Post developed by Pauline Jones and Tevah Platt
Democracy in the United States is in decline. This backsliding is part of a global trend that political scientists refer to as a “reverse wave”: For the first time in 50 years, there are more countries moving toward autocracy than democracy. Historically, this reverse wave has distinctive features: It’s distinguished by democratically elected leaders seeking to expand and centralize their power, following a shared playbook that undermines both institutional checks and balances and pathways for societal resistance. So what’s happening in the United States is not unique. But it’s also not inevitable, and global examples can provide some guidance on how to fight effectively for democracy.
Democratic Decline
Let’s start with some evidence.
A democracy is a political regime in which rulers are selected via free, fair, and competitive elections and exercise power via limits set by guarantees of human and civil rights, and by institutional checks and balances.
To measure and compare the health of democracies across nations over time, political scientists use a robust set of indices that track core features of democracy– indicators like political participation, electoral processes, and civil liberties.
These indices vary somewhat in their metrics and weighting strategies, but they show a consistent pattern. The three figures compiled by the Brookings Institution below show some of the main indices used in comparative politics to evaluate US democracy, and their contours each show a downward trajectory. They indicate that democracy in the United States has declined since roughly 2010, with a sharper decline since 2017. The Economist has ranked the US as a “flawed democracy” since 2016. Experts agree: Freedom and democracy in the US are in decline.
While this may seem academic, we can observe democratic decline in our daily lives when we see elections becoming less free, fair, and competitive; checks and balances being eroded, and human or civil rights being trampled upon.
The Reverse Wave
This democratic decline is part of a trend that is global and pervasive.
More than a third of the world population now lives under authoritarian rule. And over the past 50 years, the number of autocratizing countries has dramatically increased while the number of democratizing countries has dwindled. At the end of 2023, democratization was occurring in 18 countries, representing 5 percent of the world’s population; autocratization was occurring in 42 countries, representing 35% of the world’s population. We’ve seen surges away from democracy before– “reverse waves” occurred between World War I and World War II, and again between 1962 and 1973. But the reverse wave that the United States is now a part of is different from those we have seen before for three main reasons:
- Today’s democratic reversals are happening in mature, consolidated democracies that are expected to be secure, including the US, India, Brazil and Greece, as well as newer democracies that were once considered stable like Hungary and Poland.
- Some 70 to 90% of these global shifts have been driven not by military coups but by executive aggrandizement – leaders actively undermining checks and balances on their power and the capacity of opponents– with tactics such as packing courts; impeaching and intimidating judges; sowing disinformation; attacking the media; labelling civil society organizations as a threat, and finding ways to prevent people from mobilizing peacefully.
- Democratically elected, autocratic leaders are using a shared playbook to expand their authority, and sharing tactics to serve common goals. Not by accident, the plans laid out in Project 2025 mirror those implemented by Viktor Orbán in Hungary.
Hope for democracy
So will this trend continue? Is there any hope? If the tools that we would use are being deliberately eroded or undermined, what tools do we have to guard against democratic backsliding?
Countries like Brazil, Poland, Bolivia and Moldova provide some cues on what has worked to halt or reverse backsliding.
Autocratization can be fought when five key factors work against it in conjunction.
Democratic preservation relies on institutional and societal pushback. The institutional mechanisms come from other branches of government standing up to the erosion of democracy. We see the judiciary in the United States trying very hard, even if lately ignored, to enforce due process and push back against illegal and unconstitutional actions.
Coalitions have been critical for unifying opposition to autocratic rulers. We have recently seen for the first time broad coalitions of political parties and trade unions across the political spectrum demonstrating against the populist Orbán regime in Hungary, with tens of thousands gathering to protest this month in Budapest. Large-scale popular mobilization is also a necessary but not sufficient means of defending democracy.
Elections– opportunities to vote incumbents who abuse their power out of office– can be critical events. But what happens when the incumbent loses the election but refuses to step down? In this case it can be critical to have international support. In the case of Brazil, the US and other countries honored the outcome of the legitimately won democratic election. The question is, if that happened in the United States, would there be foreign power to back up the opposition against a defiant incumbent? This could prove crucial and necessary for the future of our democracy.
This post is based on a presentation by Pauline Jones given at the second 2025 teach-in organized by University of Michigan faculty examining “US Democracy in Peril: National and Global Implications.” The event was held March 19, 2025, in the U-M Chemistry Building. Pauline Jones is a Professor of Political Science, a Research Professor at the Center for Political Studies, and the Edie N. Goldenberg Endowed Director for the Michigan in Washington Program. She is an expert on politics in the former Soviet Union (including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia) and on assessing the impact of mass protest in authoritarian regimes. She regularly teaches PoliSci140: Introduction to Comparative Politics. This post was developed by Tevah Platt of the Center for Political Studies with contributions from Pauline Jones.
