase, “there are as many definitions of democracy as
there are users of the concept.”
5 Seva Gunitsky, “Lost in the gray zone: competing measures of democracy in the former Soviet republics,” in Ranking
the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 113-150.
6 Robert Dahl’s conception of polyarchy is sometimes cited as an influential example of a somewhat minimalist theory
of the institutions necessary for democracy. As he defined it in 1989, polyarchy includes seven elements: control over
government decisions by elected officials, free and fair elections, inclusive suffrage (virtually all adults have the right
to vote), the right to run for office, freedom of expression, access to alternative sources of information, and the right to
form “relatively independent” organizations, including political parties and interest groups. Dahl argued that the
existence of these institutions is necessary, but not necessarily sufficient, for the functioning of democracy at the scale
of modern nation states. See Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics (Yale University, 1989), pp. 221-224.
7 It should be noted that the meanings of many of these concepts are themselves contested.
8 Laurence Whitehead, Democratization: Theory and Experience (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 14.
9 See Michael Coppedge et al., “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach” Perspectives on
Politics, vol. 9, no. 2 (June 2011), pp. 247-267; Seva Gunitsky, “Lost in the gray zone: competing measures of
democracy in the former Soviet republics,” in Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance
(Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 113-150.
10 There are various other common descriptive terms for conceptions of democracy that emphasize differing principles,
such as participatory democracy, egalitarian democracy, and others.
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frequently understood in contrast to authoritarianism or dictatorship, many modern definitions
and measures recognize that political systems often exist in middle zones, and are therefore
referred to using concepts such as hybrid regimes.11 Attempts to identify political systems on a
continuum of a broader spectrum of concepts in this way may nonetheless require the use of
relatively arbitrary divisions between these concepts, given that, as one scholar has argued,
“democracy is in many ways a continuous variable,” as are many of its key elements.12
The concept of democracy is not explicitly defined in U.S. policy or law. Nonetheless, U.S. law
generally implicitly aligns with nonminimalist views or notions of democracy. For example, the
ADVANCE Democracy Act of 2007 (Title XXI of P.L. 110-53) associated democratic countries
with eight characteristics, including some elements found in broader, “thick” definitions of
democracy, such as the rule of law and various civil liberties.13 Similarly, the scope of democracy
promotion programs as defined in appropriations bills includes elements such as the rule of law
and labor rights.14 In line with this, unless otherwise noted, the term democracy in this report
refers to broader conceptions of democracy typically associated with the term liberal democracy.
Democracy Promotion, Congress, and U.S. Policy
Encouraging the spread of democracy is a recurrent theme in U.S. foreign policy, though one that
has been embraced unevenly given competing objectives and the differing foreign policy
priorities and perspectives of presidential administrations. Congress has often advocated on a
bipartisan basis for ensuring that support for democracy and human rights is an important
component of U.S. policy, and has repeatedly taken legislative action to that effect. Beginning in
the 1970s, in particular, Congress passed legislation to institutionalize support for democracy and
human rights within the State Department, authorized and appropriated significant resources for
democracy promotion programs (more than $2 billion annually in recent years), and sought to
restrict aid to governments and to security forces responsible for gross human rights violations,
among other measures.
The means by which the United States promotes democracy, broadly defined, include bilateral
and multilateral diplomacy, sanctions and other forms of conditionality, foreign assistance
programs, educational and cultural exchange programs, and public diplomacy and international
broadcasting.15 U.S. democracy promotion also sometimes has been associated with military
intervention.16 Many democracy promotion experts today draw a distinction between peaceful

11 For example, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index assigns countries to four different categories: “full
democracies,” “flawed democracies,” “hybrid regimes,” and “authoritarian regimes.”
12 Larry Diamond, “Facing up to the Democratic Recession,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1 (January 2015), pp.
141-155. Continuous variables describe those that can take on any value within a certain range, in contrast with discrete
variables such as the above-mentioned categories of “democracy,” “hybrid regime,” or “authoritarian regime.” Debate
exists over the relative merits of using continuous measures of democracy versus discrete categories.
13 See 22 U.S.C. 8203.
14 See, for instance, Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2018
(Division K of P.L. 115-141).
15 For summary information of some of these efforts in recent years, see the State Department’s “Advancing Freedom
and Democracy” reports, issued pursuant to the ADVANCE Democracy Act of 2007 (Title XXI of P.L. 110-53), which
describe “efforts by the U.S. Government to support democracy and human rights in nondemocratic countries and
countries undergoing democratic transitions worldwide.” Reports are accessible at https://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/afdr/
index.htm.
16 U.S. and allied efforts in post-World War II Japan and Germany may represent rare instances in which democracy
was successfully instituted by external actors. Many other examples, including recent efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq,
have faced widespread challenges and criticism. For example, see Stephen M. Walt, “Why is America so Bad at
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democracy support and democracy imposition, with military force falling into the latter
category.17
The traditional rhetorical and official policy embrace of democracy promotion by U.S.
policymakers (see discussion below) has not always been reflected in U.S. foreign policy
activities.18 For more information on the history of U.S. democracy promotion and congressional
efforts in this area, particularly relating to foreign assistance programs, see CRS Report R44858,
Democracy Promotion: An Objective of U.S. Foreign Assistance, by Marian L. Lawson and Susan
B. Epstein.
Identification with U.S. Strategy and Interests
For over a century, U.S. policymakers have emphasized to varying degrees a connection between
the state of democracy in the world and U.S. foreign policy and national security interests. An
overarching theme in drawing this connection has been a perceived relationship between peace
and world order and the existence of partnerships between democracies with shared values. In
one of the early articulations of this sentiment, President Woodrow Wilson in 1917 advocated for
U.S. entry into World War I in part by arguing that “a steadfast concert for peace can never be
maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations.”19
Particularly since World War II, U.S. belief in democratic peace and stability has arguably led to
democracy promotion’s inclusion in a broader, though not comprehensively articulated, U.S.
“grand strategy” alongside other elements such as the promotion of free trade and the creation of
new international institutions.20 The efforts of the United States and its allies to construct what
some refer to as the post-World War II international order were, in the words of a recent report by
the RAND Corporation, “based, in part, on the assumption that no order would be sustainable if
not built on a foundation of democracies with shared values,” with democracy regarded “as the
foundation of other core elements of the order, particularly economic growth and sustainable
peace.”21 International relations scholars and policymakers debate, however, the conception and
historical importance of the international order within U.S. strategy and as a perceived instrument
for peace and stability.22 More broadly, debates continue over whether and to what extent

Promoting Democracy in Other Countries?” Foreign Policy, April 25, 2016.
17 See Adrian A. Basora and Kenneth Yalowitz, “Introduction,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and
Global Democracy Support, ed. Adrian A. Basora, Agnieszka Marczyk, and Maia Otarashvili (London: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2017), pp. xv-xvi.
18 During the Cold War, for instance, spreading democracy was an arguably major component of U.S. foreign policy
but one that was often subordinated to an overriding goal of preventing the spread of Communism. In the early years of
the Cold War, for instance, the United States supported the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran
and Guatemala.
19 Wilson also famously stated in the same address that “the world must be made safe for democracy.” Government
Printing Office, “Address of the President of the United States,” 65th Congress, 1st Session, April 2, 1917.
20 G. John Ikenberry, “Why Export Democracy?” The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 23, No. 2 (Spring 1999), pp. 56-65.
21 Michael J. Mazarr et al., Understanding the Current International Order, RAND Corporation, 2016. The report
categorizes the elements of this order as economic (with components such as the World Trade Organization and
development institutions), political-military (with components such as alliances and collective security institutions),
and justice and problem-solving (with components such as human rights norms and issue-specific functional
organizations).
22 For examples of contrasting views, see Graham Allison, “The Myth of the Liberal Order,” Foreign Affairs,
July/August 2018, and G. John Ikenberry, “Liberal World,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2018. See additional
discussion and citations in the “Debates over Democracy Promotion in U.S. Foreign Policy” section. Also, for more
information on the international order and the U.S. role in this order, see CRS Report R44891, U.S. Role in the World:
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democracy promotion should be part of U.S. foreign policy. (See “Debates over Democracy
Promotion in U.S. Foreign Policy.”)
Recent Presidential Administration Policies
Recent presidential administrations of both parties have emphasized the view that democracies
are more responsible international stakeholders and are more peaceful toward one another.
President Bill Clinton’s 1996 National Security Strategy (NSS) document, for instance, stated that
“democratic states are less likely to threaten our interests and more likely to cooperate with the
United States to meet security threats and promote free trade and sustainable development.”23
President George W. Bush’s 2006 NSS stated, “Because democracies are the most responsible
members of the international system, promoting democracy is the most effective long-term
measure for strengthening international stability; reducing regional conflicts; countering terrorism
and terror-supporting extremism; and extending peace and prosperity.”24 The Barack Obama
Administration NSS documents included more general language connecting democracy
promotion and U.S. interests. The 2010 NSS stated, for example, that “America’s commitment to
democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are essential sources of our strength and influence
in the world,” and that “our long-term security and prosperity depends on our steady support for
universal values, which sets us apart from our enemies, adversarial governments, and many
potential competitors for influence.”25
All three Presidents argued for promoting democracy at times by directly invoking the logic of
what has been called the democratic peace theory, or the contention that democracies are less
likely to engage in armed conflict with other democracies.26 The historical relative lack of war
between democracies is widely recognized by scholars, though they have debated the causes of
this phenomenon and its significance.27
Trump Administration Policy
Unlike the NSS documents of previous administrations, the Trump Administration’s December
2017 NSS does not articulate a general intention for the United States to actively promote
democracy. The NSS does, however, include references to promoting related elements such as
improved governance, anticorruption, and the rule of law, and states that the United States, “will
continue to champion American values and offer encouragement to those struggling for human
dignity in their societies.” It also describes the United States as engaged in “political contests
between those who favor repressive systems and those who favor free societies.” Echoing to

Background and Issues for Congress, by Ronald O'Rourke and Michael Moodie.
23 The White House, “A National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement,” February 1996. As discussed in
the “Issues for Congress” section, the empirical evidence for this theory is contested among scholars.
24 The White House, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” March 2006.
25 The White House, “National Security Strategy,” May 2010.
26 Clinton’s 1996 NSS (cited above) states that “democracies … are far less likely to wage war on one another.”
President Bush in 2004 stated that “the reason why I'm so strong on democracy is democracies don't go to war with
each other. And the reason why is the people of most societies don't like war, and they understand what war means.”
See The White House, “President and Prime Minister Blair Discussed Iraq, Middle East,” November 12, 2004.
President Obama in 2009 stated, “Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can
truly be lasting … peace is unstable where citizens are denied the right to … choose their own leaders or assemble
without fear…. America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that
protect the rights of their citizens.” See Barack H. Obama, “Nobel Lecture,” December 10, 2009.
27 See the “Debates over Democracy Promotion in U.S. Foreign Policy” section for discussion of these debates.
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some degree the arguments from previous administrations, it states that “governments that respect
the rights of their citizens remain the best vehicle for prosperity, human happiness, and peace,”
and conversely that “governments that routinely abuse the rights of their citizens do not play
constructive roles in the world.”28 Many argue that the Trump Administration has deemphasized
democracy promotion relative to other foreign policy priorities, an issue that is discussed in the
“Issues for Congress” section.
Global Trends
Measures of the State of Democracy Around the World
Numerous global indexes attempt to measure respect for democracy-related factors in nearly
every country. The following discussion analyzes trends as measured by two of the most
frequently cited annual indexes: Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report and the
Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index.29 Examining the trajectory of democracy as
measured by these indexes may help quantify and characterize perceived global democratic
declines as well as help place them in broader historical context. Background information about
the methodology of each report, information on other global indexes not analyzed in this report,
and discussion of some of the general critiques of democracy indexes can be found in Appendix
A.30
Freedom House’s Freedom in the World Report
Freedom House’s Freedom in the World country ratings are often used as a proxy measure for the
level of democracy. They may correspond with relatively “thick” definitions of democracy in that
they include protections for various civil liberties, the rule of law, safeguards against corruption,
and other elements associated with nonminimalist definitions.31
Historical Trends
According to Freedom House’s time series data, respect for political rights and civil liberties
around the globe has increased substantially since the mid-1970s. Since the release of Freedom
House’s first report covering 1972, the combined average of global political rights and civil
liberties was at its lowest point in 1975.32 By 2005, this combined measure had increased by 50%
(according to CRS calculations) and stood at the highest point yet recorded.33 (See Figure 1
below.) Similarly, the percentage of countries categorized as “free” by Freedom House (as

28 The White House, “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” December 2017.
29 Research Assistant Jennifer Roscoe provided data assistance for the below sections.
30 The U.S. government does not itself publish reports that comprehensively assess the state of democracy around the
world, but the State Department does produce related reports on international human rights and religious freedom
issues. See CRS In Focus IF10795, Global Human Rights: The Department of State’s Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices, by Michael A. Weber, and CRS In Focus IF10803, Global Human Rights: International Religious
Freedom Policy, by Michael A. Weber.
31 Freedom House has also used a more minimalist measurement to designate countries as “electoral democracies” if
they achieve certain minimum standards in the political rights category. In the report covering 2017, a civil liberties
threshold was added to this categorization.
32 At .42 (on a 0-1 scale). This number is a combined average of political rights and civil liberties, with higher numbers
representing greater levels of freedom (as calculated by CRS).
33 At .63 (on a 0-1 scale). This number is a combined average of political rights and civil liberties, with higher numbers
representing greater levels of freedom (as calculated by CRS).
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determined by their combined average of political rights and civil liberties) peaked in 2006 and
2007 at 46.63%.
Figure 1. Freedom in the World’s Political Rights and Civil Liberties Ratings Since 1972
Global Averages, 1972-2017

Notes: CRS calculated the yearly global average for each rating and normalized it to a 0 to 1 scale. Although
Freedom House’s ratings are such that lower numbers correspond with higher levels of freedom, for a more
intuitive display, CRS reversed the data so that higher numbers correspond with higher levels of freedom.
From 2005 to 2017, Freedom House has recorded an overall global decline in ratings for both
civil liberties and political rights, with civil liberties having declined by a greater degree (but
from a higher base). According to CRS calculations, the combined global average rating of
political rights and civil liberties in the Freedom House index decreased by approximately 3.2%
from 2005 to 2017.34 In terms of freedom gains and declines on a per-country basis, Freedom
House data show that countries that have gained have been outnumbered by those that have
declined every year since 2006, and the gap between these figures has grown wider since 2015. In
2017, 35 countries gained while more than double that (71) declined.35
Table 1 below compares Freedom House’s country statuses for the report covering 2005, with the
most recent report covering 2017. As illustrated in the table, the number and percentage of
countries categorized as “not free” increased in this period. In population terms, according to
Freedom House, 53% of the world’s population lived in either a “not free” or “partly free”
country in 2005, a figure that increased to 61% in 2017.

