On Sunday, October 4, 125 million Brazilians went to the polls to say what future they envision for their country. Their votes renewed state legislatures, the Chamber of Deputies, and two-thirds of the Federal Senate; elected governors in several states; and sent the presidential race to a runoff. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, finished first, with 47% of the valid votes to President Lula's 45%, a result that defied polls showing the incumbent ahead. Another 33 million voters stayed home, the highest abstention rate since 1998.

The picture that emerges is one of deep dissatisfaction with the current state of democracy, and of a country turning to the far right. Given the new makeup of Congress — in which the far right and its closest allies will occupy over half of the seats in both chambers — the profound crisis surrounding the Supreme Federal Court, and the risk of an anti-democratic government rising to power, Brazil has never been so close to shattering the democratic pact enshrined in its 1988 Constitution.

To international observers, Brazilian voters' sense that their democracy is not doing well may seem counterintuitive. After all, over the past four years, many have pointed to Brazil as an example of democratic resilience — a reputation largely tied to holding accountable those who attempted a coup in January 2023 and to the country's return to its diplomatic tradition. But Brazilian democracy goes far beyond what happened in 2023, and we need to take a step back to grasp the size of the challenge ahead.

The Citizen Constitution

The 1988 Constitution established a legal framework characterized by broad guarantees of universal rights and an unprecedented opening for civil society participation in shaping the country's institutions. During the constituent process, around 10,000 people circulated through the National Congress each day, about 9 million visited Congress over the course of the proceedings, and 122 popular amendments were submitted, gathering more than 12 million signatures. But the Constitution did more than expand rights and channels for participation: it also laid the foundations for a balance among the three branches of government — the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary — by distributing powers, establishing mechanisms of mutual oversight, and seeking to prevent the concentration of power.

The arrangement that emerged from this design became known as “coalition presidentialism,” a term coined by political scientist Sérgio Abranches. Under this model, the federal Executive plays a strong role in controlling the budget but depends on a multiparty coalition to carry out its agenda for the country. Since it is virtually impossible for a single party to win a majority on its own in either chamber, coalitions are needed to build majorities in Congress capable of passing the elected government's agenda. The Judiciary, for its part, historically acted to resolve constitutional questions that the other two branches had left unsettled.

The Scales Begin to Tip: Electoral Challenges and the Rise of Congress

This balance began to crack in earnest in 2014. For the first time since Brazil's return to democracy, the losing presidential candidate cast doubt on the integrity of the electoral system, which until then had been a source of national pride. This serious precedent left its mark on our democracy and paved the way for anti-democratic narratives that have since grown ever more sophisticated.

Shortly afterward, the historic rupture between then-Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Eduardo Cunha and President Dilma Rousseff led to the opening of impeachment proceedings over alleged “crimes of responsibility,” Brazil's equivalent of impeachable offenses, tied to fiscal practices that, on closer inspection, had precedents in previous administrations without ever having triggered a process of this kind. In this sense, Rousseff's impeachment differs from the one faced by former President Fernando Collor de Mello in 1992, which uncovered a corruption scheme that paid for the president's personal expenses.

In other words, the practice itself was not the reason for the process; it was the political discontent of part of the governing coalition that decided, for the first time, to punish a fiscal practice until then widely accepted across the political class. The revolt of part of Rousseff's base in Congress did not merely remove her from office: it opened an era of open confrontation between the Legislature and the Executive, with the acquiescence, at the time, of the Judiciary, in what came to be described as a “grand national agreement.”

That period left another important legacy of imbalance between the branches. In 2015, Congress passed a constitutional amendment requiring the Executive to fund individual budget amendments. Budget amendments are instruments that allow deputies and senators to change the annual budget law, directing public funds to public works, projects, and improvements in the states and municipalities they represent, much like what Americans know as earmarks. They are classified by who proposes them. Individual amendments come from each legislator. State delegation amendments come from the lawmakers of each state acting together. Committee amendments come from the standing committees of Congress. Rapporteur amendments come from the general rapporteur, the legislator in charge of the budget bill. The 2015 requirement, known as the “mandatory budget,” applied only to individual amendments, capped at 1.2% of the federal government's net current revenue.

With Jair Bolsonaro's rise to power, this imbalance took on a new dimension. In 2019, two new constitutional amendments deepened the trend. The first made funding for amendments from state congressional delegations mandatory as well. The second split individual amendments in two. Amendments with a defined purpose remained tied to a specific project, such as a health clinic or a paved road. The new “special transfers,” nicknamed “Pix amendments” after Brazil's instant payment system, allow money to flow from Congress directly to states and municipalities without clear transparency mechanisms.

