Understanding Today’s Authoritarian Challenge

Unlike in eras past, contemporary autocrats seek not to replace democracy with a competing ideology but to manipulate the democratic system to achieve their own ends. While some autocrats continue to draw on traditional tools and heavy-handed oppression tactics, many also co-opt democratic rhetoric, values, procedures, and institutions in their undemocratic pursuits. They frequently come to power through legitimate elections. Once in power, they amend, reinterpret, or simply breach the law; co-opt judiciaries, election management bodies (EMBs), and other independent institutions; dissolve opposition political parties and imprison dissenters; silence the media; and incite, abet, or commit violence against women and minority groups. These actions undermine deliberation and hollow out democratic rights and processes. 



In many cases, autocrats benefit from and take advantage of dysfunctional opposition: weak, undemocratic political parties and sparse or uncoordinated civil society. Facing few constraints, these leaders mine grievances, manufacture offense, and supply distorted information to their publics to further weaken calls for democracy. In lieu of crafting people-centered policies or to distract from their own governance failures or corruption, autocratic leaders demonize vulnerable groups and fuel and spread fears that result in civic and political inaction. Autocrats are increasingly capable of manufacturing or exploiting growing public discontent with democracy. Global dissatisfaction with democracy has been increasing steadily since 2008,  and the gap between expectations of democracy’s promise and the reality of what it delivers has been deepening for decades. 



Autocrats also receive outside help in their pursuits. Legitimate or contrived crises, pandemics, natural disasters, inter- or intrastate conflict, and displacement or migration flows resulting from such events all offer opportunities for autocrats to gain and use emergency powers to curtail political rights and expand control over the levers of the state. Their efforts are further bolstered by increasing support from other powerful autocracies, such as China and Russia,  which provide large investments, make highly publicized state visits, and report back favorably in state-controlled media. This autocratic cooperation — mimicking democratic cooperation, albeit to much different ends — dilutes the political pressure that the community of democracies can exert. 



To meet this challenge, the democracy support community requires a practical method for identifying and classifying the many tactics of autocratization. With that common understanding, we can design interventions to foster greater resilience against affronts to democracy. Interventions in pursuit of democratic resilience — as emphasized in examples provided in this paper — should identify, center, enable, and support local democracy champions to pursue their own democratic vision and goals.