34 From .63 in 2005 to .61 in 2017 (on a 0 to 1 scale).
35 Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018. In 2015, 72 countries declined while 43 improved (a gap of 29
countries); in 2016, the figures were 67 versus 35 (a gap of 32 countries), and in 2017 they were 71 versus 35 (a gap of
36 countries).
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Table 1. Freedom in the World Global Country Statuses, 2005 vs. 2017
Number of Countries
Percentage of World
(% of countries)
Population
Status
2005
2017
2005
2017
Free
89 (46%)
88 (45%)
46%
39%
Partly Free
58 (30%)
58 (30%)
18%
24%
Not Free
45 (24%)
49 (37%)
35%
37%
Source: Freedom House, “Country Status Distribution Freedom in the World 1973-2018,” Freedom House,
Freedom in the World 2006; Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018.
Notes: The 2005 report measured 192 countries, while the 2017 report measured 195 countries; the 2005
report covered a slightly different timeline than the calendar year: December 1, 2004, to November 30, 2005;
population percentages are as reported by Freedom House.
Trends by Subcategory
The discussion below breaks down the average global score for both political rights and civil
liberties by their subcategories, as measured by Freedom House. As illustrated by Figure 2 and
Figure 3, the average global score for every subcategory was lower in 2017 than it was in 2005;
however, the size of these declines varied. In general, civil liberties subcategories showed greater
decreases, with comparatively smaller declines in political rights subcategories.
Figure 2. Freedom in the World’s Political Rights Changes by Subcategory,
2005 vs. 2017
Change in Global Averages in 2017 as compared to 2005

Source: Freedom House, “Aggregate Category and Subcategory Scores, 2003-2018.”
Notes: The vertical axis represents the change in each category normalized to a 0 to 1 scale. Figures are
calculated by CRS.
As shown above, within the political rights category, the “functioning of government”
subcategory suffered the largest decline. This subcategory includes indicators relating to the
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extent to which freely elected officials exercise power (as opposed to nonelected actors or
nonstate groups), whether there are effective safeguards against official corruption, and the extent
of government transparency. The “electoral process” and “political pluralism and participation”
categories, which declined more modestly, focus on the constituent components of fair elections
and free political competition, including universal suffrage, fair election laws and procedures,
freedom to join political parties, and other elements.
Figure 3. Freedom in the World’s Civil Liberties Changes by Subcategory, 2005 vs. 2017
Change in Global Averages in 2017 as compared to 2005

Source: Freedom House, “Aggregate Category and Subcategory Scores, 2003-2018.”
Notes: The vertical axis represents the change in each category normalized to a 0 to 1 scale. Figures are
calculated by CRS.
As shown by Figure 3 above, with the exception of the “personal autonomy and individual
rights” subcategory, there were larger declines in each of the civil liberties subcategories than
there were in any of the political rights subcategories discussed above. This “personal autonomy
and individual rights” subcategory includes indicators relating to freedom of movement, property
rights, social freedoms, and equality of economic opportunity.
The “freedom of expression and belief” subcategory, which declined by the greatest degree,
includes indicators on the existence of free and independent media as well as respect for religious
freedom, academic freedom, and freedom of expression. The “associational and organizational
rights” subcategory includes indicators relating to freedom of assembly, the free operation of
nongovernmental organizations, and freedom for labor organizations. The “rule of law”
subcategory includes indicators that pertain to the existence of an independent judiciary, due
process, freedom from the illegitimate use of physical force (including governmental torture, war,
and violent crime), and equal treatment under the law.
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU’s) Democracy Index is a relatively new global
democracy measure, with the first released report covering the state of democracy around the
world in 2006. The report indicates both an overall democracy score for each country, which is
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determined by aggregating scores for five related categories, as well as a corresponding regime
type categorization.36 In addition to political rights and civil liberties-related measures similar to
those examined by Freedom House, EIU’s index includes more emphasis on the functioning of
government as well as on elements such as the level of political participation and the level of
public support for democracy and democratic norms.37
Trends Since 2006
As illustrated by Figure 4 below, the global level of democracy as measured by EIU was slightly
lower in 2017 than in 2006, but this decline has not been consistent or uniform. According to
calculations by CRS, the global average level of democracy in 2017 was less than 1% lower than
it was in 2006. Although the renewed downward trend beginning in 2015 may continue, some
might characterize the broader trajectory since 2006 to this point as reflecting stagnation more
than outright decline. The discrepancy in overall decline in EIU’s index as compared to Freedom
House’s may be due to improvements in measures of political participation that are included in
the EIU index but not measured by Freedom House (see discussion below).
Figure 4. Democracy Index Global Average Since 2006
Global Average, 2006-2017

Notes: EIU’s global average has been normalized on a 0 to 1 scale. For ease of viewing, the graph is zoomed in
to show the range between 0.52 and 0.58 on this scale. Calculations are by CRS.
Table 2 below compares EIU’s global regime type categorizations for the report covering 2006,
with the most recent report covering 2017. The data indicate a decrease in the number of “full

36 These regimes types are full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime, and authoritarian regime. The EIU index
tracks a slightly smaller number of countries than Freedom House’s because it excludes countries with a population
lower than 500,000. For more information about EIU’s methodology, see Appendix A.
37 The Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2017: Free speech under attack.
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democracies,” but also a smaller decline in the number “authoritarian regimes.”38 Accordingly,
the two middle regime types, “flawed democracies” and “hybrid regimes,” both increased in
number and percentage.39
Table 2. Democracy Index Global Regime Types, 2006 vs. 2017
Number of Countries
(% of countries)
Regime Types
2006
2017
Full Democracies
26 (16%)
19 (11%)
Flawed democracies
53 (32%)
57 (34%)
Hybrid regimes
33 (20%)
39 (23%)
Authoritarian regimes
55 (33%)
52 (31%)
Source: EIU Democracy Index 2006; EIU Democracy Index 2017.
Notes: EIU categorized a number of “borderline” countries in the 2006 index in a manner not strictly consistent
with its own score thresholds; for consistency of comparison in the above figures, CRS recategorized countries
according to a strict application of EIU’s score thresholds.
Trends by Category
The relatively modest movement at the global level in EIU’s index may mask certain underlying
trends. Disaggregating EIU’s global average by category demonstrates that a comparatively large
increase in the “political participation” category in 2017 as compared to 2006 helped balance out
declines in every other category, with the “civil liberties” category particularly negatively affected
(see Figure 5 below).

38 Some of these shifts may illustrate the inherent arbitrariness in continuous variable-based categorization regimes
when applied to “borderline” cases. For instance, the United States was downgraded to a “flawed democracy” in 2017,
but its overall democracy score, at 7.98 (on EIU’s 0 to 10 scale), was .03 below the threshold for continued status as a
“full democracy.”
39 Uruguay was the only country upgraded from “flawed democracy” to “full democracy” in 2017 as compared to 2006.
Countries downgraded from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy” included Belgium, Costa Rica, Czech Republic,
France, Greece, Japan, the United States, and Portugal. Countries upgraded from “authoritarian regime” to “hybrid
regime” included Pakistan, Morocco, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and Nepal. Tunisia was upgraded two
categories from “authoritarian regime” to “flawed democracy.” Countries downgraded into the “authoritarian regime”
category included Venezuela, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and Burundi.
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Figure 5. Democracy Index Changes by Category, 2006 vs. 2017
Change in Global Averages in 2017 as compared to 2006

Source: EIU Democracy Index 2006; EIU Democracy Index 2017.
Notes: The vertical axis represents the change in each category normalized to a 0 to 1 scale. Calculations are by
CRS.
The “political participation” category, which increased by a larger margin than any of the other
categories declined, consists of numerous quantitative indicators not included in Freedom
House’s index. Many of these relate to the level of political engagement by citizens, such as voter
participation rates, the rate of membership in political parties, and the level of interest in politics
(as captured by public opinion polls). Some might argue that these indicators and some others
included in this category, such as the level of adult literacy, while conducive to a healthy
democracy, are peripheral to its core definition.
EIU’s “electoral process and pluralism” and “functioning of government” categories, which both
declined slightly, contain many aspects in common with Freedom House’s political rights
category, with a focus on the elements of free and fair elections and free political participation as
well as the exercise of power by elected officials, corruption, and government transparency,
among other elements.40 EIU’s “political culture” category, which suffered a slightly larger
decline, consists of measures of the level of support for democratic (or antidemocratic) norms
among the population, including the level of popular support for democracy and the level of
support for “strong leaders” who bypass elections.41
Finally, EIU’s “civil liberties” category decreased by the largest margin and includes numerous
elements that are roughly analogous to those found in Freedom House’s own civil liberties

40 The functioning of government category, which decreased by a smaller margin than did Freedom House’s identically
named subcategory, also incorporates some public opinion polling, such as measures of public confidence in
government and political parties.
41 Freedom House’s index does not feature indicators of this type. See the “Challenges to Democracy’s Global Appeal
as a Political System” section for discussion of polling data on levels of support for democracy around the world.
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subcategories. These include indicators relating to free media and access to information, freedom
of expression for individuals, associational rights, freedom from torture and the enjoyment of
basic security, the independence of the judiciary, respect for religious freedom, equal treatment
under the law, and others.
Thus, similar to Freedom House’s data, EIU’s index might be characterized as reflecting
relatively smaller declines in elections and political participation aspects of democracy while
registering larger declines in civil liberties-related elements. As noted, in the aggregate these
declines are in part counter-balanced by improvements in the “political participation” measure,
which may indicate increasing levels of democratic political engagement, broadly defined.
Interpreting the Declines
The above analysis appears to support the growing consensus that the global expansion of
democracy has been halted for more than a decade. Freedom House’s historical data indicates that
the decline since 2005 is the most sustained setback to the gradual expansion of political rights
and civil liberties since Freedom House began reporting on these measures in 1972. While
declines in EIU’s index have been less uniform, EIU’s data also indicates that democracy has not
advanced since 2006. Findings from another democracy index not analyzed here, the Varieties of
Democracy Project (V-Dem), similarly show a lack of democratic progress at the global level in
recent years.42
The magnitude of actual global backsliding during this period, however, is less clear. As noted
above, according to the Freedom House data, the combined global average level of political rights
and civil liberties was 3.2% lower in 2017 than the all-time high in 2005. According to EIU’s
data, the overall decline was more modest, with less than a 1% decrease in the global average
level of democracy in 2017 as compared to 2006.43
These arguably modest declines are potentially more worrying for democracy proponents when
examined in terms of relative population sizes. According to Freedom House, while the
percentage of “free” countries decreased one percentage point from 2005 to 2017 (from 46% to
45%), the percentage of the world’s population living in a “free” country declined by seven
percentage points during this same period (from 46% to 39%). EIU’s figures similarly indicate
that the percentage of the world’s population living in either a “full” or a “flawed” democracy
was below 50% in 2017, with 4.5% living in the former.44 This appears to comport with findings
from the aforementioned V-Dem measure, which indicate that the global level of democracy is
lower when taking population size into account.45 This difference has become more pronounced
in recent years because democratic declines may have disproportionately centered on countries
with large populations, such as Brazil, India, and Russia, while many of the improving countries
have been those with small populations such as Burkina Faso, Fiji, and Sri Lanka.46

42 The most recent V-Dem annual report, covering 2017, found that the global level of democracy remained close to its
all-time high, but that there has been a “small decline” in the measure of “liberal democracy” in the past few years. See
V-Dem Institute, V-Dem Annual Democracy Report 2018.
43 As discussed above, this decline would have been greater were it not for gains in EIU’s political participation
category.
44 The Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2017: Free speech under attack.
45 This reflects the combined impact of a small number of nondemocratic countries with large populations, such as
China, as well as numerous small countries with high democracy scores. See V-Dem Institute, V-Dem Annual
Democracy Report 2018.
46 V-Dem Institute, V-Dem Annual Democracy Report 2018; Staffan Lindberg, “The Nature of Democratic Backsliding
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Underlying trends in these indexes also point to some level of commonality in terms of what
aspects of democracy may have seen the most pronounced declines. As the data disaggregation
above illustrates, in both the Freedom House and EIU measures, the aspects of democracy
relating to political competition and electoral processes appear to have suffered relatively modest
declines as compared to the broader rights and institutions that are associated with well-
functioning and truly “free” liberal democratic political systems, such as free and independent
media, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the rule of law.47 A potential
explanation is that some governments may be inclined to focus on improving “what shows,” such
as elections, while neglecting or actively undermining less visible and less easily measured
elements of democracy.48 This may also comport with research of longer-term trends indicating
that “democratic backsliding” has over time become less overt and more incremental, consisting
for instance of censorship and media restrictions, relatively subtle tactics to tilt the electoral
playing field, or engineered deteriorations in judicial independence, as opposed to outright
electoral fraud or blatant and sudden executive power grabs.49
Outlook and Historical Context
Despite the negative direction of these indexes in recent years, the potential implications for the
longer term trajectory of democracy remain unclear. Notably, some experts have previously
critiqued the accuracy of measured declines.50 More broadly, and from a longer term historical
perspective, analysts have noted that significant “reverse waves” against democratic expansion
have been observed in prior periods before giving way once more to continued democratization.
Samuel P. Huntington famously observed two prior such “reverse waves,” the first lasting from
1922 to 1945 and the second from 1960 to 1975, during which the number of democracies in the
world regressed significantly before giving way to renewed democratic expansion and eventual
new highs in global levels of democracy around the world.51 Experts who have warned of
challenges facing democracy in this current period concede that a comparable third such “reverse
wave” has not yet manifested itself.52
Those who have cautioned against excessive pessimism about the present state of democracy
argue that the number of democracies in the world remains near its all-time peak, and contend

in Europe,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, July 24, 2018.
47 This finding also aligns with the V-Dem data, which indicate that “core electoral aspects of democracy” are
improving in many countries, but that media freedom, freedom of expression, and the rule of law have declined in both
democracies and nondemocracies. See V-Dem Institute, V-Dem Annual Democracy Report 2018. Concerning media
freedom in particular, this also comports with Freedom House’s and EIU’s separate rankings on the state of press
freedoms around the world. In both cases, their most recent report found press freedoms to be at their lowest point in
over a decade. See Freedom House, Freedom of the Press 2017, and the rankings under the “freedom of speech under
attack” section within EIU, Democracy Index 2017: Free speech under attack.
48 Valeriya Mechkova, Anna Lührmann, and Staffan I. Lindberg, “How Much Democratic Backsliding?” Journal of
Democracy, vol. 28, no. 4 (October 2017), pp. 162-169.
49 Nancy Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 27, no. 1 (January 2016), pp. 5-16.
50 In 2015, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way contended that the “democratic recession” was a myth to that point,
arguing in part that the perceived declines related to dashed hopes from excessive optimism over the prospects for
democracy in the initial post-Cold War period, an optimism that may have affected democracy ratings during that
period. See Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Myth of the Democratic Recession,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26,
no. 1 (January 2015), pp. 45-58. See also discussion of critiques of democracy indexes in Appendix A.
51 Samuel P. Huntington, “Democracy’s Third Wave,” Journal of Democracy, Spring 1991, pp. 12-34.
52 Larry Diamond, “Reviving the Global Democratic Momentum,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and
Global Democracy Support, pp. 119-133.
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that the current alarm is partly the result of an inclination to focus on certain prominent cases of
perceived decline while overlooking positive news, such as improvements in certain countries in
Asia and Africa (according to EIU’s index).53 Nonetheless, the negative trend lines particularly in
the past few years have led to yet unresolved questions over whether democratic setbacks are best
characterized as “localized and transitory” or whether a more significant global reversal is
underfoot.54
Factors Potentially Affecting Democracy Globally
A number of key factors that analysts believe may be affecting democracy in many countries
around the world are discussed below. These broadly relevant, overarching factors may interact
with relevant context-specific historical, political, social, and economic circumstances in
particular regions or countries. (See Appendix B for a list of CRS reports that contain
democracy-related discussions in particular contexts.)
Geopolitics and Authoritarian Power
Many observers contend that democracy’s prior periods of expansion in the 20th century were due
in part to the influence of the most powerful countries in the international system and their efforts
to shape an international environment conducive to democracy. After World War II, the United
States and other leading democracies sought to embed democratic norms within multilateral
institutions, including the United Nations (U.N.), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
the European Union (EU), and later the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), among others. Thus to a certain extent democracy was built into the operating system of
the international order and was sometimes linked with security and economic benefits in a way
that incentivized countries to meet democratic standards.55 Perhaps not coincidentally, the spread
of democracy around the world since the mid-1970s in particular also coincided with an arguably
greater emphasis on human rights and democracy in U.S. foreign policy.56 The economic
dominance of the United States in this period also enhanced its cultural influence in ways that
may have promoted democratization in closed societies.57
In the current period, however, the share of global income accounted for by countries rated “not
free” by Freedom House has, according to one calculation, now reached over 30% (as compared
to 12% in 1990).58 As these nondemocratic countries develop economically, their relative capacity
to project power in their geographic neighborhoods and beyond is expected to continue to

