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	A Less Democratic America by Thomas Carothers Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agencies   Sep. 2025   A Less Democratic America, by Thomas Carothers - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace   Every week—in fact, every day—brings further news of U.S. President Donald Trump's relentless quest for unprecedented presidential power.   His deployment of the National Guard to Washington, DC is a powerful example of his willingness to use the U.S. military for domestic policing purposes. His repeated acts of legal retribution against critics and those who do not cede to his demands, including prominent media organizations, politicians, and law firms, make clear his determination to suppress dissent wherever it appears.   His wrestling away of budgetary powers constitutionally assigned to U.S. Congress and attacks on the independence of agencies like the Federal Reserve reflect his resolve to debilitate checks on his power coming from any other part of the government.   Trump and his team are engaged in what democracy specialists call executive aggrandizement: an overweening elected leader relentlessly amassing overwhelming amounts of political power, asphyxiating democratic norms and institutions.   In Trump's case, this process combines three main thrusts—asserting total presidential control over all parts of the executive branch, sidelining or cowing the other main branches of government, and constraining societal opposition.   As my colleague McKenzie Carrier and I explore in a recent paper, America's democratic erosion bears significant resemblance to what has occurred in several other backsliding countries, like Hungary and India, and, previously, Brazil and Poland.   The strength of some U.S. institutions, especially the judiciary, civil society, and free press, is providing some checks on Trump's ambitions. But the startling speed and multilayered nature of Trump’s actions—in contrast to the incremental, piece by piece nature of backsliding in most other troubled democracies—is distinctive and deeply troubling.   Democratic erosion in the United States also has deep ramifications for Europe. Three major implications already stand out: relating to Europe’s own position as a supporter of democracy globally, to the trajectory and resilience of democracy within Europe, and to how Europe relates to America’s foreign policy overall.   First, for the foreseeable future, the United States will not be a partner for Europe in supporting democracy internationally. In simple terms, a country that is retreating from democracy at home is not positioned to support it abroad.   And indeed, in its first seven months, the Trump administration has pulled back sharply from the traditional U.S. role as a global democracy supporter—abruptly ending almost all democracy assistance, dismantling significant parts of its diplomatic capacity relating to democracy, and disbanding global broadcasting, which was once a linchpin of U.S. democracy support around the world.   Europe now faces a profound choice in this domain. Faced with the U.S. withdrawal on democracy globally, it can conclude that it too should narrow its understanding of its own foreign policy interests and focus primarily on near-term economic and security concerns, at the cost of turning a blind eye to the widespread democratic backsliding occurring in many places.   Or it can reembrace its longtime view that a more democratic world is a more hospitable world for Europe, recognize that this is a moment of greater need and opportunity for democracy support, and act accordingly.   Second, after decades of supporting liberal democratic forces in Europe and beyond, the U.S. government is now, under Trump, seeking to bolster illiberal right-wing parties or politicians across Europe, including so far, in France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the United Kingdom.   Its intrusions have included accusations of censorship leveled against European governments by the U.S. Vice President JD Vance and other high-level American officials, as well as pressure by Trump against European efforts to moderate social media platforms.   Europe needs to adjust quickly to the fact that the new U.S. interventionism in European domestic politics is a feature, not a bug, of a politically reshaped America. European political actors must move quickly beyond their surprise at such actions and converge soon around a common stance of principled objection, while considering what further steps they can employ both in terms of their own communication strategies and legal and regulatory responses.   Third, several structural characteristics of U.S. democratic erosion have foreign policy implications that will affect Europe. The U.S. political system has been transformed into a hyper-presidential one, with few constraints on the president from within the executive branch or from other branches of government.   This has reduced foreign policy to a direct expression of Trump's most personal ideas and instincts—whether about the value of trade, the utility of certain allies, or the desirability of territorial expansion.   There has been a significant reduction in state institutional capacity, driven by the belief that the “deep state” is intrinsically a constraint on the Trump agenda. The diminishment of diplomatic capacity—the White House National Security staff, for example, has shrunk by 60 percent this year—means that the United States will be less present in many parts of the foreign policy domain than it used to be.   This will be especially true in areas relating to global governance, whether it is global health, migration, sustainable development, global environmental change, or peacekeeping.   And there has been a harsh downgrading of the role of expertise, out of resistance to expert knowledge that cuts against favored ideological tenets.   This downgrading means that policy will be increasingly shaped by ideology conviction, with diminishing regard for factual reality—something already becoming evident in the administration’s punishment of intelligence officials who present empirical assessments that run contrary to the political views of senior Trump officials.   