The U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.
A new report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance finds U.S. democracy at 50-year low.
Allison Robbert/AP
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Allison Robbert/AP
U.S. democracy has reached its lowest levels in 50 years, according to a new global report that tracks democratic performance around the world.
For several years, Dr. Seema Shah, who heads the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s democracy assessment team, said their researchers have observed a global pattern of democratic decline: “Severe drops in scores that measure freedom of expression, freedom of the press, credible elections, effective parliament,” she said.
Shah says that in the 50 years of compiling this survey, she’s seen undemocratic trends like this correcting themselves.
But not this time.
“It’s getting worse and worse,” Shah says. “So that’s really worrying, especially because we also see that people are more willing in some cases to consider non-democratic leadership or non-democratic governance.”
The organization’s annual Global State of Democracy report, which tracks democratic performance across 174 countries and draws on data going back to 1975, was released Tuesday. The latest report focuses on changes in democratic performance between 2020 and 2025.
And Shah says one country stood out for how far its democracy has declined. “The clearest example, unfortunately, is the United States,” she says.
The report says that in 2025, “President Donald Trump quickly amassed power in the executive branch and wielded it to further a narrow set of personal goals and pursue retaliation against perceived enemies. … The results have been far-reaching, undermining the rule of law domestically and internationally and testing long-standing alliances and multilateral cooperation.”
Shah says the U.S. has historically served as a bastion of democratic governance, with strong performance in the rule of law and judicial independence and a prominent role in promoting democracy around the world. “But that’s no longer the case,” says Shah.
“Inside the U.S. and outside the U.S., we’re seeing in the U.S. administration policies harming domestic democracy…but also really weakening global norms and actually providing fodder for other non-democratic leaders.”
Democracy, she notes, is no longer the central focus of U.S. foreign policy.
Democratic values are also no longer the basis for new alliances globally, Shah says, noting that the democratic aid the U.S. used to provide to developing countries has been dismantled.
President Trump has hinted at this himself. At a summit last year in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he criticized previous U.S. administrations as “interventionist” and said the U.S. would no longer give other countries “lectures on how to live.”
Domestically, Shah says, the U.S. has seen declines in nearly half of the 30 indicators the organization measures. She says they’ve hit their lowest levels in 50 years of gathering data on democracies.
And it’s not just the U.S. seeing these declines.
The organization’s survey shows that 57% of countries surveyed showed declines in at least one key indicator of democratic performance, with the rule of law serving as the weakest-performing area of democracy globally.
But what about countries that have seen a resurgence of democracy — places like Poland, Hungary and Syria in recent years?
“What the research shows is that, depressingly, in 90% of cases, a democracy that has suffered decline and then comes back and what’s called a U-turn in 90% of the cases, they suffer another democratic decline within five years.”
Shah says candidates promising change typically find that when voters give them power, they often are not able to deliver on those promises because remnants of the old guard often prevent those changes.
“And unless,” she says, “you’re willing to break your own democratic laws to get them out, what can you do?”
This story originally appeared on NPR