53 Thomas Carothers, “Is the United States Giving Up on Supporting Democracy Abroad?” Foreign Policy, September
8, 2016; Thomas Carothers and Richard Youngs, “Democracy is Not Dying,” Foreign Affairs, April 11, 2017.
54 Adrian A. Basora and Kenneth Yalowitz, “Introduction,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and Global
Democracy Support, pp. ix-xiii.
55 Robert Kagan, “The Weight of Geopolitics,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1 (January 2015), pp. 21-31. The
importance of democratic values to some of the aforementioned international institutions, however, has not been
uninform across institutions or across time. For example, analysts note that NATO was established foremost on the
basis of shared opposition to the Soviet Union and increasingly emphasized democratic values over time. See Nikolas
K. Gvosdev, “Realist Counsel on Democracy Promotion,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and Global
Democracy Support, pp. 7-31.
56 See discussion in the “Democracy Promotion, Congress, and U.S. Policy” section above and CRS Report R44858,
Democracy Promotion: An Objective of U.S. Foreign Assistance, by Marian L. Lawson and Susan B. Epstein.
57 Yascha Mounk and Roberto Stefan Foa, “The End of the Democratic Century,” Foreign Affairs, May/June 2018, pp.
29-36.
58 Ibid.
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increase. If perceptions about the role of the United States and other liberal democracies in having
created favorable conditions for democracy are accurate, this rising authoritarian power arguably
has the potential to conversely move the international political environment in a direction less
hospitable to democracy.
Democracy scholars increasingly focus on the potentially widespread negative impacts to
democracy from influential and “activist” authoritarian regimes.59 The growing international
assertiveness of these countries, China and Russia foremost among them, is said to be putting the
leading democracies “on the defensive.”60 Many U.S. policymakers had hoped that Chinese and
Russian engagement with the United States and other democracies, their membership in an array
of international institutions, and their economic growth from participation in the international
trading system might contribute to a gradual political liberalization in both countries, but these
hopes have largely not come to fruition.61 Rather, both China and Russia, according to a RAND
report, “resent key elements of the U.S. conception of postwar order, such as promotion of liberal
values … viewing them as tools used by the United States to sustain its hegemony.”62 According
to a 2017 U.S. intelligence community assessment, Russia has a “longstanding desire to
undermine the US-led liberal democratic order.”63 Notably, the Trump Administration’s
December 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) appears to emphasize some ideological aspects
of U.S. competition with these countries.64
Some of the foreign policy activities of influential authoritarian countries may already be having
negative impacts on democracy internationally, such as by

59 Agnieszka Marczyk, “Academic Conclusions, Working Hypotheses, and Areas for Further Research,” in Does
Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 159-162.
60 For example, see Marc F. Plattner, “Liberal Democracy’s Fading Allure,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 28, no. 4
(October 2017), pp. 5-14; Christopher Walker, “What is “Sharp Power”?” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 29, no. 3 (July
2018), pp. 9-23.
61 The Trump Administration’s December 2017 National Security Strategy reflects this view. With regard to China, it
states, “For decades, U.S. policy was rooted in the belief that support for China’s rise and for its integration into the
post-war international order would liberalize China. Contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of
the sovereignty of others.” The White House, “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” December
2017.
62 Michael J. Mazarr et al., Understanding the Current International Order, RAND Corporation, 2016. An illustrative
example of this view featured in an often cited address by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007. Speaking to
attendees at the Munich Security Conference, Putin criticized the Organization for Security Co-operation in Europe
(OSCE) by stating, “People are trying to transform the OSCE into a vulgar instrument designed to promote the foreign
policy interests of one or a group of countries…. According to the founding documents, in the humanitarian sphere the
OSCE is designed to assist country members in observing international human rights norms at their request. This is an
important task. We support this. But this does not mean interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, and
especially not imposing a regime that determines how these states should live and develop. It is obvious that such
interference does not promote the development of democratic states … it makes them dependent and, as a consequence,
politically and economically unstable.” See “Putin’s Prepared Remarks at 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy,”
Washington Post, February 12, 2007.
63 Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S.
Elections,” January 6, 2017.
64 In describing the challenges to the United States presented by China and Russia, as well as by rogue states and
nonstate actors, the NSS states, “These are fundamentally political contests between those who favor repressive
systems and those who favor free societies.” Reflecting on China’s growing influence, the NSS asserts that “a
geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order is taking place in the Indo-Pacific region.”
The White House, “National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” December 2017.
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 attempting to undercut international support for democratic norms or related
human rights norms;65
 eroding democracy’s appeal by serving as examples of economically successful
alternative political systems;66
 providing aid or other support that undermines democracy or the prospects for
democratization in recipient countries;67
 subverting democratic institutions or norms within existing democracies through
“soft” and “sharp” power projection;68 and
 actively or indirectly supporting the diffusion of techniques or tools for
repressing political dissent.69
Some aspects of these challenges are discussed in the sections that follow.
Challenging the Universality of Democratic Norms
The rising international influence of authoritarian states is being accompanied to a certain extent
by challenges to the idea that international norms relating to democracy and human rights are
universally applicable. Although concerning for democracy proponents, the overall scope and
impact of these efforts to date is unclear.
Both China and Russia in particular actively emphasize norms of state sovereignty and
“noninterference” in international relations.70 Russia’s emphasis on noninterference can take the
form of defending respect for “traditional values.” Within Russia, “traditional values” have been
invoked to justify discriminatory policies against particular groups, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual,
and transgender (LGBT) communities. Internationally, Russia has pushed for acceptance of its
“traditional values” concept within the U.N. Human Rights Council.71 Russia’s restrictive policies
for civil society groups operating within Russia, justified on the basis of protecting against

65 See below discussions in this section.
66 See relevant discussions in the “Challenges to Democracy’s Global Appeal as a Political System” section.
67 China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, for instance, have all arguably engaged in attempts to “prop up” nondemocratic
governments in geographic proximity to them, such as in Burma, North Korea, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Syria, and others.
These and other examples are discussed in Lucan Way, “Weaknesses of Autocracy Promotion,” Journal of Democracy,
vol. 27, no. 1 (January 2016). Democracy aid experts argue that foreign aid from many nondemocracies may have
negative impacts on democracy in recipient countries even if not aimed at doing so, such as by providing assistance that
is free of democracy- or good governance-related conditions. See Thomas Carothers, “Democracy Aid at 25: Time to
Choose,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1 (January 2015), pp. 59-73. Notably, the United States and other
democracies also provide assistance to some nondemocratic governments in the pursuit of U.S. security or other
interests. See relevant discussions in the “Debates over Democracy Promotion in U.S. Foreign Policy” section.
68 See text box further down in this section.
69 See the “Modern Methods of Political Control” section.
70 Alexander Cooley, “Countering Democratic Norms,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 3 (July 2015), pp. 49-63;
Michael J. Mazarr, Timothy R. Heath, and Astrid Stuth Cevallos, China and the International Order, RAND
Corporation, 2018; Andrew Radin and Clinton Bruce Reach, Russian Views of the International Order, RAND
Corporation, 2017. These efforts may be rooted in defensive regime survival motivations (see relevant discussions
under the “Promoting Authoritarianism?” section). The extent to which either country consistently abides by
sovereignty norms is questionable, particularly given recent revelations of political interference activities.
71 Alexander Cooley, “Countering Democratic Norms,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 3 (July 2015), pp. 49-63.
See also for example U.N. Human Rights Council, A/HRC/RES/21/3, “Promoting human rights and fundamental
freedoms through a better understanding of traditional values of humankind: best practices,” October 9, 2012.
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foreign influence, have also arguably engendered replication elsewhere (see discussion in the
“Modern Methods of Political Control” section).72
China’s general posture is characterized by one scholar as offering “a critique of Western-style
capitalism, liberal democracy and ‘so-called universal values,’ while presenting itself as a
pragmatic, nonjudgmental partner interested only in ‘win–win cooperation.’”73 China’s principles
of noninterference and respect for what has been termed “civilizational diversity” are said to
undergird its engagement with foreign aid recipients such that this aid is largely free of
governance conditions.74 Notably, according to one analysis, the top recipients of Chinese aid
from 2000 to 2014 were nearly all nondemocracies.75 Principles of noninterference also appear to
be manifest in China’s efforts to promote the concept of “cyber sovereignty,” arguably implicit
within which is the notion that countries should be free to censor or otherwise control internet
content within their borders.76 As with Russia, China has begun to introduce resolutions and
amendments at the U.N. Human Rights Council that some researchers and human rights
advocates argue aim to undermine respect for universal human rights norms.77
The multilateral Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes China and Russia as
influential member states, also operates according to these principles of respect for sovereignty
and noninterference.78 A 2006 joint statement by the SCO reads: “Diversity of civilization and
model of development must be respected and upheld. Differences in cultural traditions, political
and social systems, values and model[s] of development formed in the course of history should
not be taken as pretexts to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs.”79 Although the SCO has
traditionally been a regional grouping with members composed of largely authoritarian states in
Central Asia, India and Pakistan joined as member states in 2017. According to some analysts,
SCO’s promotion of “civilizational diversity” norms may be undermining regional respect for
democratic principles and having a negative impact on the democracy-related work of the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).80

72 Ibid. Also see relevant background in CRS Report R44775, Russia: Background and U.S. Policy, by Cory Welt.
73 Aaron L. Friedberg, “Competing with China,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, June-July 2018, pp. 7-64.
74 Alexander Cooley, “Countering Democratic Norms,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 3 (July 2015), pp. 49-62;
Shanthi Kalathil, “Redefining Development,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 29, no. 2 (April 2018), pp. 52-58.
75 See Minxin Pei, “A Play for Global Leadership,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 29, no. 2 (April 2018), pp. 37-51. Some
statistical analysis suggests that when controlling for other factors, recipient countries’ level of democracy may not
influence Chinese aid allocation, at least with regard to aid to Africa. See Alex Dreher et al., “Apples and Dragon
Fruits: The Determinants of Aid and Other Forms of State Financing from China to Africa,” International Studies
Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 1 (March 2018), pp. 182-194.
76 Adam Segal, “When China Rules the Web,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2018; Elliott Zaagman, “Cyber
Sovereignty and the PRC’s Vision for the Global Internet,” Jamestown Foundation China Brief, June 5, 2018.
77 See Ted Piccone, China’s Long Game on Human Rights at the United Nations, Brookings Institute, September 2018;
John Fisher, “China’s ‘Win-Win’ Resolution is Anything But,” Human Rights Watch, March 5, 2018; Nick Cumming-
Bruce, “China Brings Warm Words to U.N., and Rights Activists Feel a Chill,” New York Times, March 23, 2018.
78 Alexander Cooley, “Countering Democratic Norms,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 3 (July 2015), pp. 49-62;
Shanghai Cooperation Organization, “Charter of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” June 2002.
79 Shanghai Cooperation Organization, “Declaration on the Fifth Anniversary of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization,” June 2006.
80 Alexander Cooley, “Countering Democratic Norms,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 3 (July 2015), pp. 49-63;
Alexander Cooley, “The League of Authoritarian Gentlemen,” Foreign Policy, January 30, 2013.
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Promoting Authoritarianism?
Although some of their foreign policy actions may be harmful to democracy, the intentions of
particular authoritarian states as they relate to democracy are complex and contested. Many
authoritarian leaders are understood to be driven by a desire to maintain power and ensure regime
stability, goals that are believed to influence their foreign policy decisions.81 China’s focus on
ensuring continued Communist Party of China (CPC) rule, for instance, may influence its foreign
policy decisionmaking;82 the foreign policy actions of other influential authoritarian governments
such as Russia and Iran may also be shaped by regime threat concerns.83 These defensive regime
threat imperatives may manifest themselves in the foreign policy of states differently and
inconsistently, and thus with varying implications for democracy. In general, to date there is more
evidence that some authoritarian governments may hope to “contain” the spread of democracy
because of its potential threat to their own regime stability than there is of broad, affirmative
agendas to promote authoritarianism.84
Some experts contend that authoritarian states often pursue narrow economic and geopolitical
interests in their foreign policies, with support for autocrats or the undermining of democracy
sometimes instrumental or incidental to the pursuit of these other ends. In this argument, Russia’s
support for authoritarian governments, for instance, has often been opportunistic, rooted in the
desire for control over energy resources or other economic or geopolitical ends. It is also limited
in scope by a cultural emphasis on the “Russian world.”85 Some analysts, however, assert that
Russia’s desire to insulate itself against potential democratic political change does color its
foreign policy in ways that include an interest in influencing the regime types of its neighbors.86
China’s government is said to maintain a “regime-type neutral” approach to foreign policy by
which it seeks good relations with countries where it has particular interests without regard to the
nature of their political systems. In the words of one analyst, China to this point has exhibited “no
missionary impulse to promote authoritarianism,” even as its foreign policy efforts may
sometimes undermine democracy or lend prestige to authoritarian systems.87