Rapporteur amendments changed even more. Until then, the general rapporteur had used them mostly for technical adjustments to the bill, often to restore funding for the Executive's own programs. In 2020, they received their own budget code, RP9, and became the core of the so-called “secret budget”: billions of reais distributed at the request of lawmakers whose names were not disclosed. After the Supreme Court struck down the practice in December 2022, Congress raised the cap on individual amendments to 2% of net current revenue. It also turned to committee amendments, which, until then, had carried little weight, as the new channel for these funds.
 

Image

^{Budget amendments committed by type, 2014—2026. Source: Central das Emendas, adapted. Painel de Dados accessed on October 7, 2026; it draws on Portal da Transparência (CGU) amendment and expenditure-document data.}

The Executive's consent, then under Bolsonaro's leadership, to this surrender of control over the federal budget gave Congress a power never foreseen in the balance designed in 1988 and transformed the country's political dynamics. Congressional blocs lost interest in joining the governing coalition and began to prioritize influence within Congress itself, where they could access large sums of money without transparency or Executive mediation.

Greater control over the budget, however, does not fully account for the Legislature's growing power: a recent report by the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation shows that Congress has been gaining ground on the Executive for two decades, helped by a 2001 reform that limited the president's power to rule by decree, stronger in-house technical staff, and informal practices that concentrated power in the Speaker's hands.

Together, these developments entrenched a new balance of forces among the branches of government. By the time Lula da Silva returned to power in 2023, the Executive was far more dependent on the Legislature to manage the federal budget and advance its agenda.

The Judiciary: From Bulwark of Democracy to Target of Distrust

During Jair Bolsonaro's administration, the Judiciary played a central role in containing setbacks, as the Executive and Legislative branches advanced agendas flagrantly at odds with the 1988 Constitution. This expanded role is consistent with the concept of militant democracy coined by Karl Loewenstein in 1937, in which an institutional mechanism of the State is activated to defend the democratic order against actors who use their democratic freedoms to destroy the system itself.

This activation, however, took place without the involvement of the Office of the Prosecutor General of the Republic (Procuradoria-Geral da República, PGR), the body legally empowered to bring criminal proceedings against authorities entitled to special jurisdiction (foro privilegiado), including the President of the Republic. For most of Bolsonaro's term, the Prosecutor General was Augusto Aras, a prosecutor hand-picked by the President whose tenure was marked by inaction in the face of measures taken by the Federal Government and the Legislature. It fell to civil society and other key sectors of the country to use strategic litigation to activate this cordon sanitaire, spearheaded by the Federal Supreme Court (STF). As a result, the serious erosion of economic, social, cultural, environmental, and political rights slowed during that period.

In response to the Judiciary's more forceful actions, the Bolsonaro government and its base launched serious attacks against the Supreme Court and its justices, opening a new phase in which one political camp openly questions the integrity of the Judiciary and has even gone as far as persecuting specific justices. In 2021 alone, Bolsonaro called Justice Luís Roberto Barroso, then head of the Superior Electoral Court, "an imbecile" for opposing printed ballots, and asked the Senate to impeach Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

Tensions between the former president's political camp and the Judiciary reached new heights in the 2022 elections and the subsequent coup attempt, which culminated in the storming of the buildings that house the three branches of government, a Brazilian echo of January 6. The decisive actions of the Superior Electoral Court and the Supreme Federal Court were central to preventing a breakdown of the institutional order, ensuring both the security of an election directly affected by the sitting government and the legal accountability of those involved in the coup attempt.

What had been the main barrier against the crises up to that point came to face public distrust and became the target of a new weapon of the far right: the threat of impeachment of Supreme Court justices by the Senate, which holds this constitutional prerogative, provided that a conviction is approved by two-thirds of its members.

If the far right's accusations against the Supreme Court found no basis in fact when it came to defending the elections and holding accountable those who committed crimes against democracy, a massive corruption scandal would complicate that picture. In 2025, Brazilians learned of the case of Banco Master, a financial institution used to sell unbacked bank securities and associated with the diversion of billions in public funds from various sources, as well as with suspicious ties to people across all branches of government, including Supreme Court justices. One of the names mentioned in the investigation is that of Alexandre de Moraes, the very justice who presided over the Superior Electoral Court in the 2022 elections and led the cases on crimes against the rule of law after the coup attempt. Although he is commonly associated with President Lula, Moraes was appointed years earlier by then-President Michel Temer. Reporting on the investigation has also named five other justices or their relatives: Dias Toffoli, who stepped down as rapporteur of the Banco Master case in February; André Mendonça; Gilmar Mendes; Kassio Nunes Marques; and Luiz Fux. All deny wrongdoing.

