The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a Stockholm-based intergovernmental organization, released its annual Global State of Democracy report showing significant declines across multiple democratic measures. The report, which tracks democratic performance across 174 countries since 1975, found that judicial independence, credible elections, freedom of expression, press freedom, and access to justice have all fallen to their lowest levels in at least three decades globally.
The organization identified a particularly sharp decline in the United States, attributing the deterioration to policies and actions by the Trump administration. In its report, International Idea stated that the president rapidly consolidated executive power and wielded it to advance “a narrow set of personal goals and pursue retaliation against perceived enemies,” resulting in damage to the rule of law both domestically and internationally. The US was added to International Idea’s list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time in 2021, with the organization noting a “visible deterioration” beginning in 2019.
The report emphasized that 2025 marked the 11th consecutive year in which more countries experienced democratic decline than improvement, the longest sustained downturn in the organization’s records. Kevin Casas-Zamora, the organization’s secretary general, warned that democratic erosion correlates with increased conflict risk and stated that investing in democracy should form a core component of national security strategies. He also noted that developments in the US influenced democratic trends in other countries, pointing to what he described as a global spread of election denialism.
The report documented some positive developments, including youth-led protests in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka that resulted in leadership changes, as well as civil society engagement initiatives in Australia and the overthrow of Syria’s previous regime. However, International Idea noted that creating lasting democratic reforms has proven challenging in these contexts. Globally, rule of law emerged as the weakest area of democratic performance, with 71 countries assessed as low-performing and 29 countries registering recent downturns in this category.
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