81 Christopher Walker, “The Hijacking of “Soft Power”,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 27, no. 1 (January 2016), pp. 49-
63.
82 China identifies maintaining its current political system and ensuring “overall social stability” [社会大局稳定] as
among the “core interests” [核心利益] that it seeks to safeguard in its foreign relations. See People’s Republic of China
State Council Information Office White Paper on “China’s Peaceful Development” [中国的和平发展], September
2011. See also relevant discussions in CRS Report R41007, Understanding China’s Political System, by Susan V.
Lawrence and Michael F. Martin, and in Michael J. Mazarr, Timothy R. Heath, and Astrid Stuth Cevallos, China and
the International Order, RAND Corporation, 2018. Notably, some analysts argue that China’s international behavior is
not driven by domestic political factors to the extent as is commonly believed. See Paul Heer, “Understanding the
Challenge from China,” The Asan Forum, April 3, 2018.
83 CRS Report R44017, Iran’s Foreign and Defense Policies, by Kenneth Katzman; Andrew Radin and Clinton Bruce
Reach, Russian Views of the International Order, RAND Corporation, 2017.
84 Marc F. Plattner, “Liberal Democracy’s Fading Allure,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 28, no. 4 (October 2017), pp. 5-
14; Christopher Walker, “The New Containment: Undermining Democracy,” World Affairs, May/June 2015.
85 Lucan Way, “Weaknesses of Autocracy Promotion,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 27, no. 1 (January 2016), pp. 64-75.
86 Nicholas, Bouchet, “Russia and the Democracy Rollback in Europe,” German Marshall Fund of the United States,
May 2015. Bouchet argues that this interest is present even if it is sometimes subordinated to other foreign policy goals
in a manner not unlike how democracy promotion by the United States and other countries is pursued unevenly in the
presence of competing priorities.
87 Andrew J. Nathan, “China’s Challenge,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1 (January 2015), pp. 156-170. See also
relevant discussions under “Democracy’s Instrumental Appeal.”
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Should their capabilities and opportunities continue to expand, it is possible that powerful
nondemocracies could gradually begin to undertake more explicit and affirmative efforts to
promote authoritarian political systems. Analysts have noted that the democracy promotion goals
adopted by the United States and other democracies emerged over a period of time and expanded
in scope and ambition concomitant with the expansion of these countries’ international power and
influence.88 That said, those democracy promotion efforts, in the words of one analyst, have
arguably been motivated by “a clear normative commitment to democracy as a universal value,”
and sustained in part by genuine enthusiasm for democratic norms across many societies.89 While
authoritarian political systems may increasingly hold instrumental appeal, it is not clear that
affirmative formulations of “authoritarian values” could garner similar normative enthusiasm.
Notably, even the most politically repressive governments tend to continue to couch their own
political systems in the language of democracy, using terms such as “socialist democracy,” while
maintaining elements, such as political parties and elections, that give the appearance of
democracy.90 Moreover, efforts by China and Russia to promote norms of strong respect for
noninterference and for differing political systems, while problematic for democracy promotion
efforts, would seem to be at odds with more normatively ambitious and activist forms of
authoritarianism promotion.
Authoritarian “Soft” and “Sharp” Power91
Analysts have expressed concern over whether the “soft power” promotion of leading authoritarian states may
undermine aspects of democracy. According to Joseph S. Nye, “soft power” refers to the ability of states to
achieve their goals through means of attraction and persuasion (as opposed to through coercion). The soft power
efforts of authoritarian states vary widely and can take a range of forms, including investments in international
media, support for educational initiatives and cultural exchange programs, foreign aid, and other types of
international engagement. Because effective soft power derives in part from the energies of nongovernmental civil
society, efforts by authoritarian states to a certain extent may be impaired by the tight governmental control and
closed political systems of their sponsoring countries.92
Some analysts now argue that certain efforts by authoritarian states are better understood using the concept of
“sharp power” in that they focus on manipulation and distraction rather than on persuasion. Some of these efforts
may be characterized as defensive because they seek to bolster the image of the sponsoring country and minimize
negative information, but in so doing they may show disregard for or undermine democratic norms such as free

88 Nicholas, Bouchet, “Russia and the Democracy Rollback in Europe,” German Marshall Fund of the United States,
May 2015.
89 Lucan Way, “Weaknesses of Autocracy Promotion,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 27, no. 1 (January 2016), pp. 64-75.
90 For example, see relevant discussions in CRS Report R41007, Understanding China’s Political System, by Susan V.
Lawrence and Michael F. Martin, and CRS Report R44822, Cuba: U.S. Policy in the 115th Congress, by Mark P.
Sullivan.
91 For examples of recent discussions and research into these issues, see Christopher Walker, “The Hijacking of “Soft
Power,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 27, no. 1 (January 2016), pp. 49-63; Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig, “The
Meaning of Sharp Power,” Foreign Affairs, November 16, 2017; National Endowment for Democracy International
Forum for Democratic Studies, Sharp Power: Rising Authoritarian Influence, December 2017; Ann-Marie Brady,
“Magic Weapons: China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping,” Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, September 2017; Center for European Policy Analysis, Winning the Information War Redux, April 2017.
92 The extent to which sometimes considerable investments in soft power by these governments (China, for instance,
has been estimated to spend $10 billion annually on “external propaganda” efforts) have paid commensurate dividends
to date is unclear. The top performing soft power countries in the world in 2018 according to a prominent global index
were all democracies (China and Russia were ranked 27th and 28th, respectively). See Joseph S. Nye, “What China and
Russia Don’t Get About Soft Power,” Foreign Policy, April 29, 2013; David Shambaugh, “China’s Soft Power Push,”
Foreign Affairs, July/August 2015; USC Center on Public Diplomacy and Portland, The Soft Power 30: A Global
Ranking of Soft Power 2018, July 2018.
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expression or academic freedom. Other activities, particularly some Russian efforts in the media space, may aim to
proactively sow a corrosive general distrust toward the media and objective truth within target countries. As has
been widely reported, authoritarian governments have also engaged in direct and covert political interference
activities within numerous democracies, sometimes with more particular political goals.
Challenges to Democracy’s Global Appeal as a Political System
Signs of backsliding within existing democracies in recent years have led some experts to
question whether the appeal and prestige of democracy as a political system itself is eroding
around the globe. Although political conditions are highly contextualized within individual
countries, citizens in a geographically and culturally diverse set of democracies have shown
apparent willingness to “cast votes in large numbers for candidates whose commitment to liberal
democracy was highly questionable.”93 Arguably authoritarian or authoritarian-leaning leaders are
currently in power or have previously been elected in countries as varied as Venezuela, Turkey,
the Philippines, and Peru. Aspects of liberal democracy such as respect for individual rights,
freedom of the press, and the rule of law have come under particular attack in many countries.
Within Western democracies such as Hungary and Poland, leaders and political parties who hold
views contrary to democratic norms have also achieved electoral success. Notably, Hungary’s
Viktor Orbán, who was overwhelmingly elected in April 2018 to a third consecutive term as
prime minister, has spoken of constructing an “illiberal state,” a project alleged by critics to entail
hollowing out pluralism and ensuring the dominance of the ruling party over the long term.94
Political scientists have traditionally viewed countries that have reached a certain level of wealth
and have experienced peaceful democratic political transitions as being stable, “consolidated”
democracies largely impervious to backsliding into nondemocratic forms of government.
Arguably weakening support for democracy within some long-established democracies, however,
has spurred an emerging and highly contested debate over whether democratic “deconsolidation”
is more possible than previously believed.95
Populism and Nationalism96
Many observers have expressed concern in recent years over the potential threat to democracy from populist and
nationalist political parties and candidates, which have emerged within both new and old democracies in various
regions. Analysts concerned over these trends point to examples of democratic erosion in countries such as

93 Marc F. Plattner, “Liberal Democracy’s Fading Allure,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 28, no. 4 (October 2017), pp. 5-
14.
94 Arch Puddington, Breaking Down Democracy: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians, Freedom
House, June 2017.
95 For arguments supporting an emerging “democratic deconsolidation” thesis, see Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha
Mounk, “The Democratic Disconnect,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 27, no. 3 (July 2016), pp. 5-17, and a later piece by
the same authors, “The Signs of Deconsolidation,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 28, no. 1 (January 2017), pp. 5-15. For
critiques of these arguments, see Journal of Democracy, “Online Exchange on “Democratic Deconsolidation” at
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exchange-%E2%80%9Cdemocratic-deconsolidation%E2%80%9D.
96 William A. Galston, “The Populist Challenge to Liberal Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 29, no. 2 (April
2018), pp. 5-19; Yascha Mounk, “The Undemocratic Dilemma,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 29, no. 2 (April 2018), pp.
91-112; Thomas Carothers and Richard Youngs, “Democracy is Not Dying,” Foreign Affairs, April 11, 2017; Takis S.
Pappas, Distinguishing Liberal Democracy’s Challengers,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 27, no. 4 (October 2016), pp.
22-36; Manuel Funke, Morit Schularick, and Christoph Trebesch, “Going to Extremes: Politics after Financial Crises,
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Hungary and Venezuela, where nationalist and populist leaders, once elected, have sought to subvert not just
aspects of liberal democracy but arguably also core elements of free and fair democratic political competition.
While acknowledging the genuine threat of some of these movements to democracy, some analysts have warned
against overgeneralizing populist or nationalist movements, noting that even within the same region these
movements can arise as a result of different circumstances in each country. Moreover, they contend that not
every such movement is necessarily threatening to democracy, and may center on legitimate policy debates. Some
research and commentary has connected aspects of rising populism and nationalism in the West in particular to
events such as the 2008 financial crisis or, more recently, refugee in-flows. Other research indicates, however,
that populist parties in Europe have been gradually rising in popularity for decades, suggesting also longer-term
factors.
Democracy’s Instrumental Appeal
Support for democracy around the world may rest on a combination of its intrinsic and its
instrumental appeal. Whereas democracy’s intrinsic appeal is rooted in personal and political
freedoms, its instrumental appeal is associated with perceived positive outputs resulting from
democratic governance, such as economic growth and national prestige. Some analysts assert that
particularly after the end of the Cold War, many countries pursued democratizing political
reforms at least in part because democracy was seen as the only viable pathway to high economic
growth, modernity, and national prestige. As discussed above, democratization was also
associated with membership in international institutions that provided instrumental economic and
security benefits.97
If traditionally high levels of support for democracy around the world have related at least in part
to its instrumental appeal, then challenges within democracies in recent years (including within
the United States) may be eroding support for democracy as a political system. According to the
U.S. intelligence community, some of these challenges include poor governance, economic
inequality, and “weak national political institutions.”98 Many challenges facing newer
democracies in particular may relate to difficulties in establishing modern states capable of
providing services in line with the demands of their citizens.99 The connection between
democracy and attainment of the economic and security rewards of certain international
institutions may also be loosening. Apparent democratic backsliding among some member states
in the EU (such as Hungary and Poland) and NATO (such as Turkey) have called into question
the ability and inclination of these institutions to enforce democratic standards for countries that
have already acceded to membership.100

1870-2014,” Center for Economic Studies & Ifo Institute Working Paper, October 2015; Ronald F. Inglehart and Pippa
Norris, “Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash,” Harvard Kennedy
School Faculty Research Working Paper, August 2016.
97 Roberto Stefan Foa, “Modernization and Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 29, no. 3 (July 2018), pp.
129-140; Robert Kagan, “The Weight of Geopolitics,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1 (January 2015), pp. 21-31.
98 Daniel R. Coats, “Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community,”
February 13, 2018.
99 Francis Fukuyama, “Why is Democracy Performing so Poorly?” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1 (January
2015), pp. 11-20.
100 In December 2017, the EU launched a process that could sanction Poland over judicial reforms alleged to constitute
a “clear risk of a serious breach of the rule of law.” In September 2018, the European Parliament, citing a “systemic
threat” to EU values, the rule of law, and fundamental rights, voted in favor of initiating a similar process against
Hungary. The governments of Poland and Hungary strongly contest these allegations. Many analysts regard it as
unlikely that the EU procedures will result in concrete measures, such as stripping Poland or Hungary of their voting
rights in the Council of the EU, because unanimity among the other member states is required to do so.
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Relatedly, a class of economically successful authoritarian capitalist states has emerged. To the
extent that these countries, China foremost among them, are able to continue to grow at high rates
while forestalling political liberalization, they may gradually be undermining the appeal of
democracy as a political system by disconnecting it from its perceived association with economic
success, modernity, and prestige.101 Recent statements by Xi Jinping have led some observers to
assert that China is now openly embracing this role.102 In October 2017, Xi stated that China’s
model of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” could serve as a “new choice” for countries
hoping to speed up their development and preserve their independence.103 Xi later stated,
however, that China will not “export” its political model or ask that other countries copy China’s
methods.104
The U.S. Example105
Many believe that democracy’s appeal around the world has historically been enhanced by the
capacity of the United States to serve as an attractive example. In recent years, some Members of
Congress and others have argued that challenges in the U.S. political system are hampering the
United States’ ability to effectively project democratic values abroad. Experts point to problems
such as polarization and polarizing rhetoric, institutional gridlock, and eroding respect for
democratic norms as potentially undermining U.S. democracy promotion efforts. According to
Freedom House, the United States has suffered a “slow decline” in political rights and civil
liberties for several years, a deterioration that it says “accelerated” in 2017. The Economist
Intelligence Unit (EIU) for the first time categorized the United States as a “flawed democracy”
in its report covering 2017 (although, as noted earlier in this report, its score narrowly missed
continued categorization as a “full democracy” according to EIU).
Measures of Support for Democracy106
Perhaps reflecting some of the dynamics discussed above, a Pew Research Center report
summarizing 2017 polling data across a set of 38 geographically and economically diverse
countries found mixed attitudes about the performance of democracy. Nonetheless, the same

101 Roberto Stefan Foa, “Modernization and Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 29, no. 3 (July 2018), pp.
129-140; Marc F. Plattner, “Liberal Democracy’s Fading Allure,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 28, no. 4 (October 2017),
pp. 5-14. Plattner points out that in a 2014 speech, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán stated that liberal democracies “will
probably be incapable of maintaining their global competitiveness,” and pointed to Singapore, China, India, Russia, and
Turkey as examples of “successful” models that are not organized as liberal democracies.
102 Richard McGregor, “Xi Jinping’s Ideological Ambitions,” The Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2018.
103 Xi Jinping’s Report at the CPC 19th Party Congress [习近平作十九大报告全文实录], October 18, 2017.
104 Xi Jinping’s Speech at the High-Level CPC Dialogue with World Political Parties [习近平在中国共产党与世界政
党高层对话会上的主旨讲话], December 1, 2017. An English write-up of this speech is available at Xinhua, “Xi calls
on world political parties to build community with shared future for mankind,” http://www.xinhuanet.com//english/
2017-12/02/c_136794028.htm.
105 U.S. Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democracy Promotion in a Challenging World, hearings, 115th
Congress, 2nd sess., June 14, 2018; Sen. Jeff Flake, “Truth and Democracy,” remarks in the Senate, Congressional
Record, daily edition, vol. 164 (January 17, 2018), pp. S215-S217; Larry Diamond, “How to Reverse the Degradation
of Our Politics,” The American Interest, November 10, 2017; Larry Diamond, “Reviving the Global Democratic
Momentum,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 119-133; Stephen M.
Walt, “Why is America so Bad at Promoting Democracy in Other Countries?” Foreign Policy, April 25, 2016; Thomas
Carothers, “Democracy Promotion Under Trump: What Has Been Lost? What Remains?” Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, September 6, 2017; Freedom House, “Democracy in Crisis,” Freedom in the World 2018; The
Economist Intelligence Unit, Democracy Index 2017: Free speech under attack.
106 Research Associate Ana Sorrentino provided research assistance for this section.
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report indicated that support for democracy as a political system remains high, with support far
exceeding most nondemocratic alternatives. A median of 78% of respondents approved of
representative democracy, while more than 70% disapproved of either rule by a “strong leader” or
rule by the military. The only nondemocratic alternative to garner plurality approval was “rule by
experts.” (See Figure 6 below.) Approximately 23% of respondents expressed support for
representative democracy and rejected all three nondemocratic alternatives posed. Pew found that
the proportion of these “committed democrats” in a country was correlated with its level of
wealth as well as its level of democracy as measured by EIU, suggesting that support for
democracy is highest within richer and more democratic countries.107
Figure 6. Level of Support for Democracy Versus Nondemocratic Alternatives
Median levels of support among 38 countries (Spring 2017)

Source: Pew Research Center graphic from Richard Wike et al., “Globally, Broad Support for Representative
and Direct Democracy,” Pew Research Center, October 16, 2017.
Beyond this broad snapshot, analyses of polling data measuring support for democracy over time
and within individual countries does not appear to demonstrate a single, clear overall global
negative trend. For instance, an analysis sought to gauge the trajectory of support for democracy
across 134 countries since 1990 by statistically aggregating data from a large number of polls.
The findings indicated that baseline levels of support for democracy differed between established
democracies, new democracies, and nondemocracies (with levels of support generally highest
within established democracies), but that recent trend-lines across each type varied across
countries and regions. Some countries exhibited a distinct downward trajectory of support in
recent years, while others showed marked increases during the same period. Many countries
showed relatively stable levels of support.108
This mixed picture is also reflected in trends within regional polls. For instance, according to a
2014-2015 poll of 34 African countries, since 2012 support for democracy had increased in 10