These many different implications of U.S. democratic backsliding for Europe represent a daunting, even foreboding, new reality for a continent already ill at ease about its place in an increasingly conflictive and illiberal world.   Yet within each challenge lie opportunities for Europe to step up in meaningful ways—to reenergize its own sense of global purpose, to fill new gaps and find new partners, and above all, to appreciate anew the value of European unity over division.   http://carnegieendowment.org/europe/strategic-europe/2025/09/a-less-democratic-america-implications-for-europe http://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/08/us-democratic-backsliding-in-comparative-perspective http://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/08/democracy-promotion-trump-putin-europe http://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/08/is-the-prohibition-on-the-use-of-force-collapsing http://www.opb.org/article/2025/10/22/oregon-senator-jeff-merkley-speaks-holding-floor-overnight-decry-authoritarianism/ http://www.c-span.org/program/news-conference/sen-jeff-merkley-talks-to-reporters-after-lengthy-floor-speech/667650   Social protection is our most effective tool for eradicating poverty - Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter.   The rolling back of protections for people living in poverty has created fertile ground for far-right movements across the world, warned the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter, in a new report presented to the United Nations General Assembly today.   “Welfare reform in the name of austerity and efficiency has alienated millions of people living in poverty and played into the hands of a far right looking to exploit discontent,” De Schutter said.   “Government restructuring of welfare systems has led to increasingly harsh conditions linked to receiving benefits and the ramping up of digital surveillance. Programmes once designed to provide basic security to all in times of need now shame and punish the very people they are meant to support.”   The report details how, rather than reducing poverty or cutting public expenditure, modern welfare systems stigmatise claimants, forcing them into unsuitable jobs under the threat of sanctions, subjecting them to algorithms that falsely flag fraud, and even penalising families by removing children when poverty is misclassified as ‘neglect’.   “These punitive welfare systems increase economic insecurity, erode trust in public institutions and leave millions feeling humiliated and abandoned by mainstream politics,” the expert said, citing a study that found that a one-point increase in income inequality corresponded almost exactly to a one-point increase in support for populist parties.   “It is in this void that far-right populists thrive, presenting themselves as champions of those left behind by the ‘elite’,” he said. “But their agenda is not to empower people in poverty – it is to further dismantle protections for their own gain. Once in power, they work to maintain the privileges of the very economic elite they denounce in their speeches, slashing food assistance, healthcare and other life-saving services, and further deepening poverty and exclusion.”   The report highlights deep cuts to social spending in countries ranging from Argentina to the United States, depriving millions of basic healthcare or income support, even as tax cuts shift wealth from the poorest households to the richest.   “These are the politics of exclusion: a deliberate decision to cut off lifelines to the poor while rewarding the richest echelons of society, often in the name of protecting public budgets from ‘outsiders’ or the so-called ‘undeserving poor’,” De Schutter said.   The Special Rapporteur called on governments to shift away from narrowly targeted benefit schemes and towards investing in universal, rights-based social protection to counter the rise of the far right. He urged governments to reframe the welfare state not as a cost to be reduced, but as part of a strategy that has been proven to deliver security and wellbeing for all.   “Social protection is our most effective tool for eradicating poverty. It is not charity, nor is it a favour granted under strict conditions; it is a human right that should be provided to all willingly and with respect,” the expert said.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/a80138-far-right-populism-and-future-social-protection-report-special http://www.srpoverty.org/2025/10/01/far-right-populism-and-the-future-of-social-protection/ http://docs.un.org/en/A/80/138 http://thewire.in/communalism/global-rise-of-right-wing-populism-olivier-de-schutter-un-special-rapporteur   What will it take to beat the far right, asks Adriana Abdenur, Co-President of the Global Fund for a New Economy in Brazil. (IPS/Project Syndicate)   From Germany and the United States to Brazil and beyond, the far right is gaining ground. While the details vary from country to country, the pattern is strikingly consistent: the far right thrives when economies fail to deliver well-being, fairness and security.   This is not a new observation. Antonio Gramsci, Karl Polanyi and other twentieth-century thinkers diagnosed fascism as a reactionary response to capitalist instability and the progressive movements that had emerged to counter its excesses. In The Great Transformation, Polanyi argued that the ‘disembedding’ of markets from social relations created fertile soil in which authoritarianism could take root.   In our own time, the New School for Social Research’s Nancy Fraser has described how neoliberalism erodes social solidarity, fuelling exclusionary populism. And other analysts stress that austerity and precarity leave citizens vulnerable to simple, scapegoat-driven narratives.   Thus, history demonstrates how mass unemployment, inflation and declining living standards can incubate extremism, especially when combined with weak institutions, political polarisation or narratives that exploit grievance and fear. Just as the Great Depression paved the way for fascism in Europe, the 2008 global financial crisis created the conditions for nationalist backlash around the world.   