In this new report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Dr. Rachel Kleinfeld examines how over the past two decades, dozens of governments have used regulations, laws, and vilifying narratives to restrict the ability of civil society organizations to act and speak. Now, a similar set of tactics is being rolled out in the United States. What should philanthropists and organizations expect, and what can be done?
Read MoreIn this brief update of the January 2023 report, we summarize how the trends we observed have become even more worrying. With implications for every funder's work, authoritarian populists have strengthened their hold on government power and are using it to restrict freedoms across a wide swathe of American life. Regardless of the programs or issue areas you fund, whether you're socially conservative or progressive, we hope the report and update will act as a guide to the challenges ahead and encourage greater collaboration across programmatic and institutional lines in defense of liberal democracy.Rising authoritarianism in the U.S. has the potential to profoundly damage civil society and the philanthropy that supports it, damage that itself has the potential to further accelerate autocratic rule.
Read MoreSince June 16, 2015, the day that Donald Trump descended an escalator in Trump Tower and announced his run for the presidency, the American body politic has struggled to figure out how to treat him, his rhetoric, and the threat he poses to our system of government. A similar pattern plays out repeatedly: Trump makes a seemingly outlandish promise that upends conventional understandings of politics. Then, those who help Americans make sense of current events — the media, other politicians, pundits, and influencers — dismiss, distort, or deny the very promise Trump has made. And few then know quite what to make of it all or how to respond — a state of confusion that has enabled Trump to shatter democratic norms in previously inconceivable ways.
We now have more than eight years of experience with this phenomenon and a full presidential term as a track record proving that Trump’s pledges should be taken both seriously and literally. He has, for the most part, sought to do the extreme things that were dismissed as mere rhetoric when first promised, from enacting a “Muslim ban” to refusing to accept the results of an election. And yet, here we are again, with Trump making even more extreme promises to “terminate” the Constitution, seek “retribution” against political opponents, and be a “dictator” (just on day one), only to see people unsure what to make of or how to respond to these threats.
This report aims to alter these dynamics by clearly showing how Trump would follow through on his most extreme anti-democratic pledges for a second term and then offering expert recommendations for how to mitigate that danger.
Read MoreIn Advantaging Authoritarianism: The U.S. Electoral System & Antidemocratic Extremism, Protect Democracy examines the links between escalating antidemocratic extremism and the U.S. electoral system: “one uniquely translating limited factional support into outsized political influence.” In particular, it interrogates how specific features of the U.S. electoral system may be structurally favoring political extremism, such as by exaggerating one party’s electoral wins over the other, diluting minority voting power, weakening competition between the major parties, preventing an electorally viable new center-right party, and rewarding extreme factions at the ballot box, among other effects. READ MORE>
Read MoreEarlier this year, Citizen began comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of the modern American Right, examining attitudes towards Authoritarianism, QAnon, Voting & Elections, COVID-19, and Climate Change.
This report summarizes our findings and affirms our initial hypothesis that while political polarization puts our democracy at increasing risk, opportunities exist for Citizen partners to reach pragmatic voters on the Right and engage them in efforts to strengthen democracy and address other pressing national issues. READ MORE>
Read MoreWhen Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, a bewildered nation turned to Strangers in Their Own Land to understand what Trump voters were thinking when they cast their ballots. Arlie Hochschild, one of the most influential sociologists of her generation, had spent the preceding five years immersed in the community around Lake Charles, Louisiana, a Tea Party stronghold. READ MORE>
Read MoreBright Line Watch shares key findings from expert and public surveys on the state of American democracy. READ MORE>
Read MoreFor two hundred years, the grand project of liberal internationalism has been to build a world order that is open, loosely rules-based, and oriented toward progressive ideas. Today this project is in crisis, threatened from the outside by illiberal challengers and from the inside by nationalist-populist movements. This timely book offers the first full account of liberal internationalism's long journey from its nineteenth-century roots to today's fractured political moment. Creating an international "space" for liberal democracy, preserving rights and protections within and between countries, and balancing conflicting values such as liberty and equality, openness and social solidarity, and sovereignty and interdependence--these are the guiding aims that have propelled liberal internationalism through the upheavals of the past two centuries. G. John Ikenberry argues that in a twenty-first century marked by rising economic and security interdependence, liberal internationalism--reformed and reimagined--remains the most viable project to protect liberal democracy. READ MORE>
Read MoreRuth Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the "strongman" playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin--enabling her to predict with uncanny accuracy the recent experience in America. In Strongmen, she lays bare the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. READ MORE>
Read MoreA Pulitzer Prize-winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism.
From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. READ MORE>
Read MoreJoe Goldman on how philanthropy can support the fight for a more open and just democracy. READ MORE>
Read MorePhilip Rojc interviews democracy funders on what funders should have done better in the lead-up to January 6, and what they can do now. READ MORE>
Read MoreIn mid-2020, the Alliance for Securing Democracy convened a task force of 30 leading American national security and foreign policy experts to devise a national strategy for the United States to offset autocratic advances in non-military domains of competition. This report reflects the collective insights and recommendations of this bipartisan group. READ MORE>
Read MoreIn its 2020 assessment, Freedom House asserts that global freedom has been declining for 14 straight years, as democracy and pluralism come under further assault from dictators and authoritarian states. READ MORE>
Read MoreIn the face of the decline of democracy in the United States, it is beneficial to look toward other democracies which declined and recovered. This analysis reveals that often recovery takes decades, can remain incomplete, and that it requires the dedication of individuals committed to renewal. READ MORE>
Read MoreOur global community is experiencing similar trends. Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk offer a global perspective, demonstrating that declining trust in democracy is a problem around the world. See their findings in The Danger of Deconsolidation. READ MORE>
Read MoreIn his book, The Retreat of Western Liberalism, Edward Luce argues that we are on a menacing trajectory brought about by ignorance of what it took to build the West, arrogance towards society's economic losers, and complacency about our system's durability. Unless the West can rekindle an economy that produces gains for the majority of its people, its political liberties may be doomed. READ MORE>
Read MoreBen Wittes and Susan Hennessey describe how to interpret Donald Trump’s behavior as a president in the context of how we understand the presidency as an institution, detailing which aspects of Trump are radically different from past presidents and what aspects have historical antecedents. READ MORE>
Read MoreDrawing on decades of research and a wide range of historical and global examples, from 1930s Europe to contemporary Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela, to the American South during Jim Crow, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt show how democracies fall to authoritarianism—and how U.S. democracy can be saved. READ MORE>
Read MoreLarry Diamond argues we are in a critical moment: the defense and advancement of democratic ideals relies on U.S. global leadership. If we do not reclaim our traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's authoritarian swell could become a tsunami, providing an opening for Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and their admirers to turn the twenty-first century into a dark time of despotism. READ MORE>
Read More