107 Richard Wike et al., “Globally, Broad Support for Representative and Direct Democracy,” Pew Research Center,
October 16, 2017. The report utilized the EIU democracy index data covering 2016.
108 Christopher Claassen, “Support for democracy is declining – but not in the U.S. or other Western democracies,”
Washington Post, July 5, 2018; Christopher Claassen, “In the Mood for Democracy? Democratic Support as
Thermostatic Opinion,” July 2018 (working paper). The findings also indicated that support for democracy may
sometimes increase when democracy is eroding within a particular country and decrease in times of greater democratic
health.
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countries, decreased in 14 countries, and had no statistically significant change in 10 countries.109
Among nine countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, polling data comparing levels
of support for democracy in 2010-2011 versus 2012-2014 shows that support remained
essentially unchanged in five countries, decreased in two countries, and increased in two
countries.110 Within Latin America, although there have been considerable changes in levels of
support within particular countries, the aggregate level of support across the region has reportedly
remained largely unchanged since 1995.111
These varied trend-lines are perhaps unsurprising given the myriad distinct political, social, and
economic contexts and developments within countries around the globe. Nonetheless, they may
also indicate that support for democracy as a political system, at least among general publics, is
not eroding to the degree that many democracy proponents fear. Rather, to the extent that public
opinion polling is a reliable indicator (see text box below), support overall appears resilient to this
point. This may buttress the claim, as articulated by one scholar, that “democracy may be
receding in practice, but it is still ascendant in peoples’ values and aspirations … few people in
the world today celebrate authoritarianism as a superior moral system … [or] the best form of
government.”112
Limitations and Caveats Around Measuring Support for Democracy113
Public opinion pol ing is one of the few concrete means for measuring support for democracy among average
citizens around the world. Nonetheless, there are various potential shortcomings and response biases
associated with pol s that attempt to measure support for democracy, as well as wide disagreements over how
to interpret pol ing data. For instance, the concept of democracy may mean different things to different people
across time and cultural contexts. Along these lines, some argue that there have been generational shifts in
conceptions of democracy, making long-term time series data difficult to compare. Another example of
potential response bias is that positive connotations around the concept of democracy may create social
pressure for respondents to overstate their level of support. Respondents in authoritarian political systems may
also exhibit self-censorship. Finally, the relationship between attitudes toward democracy and the stability (or
lack thereof) of democracies is not necessarily straightforward.
Modern Methods of Political Control
In addition to concerns over their international influence, nondemocracies are also using new and
sophisticated tools to forestall the potential formation of democratizing forces within their own
societies. Many of these modern tools may be less heavy-handed, and thus less likely to engender

109 The measure of support for democracy here refers to the proportion of those that prefer democracy and reject all
three alternatives of dictatorship, military rule, and one-party rule. The overall figure stood at 46%. Robert Mattes and
Michael Bratton, “Do Africans still want democracy?” Afrobarometer Policy Paper No. 36, November 2016.
110 Level of support here refers to the percentage of respondents who agreed or strongly agreed that “despite its
problems, democracy remains the best system.” Michael Robbins, “People Still Want Democracy,” Journal of
Democracy, vol. 26, no. 4 (October 2015), pp. 80-89.
111 The Economist, “Neither Trumpian nor Brexiteer: Latin America has different worries from the United States and
Europe,” September 3, 2016.
112 Larry Diamond, “Reviving the Global Democratic Momentum,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and
Global Democracy Support, pp. 119-133.
113 Helena Schwertheim, Measuring Public Support for Democracy, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral
Assistance, 2017; Amy C. Alexander and Christian Welzel, “The Myth of Deconsolidation: Rising Liberalism and the
Populist Reaction,” Journal of Democracy web exchange, April 28, 2017; Darrel Robinson and Marcus Tannenberg,
Self-Censorship in Authoritarian States: Response bias in measures of popular support in China, Varieties of
Democracy Institute (working paper), April 2018.
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societal backlash, than traditional forms of repression. They may also be less resource intensive.
These methods, some of which are discussed below, are thus potentially contributing to more
durable forms of nondemocratic governance.114
Civil Society Restrictions115
Civil society organizations (CSOs), which are often viewed as an important component of
sustainable democracy, are confronting growing limitations on their ability to operate around the
world.116 From restrictions on the types of funding they are allowed to receive to stringent
registration requirements, the measures targeting CSOs are increasingly putting pressure on the
entire civil society sector in certain countries.117 These restrictions are most commonly, but not
exclusively, imposed by authoritarian and hybrid regimes seeking to limit the influence of
nongovernmental actors. This phenomenon is commonly referred to by researchers and advocates
as the “closing space” for civil society work around the world.118
The origins of the closing space phenomenon vary and are often country-specific. That said,
scholars have pointed to several factors that have contributed to the spread of civil society
restrictions. After the end of the Cold War era, Western governments, including the United States,
substantially increased funding for pro-democracy CSOs. Concurrently, a number of events
caused some governments to view the civil society sector warily, including the color revolutions
in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, the later Arab Spring movements, and others.119 Publicly,
many states have sought to justify civil society restrictions on national security and
counterterrorism grounds; critics argue that such measures are merely pretexts for cracking down
on certain civil society sectors or activities.120 Some countries have also justified civil society
restrictions, particularly those concerning foreign funding, on the basis of sovereignty.121
Experts cite Russia’s suppression of civil society in particular as a model that other states may
have sought to emulate.122 Russian government measures restricting civil society have included

114 The extent to which nondemocratic governments are able to deliver economic growth and public services for their
citizens also likely enhances their domestic political legitimacy and durability. See also the “Structural ” section.
115 This section was primarily authored by Research Associate Ana Sorrentino. Portions are drawn from a prior,
archived CRS report on this subject by Alex Tiersky and Emily Renard.
116 While often used interchangeably with terms such as “nonprofit organizations” and “nongovernmental
organizations,” civil society is generally recognized to also include a range of organizations such as labor unions,
activist or civic coalitions, watchdog groups, professional associations, religious groups, political movements, and/or
chambers of commerce.
117 A 2012 report identified six types of legal barriers: barriers to entry, barriers to operational activity, barriers to
speech and advocacy, barriers to communication and cooperation, barriers to assembly, and barriers to resources.
International Center for Not-for-Profit Law & World Movement for Democracy Secretariat at the National Endowment
for Democracy, Defending Civil Society, June 2012.
118 A separate but related phenomenon is that of authoritarian governments increasingly creating and funding
“government-organized NGOs,” or GONGOs. While these organizations purport to legitimately represent social
movements or interest groups, their objectives are generally to advance the state’s goals and broadcast its agenda both
at home and abroad. See “What Is A GONGO?,” Foreign Policy, October 13, 2009; Ambassador Daniel B. Baer,
“Mind the GONGOs: How Government Organized NGOs Troll Europe’s Largest Human Rights Conference,” U.S.
Mission to the OSCE, September 30, 2016.
119 Thomas Carothers and Saskia Brechenmacher, Closing Space: Democracy and Human Rights Support Under Fire,
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 20, 2014.
120 Center for Strategic and International Studies Human Rights Initiative, Counterterrorism Measures and Civil
Society: Changing the Will, Finding the Way, March 2018.
121 Alexander Cooley, “Countering Democratic Norms,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 3 (July 2015), pp. 49-63.
122 Arch Puddington, Breaking Down Democracy: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians, Freedom
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requiring groups that receive foreign funding and engage in “political activity,” broadly defined,
to register as foreign agents. Later measures granted the Russian government the authority to
unilaterally declare a CSO a foreign agent, as well as the discretion to shut down or limit the
activities of CSOs deemed a threat to national security.123
A broad range of other governments have imposed similar restrictions on civil society. According
to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), between 2012 and 2015, 60 countries
enacted a total of over 120 laws to constrain the freedom of association or assembly (see Figure 7
below).124 In some cases, restrictions render the structure, funding streams, or activities of CSOs
illegal or otherwise impossible to sustain, forcing organizations to cease operations. CSOs that
depend on foreign funding or staff are particularly vulnerable, as are those that focus on social or
political issues that can be deemed subversive or threatening to national interests pursuant to
vaguely written laws.125 In other cases, governments initiate investigations or legal proceedings
against CSOs for alleged violations of laws related to CSO registration, funding, or activities.
Such cases may be intended to drain CSOs of resources and/or to intimidate other groups into
compliance.126

House, June 2017; Julia Broome and Iva Dobichina, “Turning the tide against the wave of civil society repression,”
International Service for Human Rights, June 5, 2015.
123 Saskia Brechenmacher, “Delegitimization and Division in Russia,” Civil Society Under Assault: Repression and
Responses in Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 18, 2017.
124 Douglas Rutzen, “Civil Society Under Assault,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 4 (October 2015), pp. 28-39.
Also see U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) regional civil society sustainability indexes, accessible
at https://www.usaid.gov/what-we-do/democracy-human-rights-and-governance/supporting-vibrant-civil-society-
independent-media.
125 For example, see Kendra E. Dupuy, James Ron, and Aseem Prakash, “Who Survived? Ethiopia’s regulatory
crackdown on foreign-funded NGOs,” Review of International Political Economy, vol. 22, no. 2 (2015), pp. 419-456.
126 According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “as of November 2016, Russian authorities
had launched 235 judicial proceedings against NGOs for alleged noncompliance with government regulations—in
addition to 98 cases initiated by NGOs themselves to challenge government fines and interference. These types of cases
require significant resources, time, and organizational capacity.” Saskia Brechenmacher, “How State Restrictions Are
Reshaping Civic Space Around the World,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 22, 2017.
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Figure 7. Geographic Distribution of Initiatives to Restrict Civil Society
2012-2015

Source: Graphic adapted from Douglas Rutzen, “Civil Society Under Assault,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no.
4 (October 2015), p. 28-39.
Technological Tools127
Optimism about the potential democratizing power of new information technologies, the internet,
and social media has been tempered in recent years as nondemocratic governments have grown
more adept at using technological means to censor, monitor, distort, or otherwise repress potential
social and political opposition.128 In general, many emerging technologies are perhaps best
understood as “dual use” in the sense that, depending on how they are utilized, they have the
potential for both positive and negative impacts on democracy. Authoritarian governments appear
to have shown an ability to mitigate many of the politically threatening aspects of these new
technologies, and over time may increasingly have the capacity to actively leverage them in
service of social and political control.
Efforts to restrict free expression online have accelerated in some countries since the
aforementioned color revolutions and the Arab Spring movements, which saw activists and
citizens share information and organize mass protests via social media in an unprecedented
fashion.129 According to Freedom House, internet freedom restrictions can be divided into three

127 Research Associate Ana Sorrentino provided significant research and writing support for this section.
128 Joshua A. Tucker et al., “From Liberation to Turmoil: Social Media and Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, vol.
28, no. 4 (October 2017), pp. 46-59; Espen Geelmuyden Rød and Nils B Weidmann, “Empowering activists or
autocrats? The Internet in authoritarian regimes,” Journal of Peace Research, vol. 52, no. 3 (February 2015), pp. 338-
351.
129 Courtney C. Radsch, “Treating the Internet as the enemy in the Middle East,” Committee to Protect Journalists,
April 27, 2015; Kris Ruijgrok, “From the Web to the Streets: Internet and Protests under Authoritarian Regimes,”
Democratization, vol. 24, no 3 (2017), pp. 498-520.
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main categories: obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights.130 Obstacles
to access may relate to poor infrastructure or high costs, but also to blanket and deliberate
outages, such as during politically sensitive periods or in politically sensitive areas. Content
limitations consist of proactive efforts to shape the information environment online such as
through technical filters or censors to block websites and/or certain content.131 In some cases,
governments may also use forms of offline punishment such as criminal or extralegal detention to
deter individuals from engaging in certain online speech or political organizing.132 Relatedly,
government-sponsored cyberattacks on media outlets, opposition leaders, and activists are also
reportedly on the rise.133
Increasingly, government efforts also extend to active manipulation of online discourse through
automated bots or paid commentators, which artificially spread pro-government messages or use
misinformation to distract or confuse online audiences, thereby “drowning out” the online speech
of individuals seen as threatening to the government.134 According to the U.S. intelligence
community, the use of these tactics by governments around the world has “increased dramatically
in the past 10 years.”135
Human rights organizations argue that well-resourced and technologically advanced authoritarian
states are also developing and deploying advanced technologies to more comprehensively track
the online and offline activities of their citizens in ways that may be aimed, at least in part, at
anticipating and repressing sources of political dissent. China’s efforts are foremost among these
and include facial recognition-enhanced public surveillance and the use of “big data” information
collection and aggregation technologies.136 These and other emerging technologies may

130 Freedom House, “Freedom on the Net Methodology,” accessed at https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net-
methodology.
131 Chinese government-mandated efforts in this area are generally seen as the most sophisticated and comprehensive in
the world. See, for example, recent reports concerning the use of algorithms to censor images on China’s most popular
social media platform: Jeffrey Knockel et al., “(Can’t) Picture This,” The Citizen Lab, August 14, 2018. Also see CRS
Report R45200, Internet Freedom in China: U.S. Government Activity, Private Sector Initiatives, and Issues of
Congressional Interest, by Patricia Moloney Figliola.
132 Taylor C. Boas, “Weaving the Authoritarian Web: The Control of Internet Use in Nondemocratic Regimes,” in How
Revolutionary Was the Digital Revolution? National Responses, Market Transitions, and Global Technology, ed. John
Zysman and Abraham Newman (Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2006), p. 361-378; Freedom House, Freedom
on the Net 2017: Manipulating Social Media to Undermine Democracy, November 2017; Joshua A. Tucker et al.,
“From Liberation to Turmoil: Social Media and Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 28, no. 4 (October 2017), pp.
46-59.
133 Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2017: Manipulating Social Media to Undermine Democracy, November 2017.
134 Joshua A. Tucker et al., “From Liberation to Turmoil: Social Media and Democracy,” Journal of Democracy, vol.
28, no. 4 (October 2017), pp. 46-59. The authors note that events in recent years have also demonstrated that these
tactics may also be used by certain actors within democracies in ways that similarly degrade and undermine genuine
online discourse. See also Freedom House, Freedom on the Net 2017: Manipulating Social Media to Undermine
Democracy, November 2017; Gary King, Jennifer Pan, and Margaret E. Roberts, “How the Chinese Government
Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument,” American Political Science Review,
vol. 111, no. 3 (2017).
135 Daniel R. Coats, “Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community,”
February 13, 2018.
136 Human Rights Watch, “China: Police ‘Big Data’ Systems Violate Privacy, Target Dissent,” November 19, 2017;
Paul Mozur, “Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams: A.I., Shame and Lots of Cameras,” New York Times, July 8, 2018;
Christina Larson, “Who needs democracy when you have data?” MIT Technology Review, August 20, 2018. China’s
use of these technologies has been particularly pervasive in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China’s
northwest. See CRS In Focus IF10281, Uyghurs in China, by Thomas Lum.
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increasingly use efficient and scalable forms of artificial intelligence (AI) that could lower the
costs required for maintaining social control.137
Although the most advanced of these technologies are being developed in a small number of
countries, they may increasingly spread to other governments over time. Analysts have noted, for
instance, reports of Chinese-developed facial recognition technologies having already been
marketed and sold to some foreign government customers.138
Structural Conditions
Some analysts contend that the lack of global democratic expansion in recent years, and its
arguably modest backsliding, is rooted in unfavorable conditions for democratization in many of
the world’s remaining nondemocracies. These arguments draw on academic research indicating
that structural conditions such as wealth, international linkages, and levels of inequality may have
considerable impact on a country’s likelihood of sustained democratization. Thus, according to
some analysts, challenges in the current period are not particularly surprising, and might be
expected to continue, because “nearly every country with minimally favorable conditions for
democracy” had already democratized by the mid-2000s.139
These arguments may be buttressed by the fact that many factors that were previously understood
by scholars to support democratization are increasingly believed to have more ambiguous effects.
Increasing levels of wealth, for instance, may not be as closely associated with democratization as
previously believed, and may contribute to regime stability for democracies and some
authoritarian states alike.140 Relatedly, the relationship between state capacity and democracy is
complex and, according to some experts, not necessarily mutually supportive.141 Within
authoritarian regimes, strong state capacity may help forestall democratization by enhancing what
scholars call “performance legitimacy” through the government’s ability to provide valued public
goods, as well as its capacity to monitor and respond to dissent.142 Some research also supports
what has been referred to as the “oil curse,” or the notion that countries with natural resource
wealth are less likely to democratize. This may be because their governments can use abundant
revenues from these resources to similarly undercut societal demands for democracy (among
other theorized causal factors).143