Today, we face a new iteration of the same cycle. Although Germany initially proved resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic, the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit it especially hard. As economists Isabella M. Weber and Tom Krebs have shown, rising energy costs cascaded through the economy, with corporate price-setting amplifying inflationary pressures. As households struggled, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland surged in popularity.   In the US, decades of deindustrialisation, wage stagnation and rising inequality have eroded the idea that each generation will do better than the last. Former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act was an ambitious effort to revive industrial policy and boost green manufacturing, but its legacy proved short-lived. Donald Trump exploited the discontent over post-pandemic price increases and won the 2024 election by weaponising alienation and grievance, scapegoating immigrants, globalisation and ‘urban elites’.   Brazil illustrates another dynamic. Millions rose out of poverty under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party government in the 2000s, but many have seen those gains reversed, while others resent being excluded from social programmes. The digital revolution is making work more precarious. Lula has tried to restore some of the lost gains since returning to office in 2023, but he faces a Congress dominated by the far right and its allies.   Even with Jair Bolsonaro sentenced for attempting a coup, other far-right leaders in Brazil also promise a return to order, stability and religious faith. Their rhetoric emphasises entrepreneurship and self-reliance. While emotionally appealing, the narrative that individuals are responsible for poverty cynically ignores the structural barriers that block socioeconomic mobility.   International shocks – pandemic-era supply-chain breakdowns, volatile energy markets, prolonged conflicts, the inflationary effects of climate change – have also fuelled the rise of far-right forces. Such problems demand cooperation across borders, yet extremists exploit them to attack multilateralism, portraying it as a ‘globalist plot’. Trump’s punitive tariffs embody this response, presenting global trade as a zero-sum struggle in which foreigners are the enemies of American workers.   Such simplistic narratives unite far-right movements more than any common set of policies. Each relies on a basic us-versus-them framing. As the Brazilian sociologist Esther Solano notes, these stories seduce those who feel abandoned, conjuring enemies out of immigrants, minorities, feminists, climate activists and others. In a binary world of winners and losers, the complexity disappears in myths of bygone cultural purity and national greatness.   Countering these narratives requires more than a reasoned rebuttal. If the roots of the far right’s ascendance are in great part economic, defeating it will be impossible without a new economic vision.   That means, for starters, tackling inflation at its source. The recent wave of inflation was less about overheated demand than about supply shocks, profiteering and structural fragilities. Yet the economic orthodoxy still defaulted to interest-rate hikes and austerity, punishing workers and the most vulnerable. Governments must instead use fiscal tools – income support, tax relief on essentials, stronger public services – to shield households, while investing in domestic capacity in renewable energy, food security and sustainable manufacturing. Corporate profiteering must be confronted head-on through antitrust enforcement, stronger transparency rules and penalties against price gouging.   A second priority is to invest massively (and strategically) in public infrastructure. From transportation and housing to health and education, the public realm must be rebuilt. Public ownership or regulation of key sectors would ensure that services are reliable, equitable and climate-resilient. But investment alone is not enough. Institutions must be made more transparent, accountable and participatory, restoring trust that governments are serving the many.   Third, we need a truly just transition to a low-carbon economy. Green industrial policy can generate jobs and revitalise left-behind regions while decarbonising economic activity. But if left too much to the market, the green transition risks deepening inequalities. The energy transition must empower workers, not abandon them. Green jobs must be good jobs — secure, well-paid, unionised and rooted in communities. To that end, industrial policy should focus on clean energy, ecosystem regeneration and care sectors.   Fourth, we must restore trust in institutions. That means delivering tangible improvements in areas like affordable housing, public health care and resilient infrastructure. It also means democratising decision-making. Mechanisms like participatory budgeting, citizens’ assemblies and community-driven climate initiatives can allow people not just to witness change but to shape it.   Finally, countering the far right’s simplistic narratives requires crafting bold new narratives. A message of cultural and political renewal must accompany economic reform. Where the far right offers fear, division and scapegoats, democratic forces must offer solidarity, dignity and hope, based on a narrative that emphasises collective well-being, celebrates diversity and makes progress feel possible and real.   The far right feeds on despair, insecurity and exclusion. Tinkering at the edges of neoliberalism will not deliver the security, dignity and belonging required to starve it. For that, we need a new economic model, grounded in sustainability, justice and solidarity.   http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/economy-and-ecology/what-will-it-take-to-beat-the-far-right-8599/ Visit the related web page
