Practice

About

The Democracy Garage is a problem-solving hub that generates insights to strengthen the effectiveness of pro-democracy movements. By bridging the gap between democratic theory and practice, it serves as both an innovation incubator and an accelerator for democracy entrepreneurs. In this space, practitioners and experts collaborate to co-design impactful responses to the challenges of autocracy and democratic erosion.

The HP garage in Palo Alto, where William Hewlett and David Packard started the Hewlett-Packard company. — *HP Garage, Palo Alto.*
*Calrosl via Wikimedia Commons*

Why the Democracy "Garage?"

The work of the Democracy Garage draws inspiration from the history of innovation, both at Stanford and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. We live in the shadow of legendary garages. From the HP (Hewlett-Packard) Garage in Palo Alto, often called the “birthplace of Silicon Valley,” to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak tinkering in a suburban garage before launching Apple, the garage has become a powerful symbol of creativity and revolutionary innovation.

A garage is functional. It is a place to build prototypes, test concepts, fail rapidly, and then quickly iterate solutions that lead to improved outcomes. In Silicon Valley, a garage is a space where bold ideas are born, refined, and the world is reimagined. The experimental, collaborative, and solutions-oriented mindset is what the Democracy Garage brings to the fight for democracy and improved human development.

Like the Silicon Valley garages of the past, the Democracy Garage is a workshop for the future, where ideas become tools, and tools become strategies in the battle for democracy.

The Problem

Around the world, “authoritarian entrepreneurs” are drawing on a shared implicit playbook to dismantle democracy from within. These patterns suggest that autocratic tools are transferable across contexts. Effective countermeasures can be, too.

Our Role

The Democracy Action Lab exists to decode the shared patterns of democratic backsliding. The Democracy Garage then translates those insights into stage-specific tools to equip front-line advocates and defenders of democracy with better and more effective strategies.

The Autocrat’s Playbook

In the 21st century, democratic systems are not brought down by military coups, socialist revolutions, or guerrilla groups, as they were in the past. Instead, it is more common for autocrats to come to power initially through the ballot box. Once in power, however, they follow a strikingly similar blueprint to dismantle democracy from within. The autocratic playbook¹ includes:

Capturing the executive branch.
Demonizing and delegitimizing political adversaries.
Undermining the independence of courts and prosecutors.
Subverting other horizontal accountability bodies and agencies (legislatures, anticorruption agencies, ombudsmen, etc).
Developing a base of supporters by cultivating loyal constituencies that can be activated for pro-regime mobilization (projecting legitimacy, intimidating opponents, rewarding clientelist networks, and signaling strength to elites).
Controlling the information ecosystem: attacking media independence, politicizing public communication media, and restricting internet freedom.
Consolidating a propaganda machine that divides the population into “patriots” and “traitors" (exploiting narratives that include internal and external enemies, amplifying polarization and divisions, and spreading misinformation).
Undermining the independence of opposition voices in the media, civil society organizations like universities, electoral commissions, and other non-governmental organizations.
Intimidating the business community by threatening property inspection, tax increases, or using “the law” as an instrument of control..
Enriching a class of loyal and clientelist capitalists.
Extending political control over previously non-partisan state bureaucracies and consolidating the loyalty of the security apparatus.
Manipulating electoral rules (districts, voter registration, etc.).

_{¹Adapted from Larry Diamond's "The Autocrats’ 12-step Program." Diamond, L. (2019).}_{Ill winds: Saving democracy from Russian rage, Chinese ambition, and American complacency}_{. Penguin Press. (pp. 62-66)}

What the Democracy Garage Does

Map Backsliding Pathways: We identify the typical trajectories of democratic backsliding and the common challenges and dilemmas that movements face at each stage.
Provide a Repository of Insights: We build an evidence-based repository of knowledge that can be assembled in different ways and tailored to the specific needs of different countries. That repository includes scientific insights critical to the strategic dilemmas of pro-democracy movements, with a collection of successful interventions and tools to overcome the challenges they faced at each stage of backsliding.
Put Research into Practice and Practice into Research: We share insights from cutting-edge social science research and translate them into policy practice. At the same time, we facilitate the creation of action plans for practitioners, and we aim to learn from them what succeeds, what fails, and why.
Build Lasting Capabilities: We serve as a knowledge and information hub to support practitioners in acquiring the skills and capacities needed to be more effective in building or rebuilding quality democratic governance. In parallel, we create a feedback loop that helps expand the repository of knowledge within the Democracy Action Lab.