137 Miles Bundage et al., The Malicious Use of Artificial Intelligence, Center for a New American Security, Electronic
Frontier Foundation, University of Oxford, and other organizations (co-release), February 2018.
138 Elsa B. Kania, “China’s Ambitions in Artificial Intelligence: A Challenge to the Future of Democracy?” Power 3.0
Blog, International Forum for Democratic Studies, August 8, 2018.
139 Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Myth of the Democratic Recession,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1
(January 2015), pp. 45-58.
140 Agnieszka Marczyk, “Academic Conclusions, Working Hypotheses, and Areas for Further Research,” in Does
Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 146-148. Roberto Stefan Foa has noted that
315 million people now live in authoritarian countries with per capita incomes above the “level that was once
associated with regime transition,” and that this number is over 800 million if China’s coastal provinces are included.
See Roberto Stefan Foa, “Modernization and Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 29, no. 3 (July 2018), pp.
129-140.
141 Marczyk, “Academic Conclusions, Working Hypotheses, and Areas for Further Research,” in Does Democracy
Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support, p. 142-144. Francis Fukuyama has cited examples of
modern states having been created within authoritarian political systems, such as in China and elsewhere. See Francis
Fukuyama, “States and Democracy,” Democratization, vol. 21, no. 7 (December 2014), pp. 1326-1340.
142 Roberto Stefan Foa, “Modernization and Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 29, no. 3 (July 2018), pp.
129-140.
143 Michael Ross, “Does Oil Hinder Democracy?” World Politics, vol. 53, no. 3 (April 2001), p. 325-361; also see
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How much any of these or other factors alone or together may affect the prospects for
democratization in a given country is a complex and contested question. Experts who have
emphasized these factors as helping to explain the challenges to democracy in the current period
concede that favorable conditions are not always necessary for democratization, but contend that
they are causally important.144 Some analysts argue against excessive emphasis on these
conditions and point to prior examples of democratization in countries where the scholarship
would indicate this to be unlikely.145
Debates over Democracy Promotion in U.S.
Foreign Policy
Rationales for U.S. democracy promotion are varied. As noted, U.S. leaders have long drawn
links between the state of global democracy and U.S. national security and economic interests. In
addition, Members of Congress and others have sometimes asserted that the United States has a
moral obligation to promote democracy and human rights, and some scholars argue that an
inclination within U.S. foreign policy for “values promotion” derives from fundamental aspects
of American political culture.146 Nonetheless, analysts continue to debate the extent to which the
United States should promote democracy and what the proper balance of emphasis is between this
objective and other foreign policy priorities. Some have questioned the appropriateness of
democracy promotion at a basic level, such as by asserting that it constitutes an imposition of
American values on other societies. There are also debates over whether these efforts constitute
violations of sovereignty or improper interference in the politics of other countries.147 Supporters
of democracy promotion have defended these activities as legitimate and generally argue that
aspirations for, and values reflecting, democratic freedoms are universal.148
More broadly, many disagreements over the proper placement of democracy promotion within
U.S. foreign policy tend to relate to the extent to which democracy promotion is seen as
supportive of U.S. national interests, the extent of its potential tension with the pursuit of other
objectives, and whether the United States has the means and capacity over the long-term to

discussion in Agnieszka Marczyk, “Academic Conclusions, Working Hypotheses, and Areas for Further Research,” in
Does Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 150-151.
144 Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Myth of the Democratic Recession,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1
(January 2015), pp. 45-58.
145 They cite countries such as India and Botswana, for instance. See Larry Diamond, “The Liberal Democratic Order
in Crisis,” The American Interest, February 16, 2018; Robert Kagan, “The Weight of Geopolitics,” Journal of
Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1 (January 2015), pp. 21-31.
146 Walter Russell Mead, “The Paradox of Democracy Promotion,” The American Interest, April 9, 2015. Mead writes,
“If one really believes that all people are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, it
becomes very hard to believe that by ‘all people’ we mean merely ‘all citizens of the United States of America.’ There
is a sense in which the legitimacy of American domestic institutions rests on a set of assumptions about what world
society should be like, how all human beings should live.”
147 See for example recent critiques and defenses of U.S. democracy promotion programs in comparison to reports of
Russian political interference: Daniel Twining and Kenneth Wollack, “Russia’s nefarious meddling is nothing like
democracy assistance,” Washington Post, April 10, 2018; Thomas Carothers, “Is the U.S. Hypocritical to Criticize
Russian Election Meddling?” Foreign Affairs, March 12, 2018; James Bovard, “Time for the US to end democracy
promotion flim-flams,” The Hill, March 16, 2018.
148 See relevant discussions in CRS Report R44858, Democracy Promotion: An Objective of U.S. Foreign Assistance,
by Marian L. Lawson and Susan B. Epstein.
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effectively support the spread of democracy and prevent backsliding. These thematic trends are
summarized below.
Relationship to U.S. Interests
Scholars, democracy promotion advocates, and U.S. policymakers have associated the spread of
democracy around the world with U.S. interests in various ways. As noted earlier, the rationale
for democracy promotion has rested on the contention that democracies are generally more
reliable and trustworthy international partners of the United States, and on the argument that
democracies are considerably less likely to go to war with one another. Regarding the former
argument, some argue that democratic transparency may make democracies particularly
conducive to supporting the international agreements and institutions that populate the current
international order.149 Accordingly, many believe that greater numbers of democracies supports
the resilience of this order, which has arguably brought myriad economic and security benefits to
the United States. Scholars continue to debate, however, the order’s importance as compared to
traditional relative power dynamics between countries.150
With regard to democratic peace, most scholars agree that, as a historical matter, democracies
have rarely engaged in major military conflict with one another.151 Some of the potential (and
potentially mutually supportive) explanations for this include that the democratic and rights-
respecting character of liberal democracies inculcates genuine mutual shared respect among
democracies and also makes war against such a government less easily justified; and that
democratic leaders operate within political systems that make them more inclined to peaceful
resolution of conflicts, and expect leaders of other democracies to be similarly predisposed. That
said, scholarly debate remains over the purported causal explanations for the democratic peace
theory, with some arguing that these explanations have not been convincingly evidenced in the
historical record, as well as other critiques of the theory.152

149 G. John Ikenberry, “Why Export Democracy?” The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 23, No. 2 (Spring 1999), pp. 56-65.
Ikenberry writes that the openness of democracies “provides their potential international partners with a set of
something like verification tools. The partners can see their internal workings and judge for themselves whether
promises and commitments are being kept.”
150 For examples of recent debates on this issue, see Graham Allison, “The Myth of the Liberal Order,” Foreign Affairs,
July/August 2018; Graham Allison, “The Truth About the Liberal Order,” Foreign Affairs, August 28, 2018; Stephen
Kotkin, “Realist World,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2018; Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, “Liberal World,”
Foreign Affairs, July/August 2018; Rebecca Friedman and Mira Rapp-Hooper, “The Liberal Order is More Than a
Myth,” Foreign Affairs, July 31, 2018; Michael J. Mazarr, “The Real History of the Liberal Order,” Foreign Affairs,
August 7, 2018.
151 Notably, scholars who are proponents of this “democratic peace theory” generally do not make a broader claim that
democracies are less prone to go to war in general. In fact, some assert that the factors that may explain the democratic
peace may, conversely, make democracies more likely to engage in war with nondemocratic governments, whose
legitimacy they question. This discussion draws on the summary of scholarly debates found in Sean M. Lynn-Jones,
“Preface,” in Debating the Democratic Peace, ed. Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller
(London: MIT Press, 1999), pp. ix-xxxiii. Also see relevant pieces therein by Michael W. Doyle, Bruce Russett,
Christopher Layne, and others.
152 For instance, there are debates over the direction of causality—whether democracies are more peaceful with each
other because they are democratic, or whether the resolution of international security issues preceded democracy in
many countries, and thus peace causes democracy more so than democracy causes peace. Other points of disagreement
over democratic peace theory concern the statistical significance of the phenomenon; definitional disagreements over
what constitutes a “democracy,” and thus over the number of potential historical exceptions; and the extent to which
other variables may explain the peace between democracies.
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Moreover, observers note that existing threats to U.S. security, including “rogue” or revisionist
governments and terrorist organizations, tend to be associated with or emanate from
nondemocracies.153 Some claim that liberal democratic political systems may be inherently less
likely to suffer from internal armed conflicts or terrorism.154
Potential Tension with Other U.S. Policy Objectives
Democracy promotion may in some instances conflict with the pursuit of other U.S. foreign
policy objectives, and the United States may thus face difficult trade-offs in its democracy
promotion agenda. At a general level, U.S. emphasis on democracy promotion may contribute to
greater levels of tension and distrust between the United States and nondemocratic governments,
which can hamper the prospects for cooperation toward other objectives. For instance, the United
States must often choose whether and to what extent to partner with and support nondemocratic
governments such as those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the pursuit of shared counterterrorism or
regional geopolitical goals. Similarly, in the midst of arguably growing geopolitical competition
in Asia between the United States and China, some analysts argue that nondemocratic
governments of key third countries such as Vietnam may be less inclined to align with the United
States if it insists on strong adherence to democratic standards.155 On the other hand, some argue
that the United States’ shared democratic values with its allies, as contrasted with the repressive
political systems of its major authoritarian competitors, can be powerfully emphasized in its
efforts to compete geopolitically with these countries.156
Scholarly research indicates that new democracies or countries in political transition may for a
period be more nationalistic, less stable, and more likely to engage in conflict than other
countries. New democratically elected governments may also in some instances be accountable to
electorates that possess anti-American views, and may thus be less likely than the governments
they replaced to see their interests as aligned with other U.S. objectives. Although democracies
are generally believed to perform better at protecting human rights than nondemocracies, in some
cases the introduction of democratic political competition in the absence of strong protections for
individual rights may negatively affect the treatment of ethnic and religious minorities or other
marginalized communities.157

153 Richard Kramer, “A Case for Democracy Assistance and Ways to Improve It,” in Does Democracy Matter? The
United States and Global Democracy Support, ed. Adrian A. Basora, Agnieszka Marczyk, and Maia Otarashvili
(London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), pp. 33-49.
154 Madeleine Albright, Mehdi Jomaa, Ted Piccone, and Cheryl Frank, Liberal Democracy and the Path to Peace and
Security, Report of the Community of Democracies’ Democracy and Security Dialogue, September 2017. See related
issue-specific supporting reports at https://community-democracies.org/?page_id=78.
155 Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “Realist Counsel on Democracy Promotion,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States
and Global Democracy Support, pp. 7-31.
156 See for example Aaron L. Friedberg, “Competing with China,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, June-July
2018, pp. 7-64. Friedberg writes that growing U.S.-China competition is “driven not only by the traditional dynamics of
power politics … but also by a wide and deep divergence in values between their respective regimes…. American and
allied policymakers cannot afford to downplay the ideological dimension in their own strategy…. China’s rulers clearly
believe the ideological realm to be a crucially important domain of competition, one that they would be only too happy
to see the United States and other Western nations ignore or abandon.” Some analysts caution against overemphasis of
China as an ideological threat. See Paul Heer, “Understanding the Challenge from China,” The Asan Forum, April 3,
2018.
157 See illustrative discussions in Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “Realist Counsel on Democracy Promotion,” in Does
Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 7-31; Edward D. Mansfield and Jack
Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War,” in Debating the Democratic Peace, ed. Michael E. Brown, Sean M.
Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller (London: MIT Press, 1999), pp. 301-333; Walter Russell Mead, “The Paradox of
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Conversely, unwavering support for repressive authoritarian governments in the pursuit of
security interests can create anti-American resentments among the populations of these countries.
This may create significant long-term negative impacts on relations in the event that these
governments are toppled.158 Moreover, some argue that support for democracy may in many
instances have an underappreciated role in addressing security concerns over the longer term. For
instance, promoting political inclusion and pluralism and the rule of law may help address the
root causes of terrorism.159
Capacity and Effectiveness
Democracy promotion skeptics question the capacity of the United States to spread democracy in
other countries whose societal, historical, and cultural contexts can differ markedly from the
United States.160 They cite unsuccessful, and sometimes counterproductive, efforts to promote
democracy, particularly after military interventions, such as those undertaken in Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Among democracy promotion supporters and detractors alike, there has been increasing
understanding that democratization is a protracted, uncertain, and nonlinear process, with often
considerable constraints on the ability of the United States (or others) to positively influence the
process. Democracy promotion experts acknowledge that democratic transitions should be largely
driven by internal forces, but contend that the United States or other external actors can in some
instances play a productive supporting role. They cite numerous instances in which U.S. support
may have done so, although attempting to evaluate the precise impact of U.S. democracy
promotion efforts in specific instances is challenging given the complex factors affecting
democracy in any given country at a given time.161