	Governments must facilitate fundamental freedoms prior, during and after the elections by Gina Romero, Irene Khan UN Office for Human Rights (OHCHR)   Global 'Super Election' Cycle intensified civic space restrictions and undermined democratic participation says UN expert.   The rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association were heavily curtailed in many countries around the world during the 2023-2025 “super election” cycle, as part of a deliberate effort to restrict civic space and stifle democratic debate, a UN expert said today.   “These freedoms are essential for transparent, credible, and inclusive elections, representing people’s free will, and for sustaining democracy. Attacks or undue restrictions on them undermine public participation, electoral legitimacy and social peace,” said Gina Romero, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly in her first report to the UN Human Rights Council.   “Given their crucial role during elections, the threshold for imposing legitimate restrictions should have been higher than usual, but in practice it was below the minimum,” the expert said.   She underlined that civil society plays a key role in safeguarding electoral integrity, enabling free and pluralistic public debate, monitoring elections, preventing violence and promoting inclusion.   “Yet, it was stigmatised, suppressed and criminalised, including through repressive legislation. Civil society activists faced harassment, arbitrary detention, torture and killings, with justice systems weaponised to repress opposition,” Romero said.   Election observers, recognised as human rights defenders, also faced legal and physical threats, she said.   According to Romero’s report, opposition parties and candidates faced undue restrictions and political persecution, including burdensome registration, funding restrictions, unlawful disqualification and detention of candidates and dissolutions.   The ‘super election’ cycle saw widespread protests, as people denounced electoral misconduct and sought political participation, but assemblies were heavily curtailed through restrictions, arbitrary arrests, and excessive – sometimes deadly – force, and the misuse of less lethal weapons, the expert said.   Romero also raised concern about the way digital technologies, lacking transparency and oversight, such as of biometric voter registration, facial recognition and spyware, were used to suppress, persecute and repress activists and political opponents, creating chilling impacts on participation.   “These repressive acts created fear, severely limiting public freedoms and political pluralism, and undermined democratic processes and the right to vote,” the Special Rapporteur said.   Newly-elected governments further restricted civic activism through funding restrictions and repression, stigmatisation and criminalisation.   “Governments must facilitate fundamental freedoms prior, during and after the elections, and foster inclusive political participation, and tolerate criticism,” Romero urged.   “Governments must also guarantee pluralism; uphold the human rights of civil society actors, election observers and the opposition; repeal repressive laws like ‘foreign agent’ legislation; and ensure accountability and reparations for any violations.”   June 2025   Reverse the decline of freedom of expression to protect free and fair elections: UN expert   The global decline in freedom of expression is endangering free and fair elections and must be reversed for the sake of democracy as well as human rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Irene Khan, said today, presenting her latest report to the Human Rights Council.   “Polarised politics in backsliding democracies, social media platforms awash with disinformation and hate speech and a media sector too weak to debunk the lies have imperilled both freedom of expression and the right to vote,” Khan said.   “While lies are not new during elections, digital technology and social media platforms have changed the game, enabling and amplifying the degradation of the electoral information environment as never before,” the expert said.   “Vilifying minorities and marginalised groups, smearing women politicians, discrediting independent journalists, targeting electoral officials, delegitimising electoral outcomes were worrying trends in many recent elections,” she said.   The Special Rapporteur said public officials and politicians bear a significant responsibility for the degradation of the information environment, as they weaponise their own freedom of expression to incite hate and violence while denouncing the prohibition of incitement as censorship.   “The advocacy of hatred to incite violence, rampant on some campaign trails and platforms, is prohibited under international law even when it masquerades as political speech,” Khan said.   The report notes that while some States have adopted good practices based on freedom of expression, others have spread disinformation, denied access to information, attacked independent media and fact-checkers and criminalised political expression under the guise of fighting disinformation.   “Undermining freedom of expression in the name of fighting disinformation is short-sighted and counter-productive.” Khan said.   “At a time of rising hate and lies I am alarmed that large social media platforms and search engines are rolling back electoral integrity, safety, transparency and risk management for political and ideological reasons as well as economic and technological ones,” she said.   “Platforms and search engines, as major vectors of the right to information, must prioritise human safety and human rights over political and commercial interests,” the expert said.   “Democracies need a healthy media sector, and governments must also urgently address the decline of media freedom, independence, diversity, and pluralism,” Khan said. “Multi-stakeholder strategies grounded in human rights are the most effective antidote for a degraded information environment.”   “Public trust in the integrity of elections is at an all-time low. States, companies and civil society must work together to close the trust deficit urgently,” she said.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/06/global-super-election-cycle-intensified-civic-space-restrictions-and http://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc5944-impact-2023-2025-super-election-cycle-rights-freedom-peaceful http://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/torture/sr/activities/stm-international-day-torture-2025.pdf http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/06/reverse-decline-freedom-expression-protect-free-and-fair-elections-un-expert http://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1m/k1ml8kkqun
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