Authoritarianism Goes Global

gettyimages 107626494 TV screens display Russia President Vladimir Putin.

In a recent piece in The American Interest, FSI Senior Fellow Larry Diamond, alongside Christopher Walker and Marc Plattner of the National Endowment for Democracy, describe how undemocratic states are cooperating and wielding sophisticated soft power arsenals to expand their areas of influence and reshape international values and norms. While the U.S. and E.U. have scaled back their support for democracy abroad, the authors argue that democracies must better leverage new technologies in media to translate and distribute democratic knowledge; improve the functioning of their own democratic institutions; and band together to stop autocratic efforts at restricting internet freedom.