Democracy Promotion,” The American Interest, April 9, 2015.
158 Richard Kraemer, “A Case for Democracy Assistance and Ways to Improve It,” in Does Democracy Matter? The
United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 33-49.
159 Thomas Carothers, “Is the United States Giving Up on Supporting Democracy Abroad?” Foreign Policy, September
8, 2016. See also Cheryl Frank, “How human rights and the rule of law can address terrorism,” Institute for Security
Studies and Community of Democracies’ Democracy and Security Dialogue, September 2017.
160 For examples of both critical and supportive views of the capacity of the United States to promote democracy, see
John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2016, pp.
70-83; Stephen M. Walt, “Why is America so Bad at Promoting Democracy in Other Countries?” Foreign Policy, April
25, 2016; Walter Russell Mead, “The Paradox of Democracy Promotion,” The American Interest, April 9, 2015;
Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “Realist Counsel on Democracy Promotion,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and
Global Democracy Support, pp. 7-31; Thomas Carothers, “Is the United States Giving Up on Supporting Democracy
Abroad?” Foreign Policy, September 8, 2016; Thomas Carothers, “Democracy Aid at 25: Time to Choose,” Journal of
Democracy (January 2015), pp. 59-73; and Richard Kraemer, “A Case for Democracy Assistance and Ways to Improve
It,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 33-49.
161 Thomas Carothers writes that democracy promotion detractors often emphasize “a handful of the hardest cases,”
while neglecting to acknowledge “dozens of less prominent, more typical examples of democracy support—ones in
which the United States and other Western democracies have been able to make clear and meaningful contributions to
democratic progress. Such positive cases include Burkina Faso, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Burma,
Senegal, Slovakia, and Tunisia.” Regarding U.S. democracy promotion programs in particular, he writes, “This work
has led to many meaningful results, undramatic though they may be in any single instance. These have included, for
example, helping build lasting institutions that administer free and fair elections in Latin America, contributing to
significant gains for women’s political empowerment in Africa, building active networks of pro-democratic politicians
in Asia, and nurturing countless civic activists dedicated to greater governmental accountability in many regions.”
Thomas Carothers, “Is the United States Giving Up on Supporting Democracy Abroad?” Foreign Policy, September 8,
2016.
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Issues for Congress
Congress plays a key role in influencing and shaping many aspects of U.S. policy and programs
relating to democracy promotion. As it carries out its legislative and oversight responsibilities,
Congress may consider a number of questions in the current period and beyond.
How does the Trump Administration view democracy promotion?
The Trump Administration’s views on democracy promotion may conflict with those of Members
of Congress who support democracy promotion as a priority in U.S. foreign policy. Statements by
the President and senior administration officials arguably have indicated a preference for
downgrading democracy and human rights promotion in favor of greater emphasis on economic
and security issues in U.S. foreign relations. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, in
articulating the Administration’s “America First” policy as it relates to foreign affairs, drew a
distinction between U.S. foreign policies and U.S. values, the latter of which he described as
relating to “freedom, human dignity, the way people are treated.” He argued that “in some
circumstances, if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our values, we
probably can’t achieve our national security goals or our national security interests … it really
creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic
interests.”162
This stated distinction between U.S. policies and values, and the absence of an explicit
democracy promotion goal within the Administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), may
represent a shift from recent prior administrations. The Administration has also proposed
significant cuts to democracy promotion foreign assistance programs (specific figures are
discussed in the following section) that have drawn criticism from some Members of Congress.163
More broadly, some scholars and analysts charge that the Administration is failing to adequately
defend the institutions of the international order, which, as discussed in earlier portions of this
report, may support and/or be supported by shared democratic values.164 In light of these and
other developments, some observers contend that the Trump Administration may intend to move
away from a U.S. leadership role in promoting democracy overseas.165
The Administration’s degree of interest regarding democracy promotion may evolve over time,
however, as has arguably been the case with prior administrations. The White House’s February
2018 decision to cut foreign aid to the Cambodian government because of setbacks to democracy
there led one analyst to assert that the Trump Administration’s approach to democracy promotion
is “not so clear cut.”166 Tillerson’s successor, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has indicated

162 Rex W. Tillerson, “Remarks to U.S. Department of State Employees,” May 3, 2017, available at
https://www.state.gov/secretary/20172018tillerson/remarks/2017/05/270620.htm.
163 U.S. Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee, The FY 2018 Foreign Affairs Budget, hearings, 115th Congress,
1st sess., June 14, 2017; U.S. Congress; U.S. Congress, House Foreign Affairs Committee, Democracy Promotion in a
Challenging World, hearings, 115th Congress, 2nd sess., June 14, 2018.
164 See for example the recent petition signed by hundreds of international relations scholars, accessible at
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSesHdZWxpp13plS4nkLOSMHv4Dg1jaksBrCC6kWv6OfVAmO5g/
viewform. For a critique of this petition see Stephen M. Walt, “Why I Didn’t Sign Up to Defend the International
Order,” Foreign Policy, August 1, 2018.
165 For example, see Joshua Kulantzick, “Trump Has Abandoned Democracy Promotion. Which Countries Could Fill
the Void?” World Politics Review, March 19, 2018.
166 Jessica Trisko Darden, “When it comes to democracy promotion, Trump picks and chooses,” American Enterprise
Institute blog, February 28, 2018. For more information about political developments in Cambodia and U.S. policy, see
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support for democracy promotion. At his nomination hearing in April 2018, Pompeo stated that
“if we do not lead the calls for democracy, for prosperity, and for human rights around the world,
who will? No other nation is so equipped with the same blend of power and principal.” At the
same hearing, when asked, he affirmed that promoting democracy is in the national interest of the
United States.167 Also, as the Trump Administration has continued to develop and expound on its
particular foreign policy strategies, some officials have emphasized democracy-related elements
within these strategies.168 The Administration has also emphasized democracy with regard to
countries seen as hostile to the United States such as Venezuela and Iran. Nonetheless, there may
continue to be points of tension between the Administration’s approach to and prioritization of
democracy promotion as compared to the preferences of some Members of Congress.
How much emphasis should the United States place on democracy
promotion?
Supporters of democracy promotion have argued that challenges in the current period necessitate
greater U.S. efforts and commitment in order to help forestall a more protracted decline.169 Some
contend that democracy promotion can usefully play a greater role in top-level U.S. foreign
policy as it arguably has during some prior periods by seeking “transformative change in
strategically important countries,” and complementing and reinforcing ongoing U.S.-funded
democracy promotion programs.170 This could conceivably entail tools such as high-level
diplomacy, significant trade or aid conditionality, or multilateral initiatives, and could potentially
involve modifications of U.S. relations with certain nondemocracies. Such efforts might to a
certain extent tie into broader efforts to defend the norms and institutions of the international
order. Some of these issues are noted in subsequent questions below.
Given arguments that democracy promotion may entail trade-offs with regard to other U.S.
interests, however, some analysts advocate a “triage” approach that weighs potential downside
risks when determining which countries the United States should prioritize for democracy
promotion.171

CRS Insight IN10918, Cambodian Election, by Thomas Lum, and CRS Report R44037, Cambodia: Background and
U.S. Relations, by Thomas Lum.
167 U.S. Congress, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Nomination Hearing for Mike Pompeo, 115th Congress, 2nd
sess., April 12, 2018.
168 For instance, in describing the Administration’s “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy,” a State Department official
argued that the “free” component referred in part to a desire that countries in the region “become progressively more
free—free in terms of good governance, in terms of fundamental rights, in terms of transparency and anti-corruption.”
See Deputy Assistant Secretary Alex N. Wong, “Briefing on The Indo-Pacific Strategy,” April 2, 2018.
169 For example, see Larry Diamond, “The Liberal Democratic Order in Crisis,” The American Interest, February 16,
2018.
170 Thomas Carothers, “Is the United States Giving Up on Supporting Democracy Abroad?” Foreign Policy, September
8, 2016; Thomas Carothers, “Democracy Aid at 25: Time to Choose,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1 (January
2015), pp. 59-73.
171 Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “Realist Counsel on Democracy Promotion,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States
and Global Democracy Support, pp. 7-31. Gsosdev writes that such an approach “recognize[s] that in some cases,
democracy promotion will occur smoothly and will strengthen the US position the world,” but that in other instances
“there is a heightened risk of destabilization or the empowerment of governments less amenable to US interests.” He
adds that “policymakers ought to be able to provide answers to two key questions: (1) Where is the risk of instability
justified?; and (2) Where must we recognize that we have little chance of succeeding with the effort to promote
democracy, or that efforts will be wasted or even counterproductive?” See also triage discussion in Andrian A. Basora
and Kenneth Yalowitz, “Policy Conclusions and Recommendations,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States
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Those particularly critical of democracy promotion tend to argue that the United States should
curtail these efforts in pursuit of a foreign policy that, in their view, more closely reflects U.S.
capacity and the pursuit of vital U.S. interests.172 Given present challenges in the U.S. political
system, some also assert that one of the best means of promoting democracy abroad is for the
United States to focus on shoring up democracy at home.173
What tools exist for targeted U.S. foreign policy responses to
particular challenges?
Given that democratic declines in recent years may relate particularly to erosions in respect for
freedom of expression and association, media freedom, and rule of law-related elements (see
“Interpreting the Declines”), the United States may consider prioritizing new or continuing
diplomatic, programmatic, or other tools that focus on these democracy elements. Toward this
end, Congress may take stock of U.S. efforts to date to combat the impacts of closing space for
civil society in countries around the globe. While the United States has engaged with and
promoted civil society in other countries for decades, the U.S. government during the Obama
Administration began to take specific actions aimed in part at addressing the closing space
challenge. This included a Presidential Memorandum that directed executive departments and
agencies to work with CSOs even when there are restrictive local laws and to oppose restrictions
on civil society and fundamental freedoms (among other directives), funding for new CSO
assistance programs, and other initiatives.174
Other new or existing tools might also focus on countering international efforts by nondemocratic
governments in the media space that are corrosive to democracy. Notably, Congress in 2016
broadened the mandate of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) to include
countering state-sponsored propaganda and disinformation (Section 1287 of P.L. 114-328).175
GEC is in the process of awarding Public Diplomacy (PD) grants that are part of an “Information
Access Fund,” which the department says will “support public and private partners working to
expose and counter propaganda and disinformation from foreign nations.”176 Also potentially

and Global Democracy Support, pp. 175-185.
172 John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, “The Case for Offshore Balancing,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2016,
pp. 70-83.
173 Stephen M. Walt, “Why is America so Bad at Promoting Democracy in Other Countries?” Foreign Policy, April 25,
2016. Democracy promotion supporters by contrast emphasize that however damaging U.S. domestic challenges are to
democracy promotion efforts, such efforts in any case should not be understood as premised on promoting replication
of the U.S. model but rather aim to flexibly draw from and present comparative experiences across a range of different
democratic political systems. Some also contend that those engaging in democracy promotion work may help “deflate
perceptions of American arrogance” by openly acknowledging challenges to democracy in the United States. See
Thomas Carothers, “Is the United States Giving Up on Supporting Democracy Abroad?” Foreign Policy, September 8,
2016.
174 The White House, “Presidential Memorandum – Civil Society,” September 23, 2014; The White House, “FACT
SHEET: U.S. Support for Civil Society,” September 29, 2015.
175 The State Department states that the GEC is “currently consulting widely within the U.S. government, with allied
governments, nongovernmental organizations, and civil society, as well as with private-sector experts about best
practices in confronting state-sponsored propaganda and disinformation.” U.S. State Department, “Global Engagement
Center,” accessed at https://www.state.gov/r/gec/.
176 U.S. State Department, “State-Defense Cooperation on Global Engagement Center Programs and Creation of the
Information Access Fund to Counter State-Sponsored Disinformation,” February 26, 2018, accessed at
https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/02/278851.htm; Grants.gov, “SFOP004178 Information Access Fund,”
accessed at https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=302596.
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relevant is the work of U.S. international broadcasting entities overseen or funded by the U.S.
Agency for Global Media (formerly the Broadcasting Board of Governors, BBG).177
Congress may also consider whether and how to directly promote democracy through capacity
building partnerships with other legislatures such as those carried out under the auspices of the
House Democracy Partnership. The House Democracy Partnership was established in 2005 and is
composed of 20 Members of the House of Representatives. It aims to promote “responsive,
effective government and strengthening democratic institutions by assisting legislatures in
emerging democracies.” As of 2018, it has worked with partner legislatures in Afghanistan,
Burma, Colombia, Georgia, Haiti, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon,
Liberia, Macedonia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Peru, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, and Ukraine.178
How much funding should be provided for democracy promotion
programs?
Congress may consider whether the current challenges to democracy have implications for the
amount of funding appropriated for democracy promotion programs. In determining funding
levels, Members of Congress may weigh a potential desire to respond to these challenges against
the opportunity costs of these resources in light of numerous other funding priorities. On average,
Congress has appropriated more than $2 billion annually in the past decade for democracy
programs, broadly defined. The Trump Administration’s FY2018 request proposed $1.689 billion
for democracy promotion assistance, an estimated 32% decrease as compared to FY2017-enacted
levels.179 The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 (P.L. 115-141), ultimately specified
approximately $2.479 billion for democracy promotion programs. The Administration’s FY2019
budget has proposed $1.480 billion in democracy promotion assistance, an approximately 40%
decrease from FY2018-enacted levels.180
How can democracy programs be meaningfully evaluated and/or
usefully targeted?
Difficult to measure objectives, long time horizons, and other factors may make democracy
promotion programs inherently more difficult to measure than many other foreign assistance
programs. Moreover, according to one democracy aid expert, aid providers “too rarely fund the
sort of in-depth, independent studies that examine the underlying assumptions, methods, and

177 For background, see CRS Report R43521, U.S. International Broadcasting: Background and Issues for Reform, by
Matthew C. Weed. In congressional testimony in September 2017, BBG CEO and Director John Lansing stated, “As
U.S. international media, the BBG’s mission is to inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of
freedom and democracy…. From Russia and its periphery, to China and East Asia, Iran and the Middle East, to Cuba,
Venezuela and large parts of Latin America—audiences are under a disinformation assault from authoritarian regimes
and are desperate for credible information…. To meet the challenge head-on, all five BBG networks are rapidly
expanding our traditional radio and television distribution to digital, mobile and social networks so we are on the same
playing field as our adversaries.” See U.S. Helsinki Commission, “The Scourge of Russian Disinformation,” September
14, 2017, accessed at https://www.csce.gov/international-impact/events/scourge-russian-disinformation.
178 See hdp.house.gov.
179 CRS Report R44858, Democracy Promotion: An Objective of U.S. Foreign Assistance, by Marian L. Lawson and
Susan B. Epstein.
180 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Congressional Budget Justification, FY2019
Supplementary Tables. All referenced figures include funding under the Governing Justly and Democratically (GJD)
foreign assistance framework objective plus funding for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
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outcomes in a sector of democracy aid.”181 Although an evaluation commissioned in 2006 by the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) found that USAID and democracy and
governance programs had a positive impact on democracy, no comparable study has been
conducted since.182
Many analysts have argued for what they consider to be more strategic targeting of democracy
promotion resources, particularly in light of funding constraints. Some argue that such targeting is
important because of perceived competing and more narrowly concentrated democracy-eroding
external influences in some countries.183 A broader policy of “triage,” as mentioned above, could
potentially help inform funding allocations. Analysts contend that these allocations may be
usefully informed by criteria such as whether programs can be coupled with broader diplomatic
efforts and/or whether conducive structural conditions are present.184 Given recent democratic
backsliding within existing democracies, some scholars have also warned against prematurely
cutting off aid to new democracies.185 Researchers have found that democracy programs are more
effective when their goals align with broader U.S. policy and are supported by the use of
diplomatic tools such as sanctions or aid conditionality.186 Congress has a direct role in shaping
these tools.187
Some experts have also argued for a more differentiated allocation of democracy promotion
resources between the major funders (including USAID, the State Department, and the National
Endowment for Democracy) based on the particular strengths of their funding models in relation
to the type of project to be funded and the extent of political openness in the target country.188

