What can those of us concerned about the state of democracy in the United States learn from the rest of the world?

What are warning signs that democracy is declining? 

How have others successfully dealt with challenges related to corruption, election integrity, polarization, civil rights, and more? 

And most importantly, how can we respond? 

Defending Democracy: Lessons from Around the World is a unique program to help address current challenges to U.S. democracy by learning from other countries’ experiences with democratic challenges and successes.

From 2017-2019 we convened 9 Democracy Dialogues and produced 12 case studies on specific democracy challenges in other countries that are relevant to American democracy reform today.

Throughout 2020, we advised US domestic reformers, convened discussions and shared resources leading up to and beyond the US 2020 Election.

Please contact us if you are interested in working together for the next phase of the critical, ongoing work.

——————————————————————————————————————————————American democracy is facing unprecedented challenges. To help address them, we can learn from abroad. 

On one hand, current challenges to American democracy are not at all unique. Many other countries have faced similar struggles that we stand to learn from. We may have a long and important history of trying to help promote democracy abroad, but now is the time to shed the limiting exceptionalist way of thinking about American democracy at home as having no comparisons. 

On the other hand, the effects of these challenges to American democracy are uniquely felt and often reverberate worldwide, given our role as the leader on the world stage. This means that the decline of American democracy inevitably has disproportionate consequences outside our borders. 

Therefore, we should be even more vigilant to preserve and protect American democratic norms and institutions, and we believe international examples can precisely help us do just that. 

How? 

We think other countries can help illustrate to us both the warning signs of democratic decay and its consequences across society, and can inspire us with new ideas for creative solutions to help stop this negative trend of democratic decline.

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The Open Gov Hub, Global Integrity, and the Sunlight Foundation launched a partnership in 2017 to do this work, then collaborated with Transparency International for the Democracy Dialogues. Together, our civil society organizations have decades of experience working on democracy reform abroad and at home. This work was supported by a collaborative seed grant from the Omidyar Network from 2017-19. Now, it continues through the ongoing programming of Open Gov Hub, which is an initiative of Global Integrity.

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We launched this program in 2017, with the goal of helping support American democracy advocates and journalists by providing clear insights into other countries’ experiences in defending democracies in distress, with 2 activities: 

• a series of nine (9) “Democracy Dialogues” convenings that tackled wide-ranging, high-level themes from populism and corruption to money in politics to investigations of criminal wrongdoing by a head of state, and more. These events featured dozens of speakers from the US and around the world to grapple with key challenges. 

• A collection of twelve (12) case studies, each examining one specific country’s experience, which offers both warning signs for Americans of democratic decline, and ideas of promising solutions and responses. 

  In both activities, we focused on four (4) critical themes that many agree are relevant to American democracy challenges today: corruption, election integrity, civil rights and liberties, and press freedom.

You will also see all 12 global case studies (each under 1000 words) on this site tagged either as a “warning sign” or “solution” case.

Together, the events and case studies offer a synthesis of diverse and global perspectives with thought-provoking findings. (Although we sought cases that were diverse geographically, the case study collection as a whole is not intended to be representative. In fact the cases are meant to also encourage others to seek out new and contrasting global comparisons that may build on or challenge the lessons described here.) 

Throughout 2020, we build upon this work by creating new resources, advising American democracy reform groups, and convening a new series of events leading up to and beyond the 2020 Election.

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We hope this project adds to the growing chorus of voices that want to go beyond exceptionalist thinking and fix the hard and troubling flaws deep in American democracy - even if that means looking to others and asking for help. 

We hope you learn as much as we did from this exploration in defending democracy at home and abroad. Please contact us if you are interested in exploring what the next phase of work - in 2021 and beyond - might look like. 

Acknowledgements: We thank everyone who contributed to this initiative from 2017-19, including Omidyar Network for providing seed funding, and all participants in Democracy Dialogue events, interviewees, and advisors.

The Defending Democracy Program Lead is Nada Zohdy, Director of the Open Gov Hub. Lead author of the case studies is Ben Raderstorf.