This leaves Brazilians with a dilemma: how could the Judiciary's correct actions to protect democracy in 2022 and 2023 have been carried out by the same Court whose members now face scrutiny over alleged ties with private actors responsible for diverting billions of reais from taxpayers?

2026: The Perfect Storm and the Voters' Response

Brazil entered 2026 amid a perfect storm: a Legislature with sweeping powers over the federal budget, a weakened Executive, a Judiciary exposed in its contradictions, and a population exhausted by a war of narratives fueled by disinformation and the intensive use of technology to amplify it. This scenario is further exacerbated by the immense power concentrated in Big Tech companies, whose practices remain marked by a lack of transparency regarding content moderation criteria and the algorithmic choices that shape public debate. Amid this environment of fragmentation, echo chambers, distrust, and constant conflict, there is increasingly little room to discuss visions for the country's future, build minimum consensus, or collectively imagine ways out of the crisis.

A concrete example of the breakdown in the balance between the branches was the Senate's rejection of the President's nominee to the Supreme Federal Court in April of this year, something that had not happened since 1894. Brazil is showing clear signs that the 1988 pact is unraveling, and the winners of the 2026 elections will determine what comes next.

With the October 4 results, voters consolidated the far right as the largest force in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Threats to impeach Supreme Court justices are becoming more concrete, and the next president will have the power to appoint four justices to the Court: the seat left by Luís Roberto Barroso's retirement, still unfilled, and three more that will open as justices reach the mandatory retirement age of 75.

At a time when Supreme Court justices have increasingly been chosen for their political affinity with the president, a potential Flávio Bolsonaro administration, combined with a large extremist base in the Senate, could consolidate a solid conservative majority on the country's highest court.

October 25 and the Day After

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro will face each other in the runoff on October 25. If the far-right candidate prevails, the balance between the branches designed in 1988 is unlikely to survive, as threats to change the constitutional text begin to take public form. If Lula's democratic project wins, the fractures in our democracy will still run so deep that there is no guarantee this order will endure either.

The choice on the 25th is not a difficult one. The hard part begins on the 26th: finding a path that keeps one of the world's most pioneering democratic experiments from collapsing.

This path begins by taking seriously the discontent that the first round laid bare. Some of Brazilians' distrust of their institutions has been deliberately manufactured, as demonstrated by a decade-long campaign of attacks on the electoral system. But some of it is also rooted in the country's concrete realities. We are a profoundly unequal society, shaped by social relations forged through nearly four centuries of slavery and, consequently, by persistent structures of authoritarianism, violence, and concentrations of power rooted in class, race, gender, and hetero-cisnormativity. Added to this are institutions that still lack transparency, a Congress that has come to control a growing share of the federal budget through mechanisms frequently questioned for their opacity, and successive corruption cases involving different branches and levels of the state — institutional weaknesses that recent scandals, such as the Banco Master case, have once again brought to the center of public debate.

The far right did not create this frustration, but it skillfully tapped into the resentments that underpin our social relations and our relationship with institutions, learning how to channel them and turn them into political force. And the 33 million Brazilians who did not go to the polls on October 4, along with the nearly 6 million blank and invalid ballots — a figure that is higher than the population of many US states — remind us that disillusionment can also take the form of silence or a protest vote.

Our institutions are not immune to criticism, and defending democracy cannot mean defending them as they are, with all their shortcomings, failures, and contradictions. No government, and no one who leads it, can find that path alone. Rebuilding the balance struck in 1988 will depend on institutions capable of earning back the trust they have lost, and on a society willing to continue contesting how these institutions and public policies are shaped, as well as defending the rules of the game, even when they do not favor its side.

Natália Neris is the Advocacy Manager at Pacto pela Democracia, and holds a PhD in Human Rights from the University of São Paulo. Sami Sternberg is the International Affairs Coordinator at Pacto pela Democracia, and holds a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University.