181 Thomas Carothers, “Democracy Aid at 25: Time to Choose,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 1 (January 2015),
pp. 59-73.
182 CRS Report R44858, Democracy Promotion: An Objective of U.S. Foreign Assistance, by Marian L. Lawson and
Susan B. Epstein.
183 Arguing for responses to Russian efforts in Eastern Europe, for example, one analyst states, “Especially at a time of
financial constraints in the West, a more strategic approach requires stricter prioritization of resources for countries that
have made the most progress and are in a more democratic international context.” Nicholas Bouchet, “Russia and the
Democracy Rollback in Europe,” German Marshall Fund of the United States, May 2015.
184 Sarah Sunn Bush, “Three Lessons for Democracy Assistance Effectiveness,” in Does Democracy Matter? The
United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 51-64; Melinda Haring, “Reforming the Democracy Bureaucracy,”
in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 65-82. See also discussion in the
“Structural Conditions” section above.
185 Larry Diamond, “Reviving the Global Democratic Momentum,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and
Global Democracy Support, pp. 119-133.
186 Sarah Sunn Bush, “Three Lessons for Democracy Assistance Effectiveness,” in Does Democracy Matter? The
United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 51-64.
187 Congress has enacted numerous potentially relevant sanctions tools, both country-specific legislation and global in
scope. For background, see for example CRS In Focus IF10576, The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability
Act, by Dianne E. Rennack; CRS In Focus IF10905, Targeting Foreign Corruption and Human Rights Violators in
FY2018 Consolidated Appropriations, by Liana W. Rosen, Derek E. Mix, and Michael A. Weber; CRS Report R43311,
Iran: U.S. Economic Sanctions and the Authority to Lift Restrictions, by Dianne E. Rennack; and CRS Report R43888,
Cuba Sanctions: Legislative Restrictions Limiting the Normalization of Relations, by Dianne E. Rennack and Mark P.
Sullivan. Through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, Congress has also authorized and appropriated U.S.
economic assistance that allocates funding to developing countries in part on the basis of performance on good
governance, human rights, corruption, and rule of law indicators (among other indicators). See CRS Report RL32427,
Millennium Challenge Corporation, by Curt Tarnoff. As discussed in the “Geopolitics and Authoritarian Power”
section, the availability of aid from authoritarian governments may be undermining the effectiveness of some of these
tools.
188 Melinda Haring, “Reforming the Democracy Bureaucracy,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States and
Global Democracy Support, pp. 65-82; Thomas O. Melia, “The Democracy Bureaucracy,” The American Interest, June
1, 2006. See also discussions in CRS Report R44858, Democracy Promotion: An Objective of U.S. Foreign Assistance,
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Scholars have noted that many programs carried out under the banner of promoting democracy
may relate more closely to arguably tangential goals such as good governance, and some have
questioned the assumption that these goals support democratization.189
Should the United States work to form new international
initiatives to defend democracy?
In the view of some analysts, the more challenging international terrain for democracy and the
growing influence of authoritarian countries in the current period calls for renewed and more
robust international collaboration in defense of democracy and democratic norms. To that end, the
United States might consider new initiatives among like-minded democracies, potentially
including those outside of Western Europe and North America. Multilateral initiatives may
usefully combat perceptions among some abroad that democracy promotion is linked to narrow
U.S. geostrategic interests.190 Relevant existing democracy-focused initiatives that might be
utilized include the Community of Democracies and the Open Government Partnership.191
Some argue that the United States and other democracies should focus on countering efforts by
nondemocracies to contest the universal applicability of democratic norms within international
institutions.192 Various U.N. bodies, the OSCE, and others should be increasingly viewed, in the
words of one analyst, as “arenas of competition over democracy norms,” and the United States
should “do more to build up explicit democracy caucuses within these institutions” while also
placing greater emphasis on the democracy elements of organizations such as NATO.193
Relatedly, some analysts have argued for establishing multilateral groupings of democracies
centered on combating political interference activities by authoritarian countries.194
Multilateral efforts may face limitations, however, because they are inherently complex and must
account for differing ideas and interests among participating nations. They may entail
participation from many newer democracies that have arguably not shown the same inclination to

by Marian L. Lawson and Susan B. Epstein.
189 Sarah Sunn Bush, “Three Lessons for Democracy Assistance Effectiveness,” in Does Democracy Matter? The
United States and Global Democracy Support, pp. 51-64; Francis Fukuyama, “States and Democracy,”
Democratization, vol. 21, no. 7 (December 2014), pp. 1326-1340.
190 Thomas Carothers, “Democracy Promotion Under Trump: What Has Been Lost? What Remains?” Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, September 6, 2017. See also Alexander Cooley, “Countering Democratic Norms,”
Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 3 (July 2015), pp. 49-63. Cooley notes perceptions abroad that the United States
“acts hypocritically and applies double standards when it comes to so-called values issues,” and argues for
“disentangl[ing], as much as possible, the issue of perceived Western political decline from the fate of liberal
democracy.”
191 The Community of Democracies was established in 2000 and is currently composed of 29 countries (including the
United States). It “provides Member States with a forum in which to … identify global priorities for diplomatic action
to advance and defend democracy, including through collective diplomatic action at the UN and in other multilateral
fora.” See Community of Democracies, “About the CoD,” accessed at https://community-democracies.org/?page_id=
32. The Open Government Partnership was established in 2011 and is currently composed of 75 participating countries
(including the United States) that have committed themselves to adhering to principles of open and transparent
government and have submitted independently monitored country action plans toward that purpose. See Open
Government Partnership, “About OGP,” accessed at https://www.opengovpartnership.org/about/about-ogp.
192 Alexander Cooley, “Countering Democratic Norms,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 3 (July 2015), pp. 49-63.
193 Nicholas Bouchet, “Russia and the Democracy Rollback in Europe,” German Marshall Fund of the United States,
May 2015.
194 Aaron L. Friedberg, “Competing with China,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, June-July 2018, pp. 7-64.
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defend or promote democracy abroad as have the United States and other older democracies.195
Some also contend that shared democratic principles alone may be insufficient as an organizing
principle for collective action among nations.196 Notably, in withdrawing from the U.N. Human
Rights Council and pledging to cut funding to the council and to the Office of the U.N. High
Commissioner for Human Rights, the Trump Administration has arguably exhibited a preference
against promoting “values” issues within certain multilateral venues.197 Relatedly, the withdrawal
from the council also removes the ability of the United States to vote against resolutions that are
perceived to be aimed at undermining respect for democracy or human rights norms.198
Outlook
Looking forward, the trends analyzed and described in this report likely portend continued near-
term constraints on democratic expansion around the world, and in some cases have the potential
to pose a range of persistent challenges for policymakers. Congress may continue to grapple with
policy considerations within and in light of this difficult context in the near future. As the above
discussion illustrates, some of these considerations may relate to the overarching strategic
orientation of U.S. foreign policy and democracy promotion’s place within that, while others
concern second order questions about particular means, resources, and resource allocation.199 To
the extent that there are differences in interest in democracy promotion between Members of
Congress and the executive branch, these considerations may also entail questions about the
institutional role of Congress in democracy promotion and in U.S. foreign policy generally.

195 Marc F. Plattner, “Liberal Democracy’s Fading Allure,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 28, no. 4 (October 2017), p. 5-
14. Plattner posits that this may stem in part from lingering hostility to the West in many of these countries, and he
questions the value of the association of liberal democracy with Western countries. See also related discussions in
Richard Youngs, “Exploring “Non-Western Democracy”,” Journal of Democracy, vol. 26, no. 4 (October 2015), pp.
140-154.
196 Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “Realist Counsel on Democracy Promotion,” in Does Democracy Matter? The United States
and Global Democracy Support, pp. 7-31.
197 Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, “Remarks on the UN Human Rights Council,” June 19, 2018; Associated Press,
“US to Cut Funding to UN Human Rights Office,” August 23, 2018.
198 On March 23, 2018, before the U.S. withdrawal, the State Department stated in a press release that the United States
had defended “the integrity of the U.N. human rights mechanisms” by “vot[ing] against a China-led resolution …
which sought to weaken international human rights frameworks.” U.S. State Department, “Key Outcomes of U.S.
Priorities at the UN Human Rights Council’s 37th Session,” March 23, 2018.
199 Perhaps most immediately, the latter category includes continued consideration of State Department, Foreign
Operations, and Related Programs appropriations for FY2019 and the funding provided for democracy promotion
programs therein.
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Appendix A. Background Information on
Democracy Indexes
Background on Freedom House’s Freedom in the World Report
Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report has measured the level of civil liberties and
political rights in each country annually since 1972.200 Freedom House reporting has also rated a
varying number of territories each year; the ratings for these are not included in the data
discussions in this report. According to Freedom House, its methodology is derived largely from
the United Nations (U.N.) Universal Declaration of Human Rights and “operates from the
assumption that freedom for all people is best achieved in liberal democratic societies.”201
Freedom House uses both in-house and external analysts and advisers to determine country
ratings. Scores in each category, which are tabulated to determine overall political rights and civil
liberties ratings, are guided by a set of methodological questions. For instance, under civil
liberty’s rule of law category, one of the questions is “Is there an independent judiciary?” along
with associated sub-questions, such as “Do executive, legislative, and other governmental
authorities comply with judicial decisions, and are these decisions effectively enforced?”
Analysts use a range of sources including news articles, scholarly analysis, NGO reports, and in-
country research.202
Freedom in the World’s Methodology at a Glance
Number of Countries Evaluated (2017): 195 (Freedom House also evaluates a varying number of territories
each year; for consistency, data for these are excluded from the analysis in this report)
Ratings: Countries are assigned a rating for both political rights and civil liberties based on scoring in discreet
subcategories.
Political rights rating is determined by scores on 10 indicators in the categories of

electoral process,

political pluralism and participation, and

functioning of government.
Civil liberties rating is determined by scores on 15 indicators in the categories of

freedom of expression and belief,

associational and organizational rights,

rule of law, and

personal autonomy and individual rights.
Country Statuses are based on the average of their political rights and civil liberties scores.

Free: 1 to 2.5

Partly Free: 3.0 to 5.0

Not Free: 5.5 to 7.0

200 Until 1978, Freedom House’s annual report on this subject was titled The Comparative Study of Freedom.
201 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018 Methodology,” https://freedomhouse.org/report/methodology-
freedom-world-2018.
202 Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2018 Methodology,” https://freedomhouse.org/report/methodology-
freedom-world-2018.
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Background on the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index
The Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU’s) Democracy Index began coverage in 2006; new
reports were issued biannually until the report covering 2010, and have been issued on an annual
basis since then. EIU’s index is based on an array of 60 indicators, some of which are may be at
the outer bounds of democracy’s core definition. For instance, its political participation category
includes indicators that measure rates of participation in political parties or political
nongovernmental organizations, the rate at which adults follow politics in the news, and public
confidence in the government and political parties, among other measures. In addition to
assessments by experts, many indicators are also determined by public opinion surveys, such as
the World Values Survey and others. For example, an indicator in the political participation
category measuring citizens’ political engagement uses a measure of the “percentage of people
who are very or somewhat interested in politics” as measured by the World Values Survey, if
available.
Democracy Index’s Methodology at a Glance
Number of Countries Evaluated (2017): 165, and 2 territories; excludes “microstates” with less than
500,000 people
A country’s democracy score ranges from 0 to 10 and corresponds with five regime types:

Ful democracy (8 to 10)

Flawed democracy (6 to 8)

Hybrid regime (4 to 6)

Authoritarian regime (0 to 4)
A country’s democracy score is determined by averaging scores for five categories:

Electoral process and pluralism (based on 12 indicators)

Functioning of government (14 indicators)

Political participation (9 indicators)

Political culture (8 indicators)

Civil Liberties (17 indicators)
Other Democracy Indexes
Numerous other democracy-related indexes and databases, some expansive in scope and others
focused on particular regions or on particular components of democracy, are also used by
policymakers and scholars. A relatively new global democracy measure, the Varieties of
Democracy Project, or V-Dem, consists of over 350 indicators covering five indexes associated
with differing conceptions of democracy. Another measure, Polity IV, is frequently cited in the
academic literature and has been characterized as a relatively minimalist measure that focuses on
procedural aspects of democracy. Despite this, it has been shown to be highly correlated with
Freedom House’s measure; this correlation is attenuated when countries at the
democratic/authoritarian extreme are excluded, indicating (sometimes wide) disagreement over
more middling countries.203 Other major indexes or aggregation of indexes include (but are not
limited to) Freedom House’s Nations in Transit report, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index,
the Electoral Integrity Project, The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (particularly

203 Seva Gunitsky, “Lost in the gray zone: competing measures of democracy in the former Soviet republics,” in
Ranking the World: Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 113-150.
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the Voice and Accountability indicators), and International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy
report.
Critiques of Global Democracy Indexes
Experts note that different indexes are organized around overlapping but different conceptions of
democracy, and they sometime disagree widely on the state of democracy in a particular country,
especially with regard to middling “hybrid regimes.” Differences between indexes may also be
exacerbated by the use of differing sources and methods of evaluation, differing and contested
aggregation methods, the selection of flawed or redundant indicators, flaws or inconsistencies
related to the use of expert coding, and other factors. Some have also argued that popular indexes
may suffer from ideological biases or may sometimes favor advocacy at the expense of scientific
rigor. Organizations that produce the indexes have emphasized processes designed to reduce
political bias and ensure methodological rigor.204 CRS does not endorse the value or accuracy of
any particular index.

204 For detailed analysis and critiques of the methodology of many of the major democracy indexes, see Seva Gunitsky,
“Lost in the gray zone: competing measures of democracy in the former Soviet republics,” in Ranking the World:
Grading States as a Tool of Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 113-150; and Michael
Coppedge et al., “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach” Perspectives on Politics, vol. 9, no. 2
(June 2011), pp. 247-267.
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Appendix B. Selected CRS Reports
This appendix presents a list of selected CRS reports that are referenced elsewhere in this report
or that include significant discussions of democracy-related developments in a particular region
or country context.
 CRS Report R44858, Democracy Promotion: An Objective of U.S. Foreign
Assistance, by Marian L. Lawson and Susan B. Epstein
 CRS Report R44891, U.S. Role in the World: Background and Issues for
Congress, by Ronald O'Rourke and Michael Moodie
 CRS Report R44775, Russia: Background and U.S. Policy, by Cory Welt
 CRS Report R41007, Understanding China’s Political System, by Susan V.
Lawrence and Michael F. Martin
 CRS Report R44897, Human Rights in China and U.S. Policy: Issues for the
115th Congress, by Thomas Lum
 CRS Report R45200, Internet Freedom in China: U.S. Government Activity,
Private Sector Initiatives, and Issues of Congressional Interest, by Patricia
Moloney Figliola
 CRS Report R44037, Cambodia: Background and U.S. Relations, by Thomas
Lum
 CRS Report R43132, Human Rights, Civil Unrest, and Political Reform in
Burma in 2013, by Michael F. Martin
 CRS Report R44017, Iran’s Foreign and Defense Policies, by Kenneth Katzman
 CRS Report R44793, Sub-Saharan Africa: Key Issues, Challenges, and U.S.
Responses, by Nicolas Cook et al.
 CRS Report R43166, Democratic Republic of Congo: Background and U.S.
Relations, by Alexis Arieff
 CRS Report R45120, Latin America and the Caribbean: Issues in the 115th
Congress, coordinated by Mark P. Sullivan
 CRS Report R44841, Venezuela: Background and U.S. Relations, coordinated by
Clare Ribando Seelke
 CRS Report R44822, Cuba: U.S. Policy in the 115th Congress, by Mark P.
Sullivan
 CRS Report R43888, Cuba Sanctions: Legislative Restrictions Limiting the
Normalization of Relations, by Dianne E. Rennack and Mark P. Sullivan
 CRS Report R43311, Iran: U.S. Economic Sanctions and the Authority to Lift
Restrictions, by Dianne E. Rennack
 CRS Report R43521, U.S. International Broadcasting: Background and Issues
for Reform, by Matthew C. Weed
 CRS Report RL32427, Millennium Challenge Corporation, by Curt Tarnoff

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Author Information

Michael A. Weber

Analyst in Foreign Affairs

Disclaimer
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