“Whatever happens in the U.S. has global ramifications,” says IDEA’s Kevin Casas-Zamora.
Democratic backsliding in Washington is damaging the international rules and alliances that underpin Europe’s security, while increasing the risk of conflict worldwide, per a new report out Tuesday.
The weakening of checks and norms in the United States is putting pressure on the alliances and international rules the rest of the world relies on, while also giving governments cues to attack institutions at home, according to a new report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
“Whatever happens in the U.S. has global ramifications, and I think this is one of the really big stories happening in the world today,” IDEA Secretary-General Kevin Casas-Zamora said in an interview.
Comparing 2025 with 2020, IDEA recorded seven statistically significant declines in U.S. democratic performance, including judicial independence, access to justice, the effectiveness of parliament, press freedom and freedom of expression. Nearly half of the 30 indicators it uses to measure American democracy have fallen to their lowest levels since 1975.
The erosion is unfolding against a deeply polarized backdrop. A July Lowy Institute analysis described U.S. politics as increasingly tribal, with rival camps that see each other as threatening and excuse anti-democratic behavior when it suits them.
The report says U.S. President Donald Trump quickly amassed power in the executive branch in 2025 and that the consequences were “far-reaching, undermining the rule of law domestically and internationally and testing long-standing alliances and multilateral cooperation.”
That assessment also has a concrete policy backdrop. A February 2025 executive order directed officials carrying out U.S. foreign policy to act under the president’s authority and warned that failure to implement his policy could lead to professional discipline.
Casas-Zamora elaborated that the spillover was evident in the way governments justify attacks on democratic institutions and civil society. “What we are seeing is that all the countries take cues from what has happened in the U.S. in the recent past. We see it in very concrete cases,” he said.
“Many of the arguments used in the U.S. when USAID was shut down were later used in Serbia, for example, to clamp down on civil society organizations that were deemed undesirable by the government,” he said.
Global security consequences
The U.S. decline forms part of a broader democratic recession.
In 2025, 98 of 173 countries — 57 percent — declined in at least one democratic factor over five years according to the report, while only 55 improved. It was the 11th consecutive year in which more countries saw their democratic performance deteriorate than advance. The U.S. is not an isolated case, but its size and influence make its decline especially consequential.
IDEA’s central warning is that democratic erosion is also a security problem. The world recorded 65 violent conflicts in 2025, the highest number since 1946, including a record eight conflicts between countries. The report says hybrid political systems, where democratic procedures exist but political competition and enforceable rights are weak, have been involved in conflict more often than either fully authoritarian systems or well-functioning democracies. “It is the low-performing democracies that are in this really tricky spot where conditions for conflict are more likely,” Casas-Zamora said.
Casas-Zamora pointed to Russia as a tangible example. “I have to think that a fully democratic Russia, with checks and balances, with freedom of the press, with civil society organizations able to organize themselves and hold public officials to account, would not have invaded Ukraine. It’s plain as that,” he added.
Europe still leads the democratic rankings, but it recorded 77 declines against 42 advances between 2020 and 2025. Civil liberties, access to justice and credible elections were among the areas under greatest pressure.
Germany offered a fresh illustration of that strain earlier this month, when the far-right Alternative for Germany won 43.8 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, more than doubling its 2021 result. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU fell to 17.2 percent, its worst-ever result in the eastern state, leaving mainstream parties scrambling to explain the AfD’s rise and keep it from power.
Casas-Zamora said the appeal of populist-authoritarian parties cannot be reduced to hostility toward democracy. “Whether you like or dislike populist authoritarian parties and leaders and discourses, they’re a symptom of something. They are a symptom that a hell of a lot of people are not feeling represented.” Voters may care more about safe borders, safer neighborhoods and fairness than procedural arguments about democratic institutions.
The answer, he said, is to treat democratic resilience as a security issue: “The protection of democracy needs to be at the heart of security agendas and not as a footnote.”