El Democracy Action Lab (DAL), una iniciativa del Centro sobre Democracia, Desarrollo y Estado de Derecho de la Universidad de Stanford para defensores de la democracia, se enorgullece en anunciar oficialmente la primera cohorte de The Democracy Garage, el primer programa acelerador de su tipo dedicado a fortalecer a los defensores de la democracia en primera línea en América Latina y el Caribe.

The Democracy Garage nació de una convicción simple pero urgente: la resiliencia democrática no se construye únicamente a través de ideas, sino a través del fortalecimiento de capacidades de la sociedad civil para actuar estratégicamente, usar la evidencia con eficacia, comunicar de manera persuasiva y adaptarse a entornos políticos en rápida evolución. DAL construyó este programa para cerrar una brecha persistente en el apoyo a la democracia, tendiendo un puente entre la investigación de alto nivel y las necesidades operativas en tiempo real de las organizaciones que hacen el trabajo más difícil sobre el terreno.

Durante los próximos meses, DAL trabajará codo a codo con ocho extraordinarias organizaciones en la región, aplicando una metodología estructurada de acelerador para co-desarrollar estrategias adaptadas a los desafíos democráticos específicos de cada país. Este no es un programa de crecimiento tradicional: es una asociación profunda y colaborativa basada en la evidencia, la estrategia y la solidaridad.

Un Modelo Acelerador de Tres Ejes

El modelo acelerador de The Democracy Garage se organiza en torno a tres ejes que se refuerzan mutuamente, diseñados para abordar una brecha clave en el ecosistema de apoyo democrático: muchos programas ofrecen formación de alto nivel desconectada de las necesidades inmediatas, o asistencia técnica a corto plazo que no genera capacidad duradera. The Garage tiende ese puente.

Eje 1  |  Análisis de Evidencia para la Estrategia Democrática  —  Asesoría Práctica

El primer eje proporciona apoyo de asesoría directa, orientada a los problemas. Cada organización  entra al Garage con un desafío concreto y actual. DAL moviliza su capacidad analítica — incluyendo la experiencia de su cuerpo docente, la participación de estudiantes y herramientas de datos — para abordarlo de forma colaborativa. No se trata de asistencia técnica unidireccional: es un proceso conjunto que desarrolla la propia capacidad de las organizaciones para usar la evidencia como herramienta estratégica, transitando de modos reactivos a anticipatorios.

Eje 2  |  Formación y Fortalecimiento de Capacidades  —  Cuatro Áreas Fundamentales

El segundo eje ofrece formación estructurada en cuatro áreas críticas para la acción democrática: (1) Estrategia para la defensa democrática — comprender el estado de la democracia en la región y sus principales desafíos; (2) IA para el activismo — aplicaciones prácticas de la inteligencia artificial para monitoreo, comunicación y toma de decisiones; (3) Evidencia para la defensa democrática — recolección, análisis e interpretación de datos vinculados directamente a las decisiones estratégicas; y (4) Narrativa para el cambio — traducir el análisis complejo en narrativas persuasivas que resuenen con tomadores de decisiones, medios de comunicación y ciudadanos.

Eje 3  |  Construcción de Plataformas para la Defensa Democrática  —  Escalar el Impacto Sistémico

El tercer eje apoya a las organizaciones  para que se conviertan en nodos fundacionales de plataformas nacionales de defensa democrática. El deterioro democrático rara vez se produce de forma aislada: requiere respuestas coordinadas entre la sociedad civil, los medios, la academia y las instituciones. A través del mapeo de actores, la articulación de redes y el desarrollo de mecanismos de coordinación, el Garage contribuye a construir ecosistemas estructurados capaces de acción colectiva. Este eje culmina en el Encuentro Regional de Sinergias en agosto de 2026, donde las organizaciones presentarán su visión de plataforma y sentarán las bases para la coordinación regional.

Image

^{Metodología de aceleración de DAL (haga clic para ampliar)}

Ocho Organizaciones. Tres Países. Una Región.

Tras un riguroso proceso de selección, The Democracy Garage se enorgullece en dar la bienvenida a las siguientes organizaciones participantes:

CESJUL — Centro de Estudios Socio Jurídicos Latinoamericanos (Colombia)  

Trabaja en la intersección del derecho penal, los derechos humanos y la gobernanza democrática, aportando análisis jurídico riguroso a los desafíos más urgentes de la democracia colombiana — incluyendo el uso del derecho tanto como herramienta de represión como vehículo de rendición de cuentas.

Dejusticia (Colombia)

Una de las organizaciones de derechos humanos más respetadas de América Latina — un auténtico think-and-do tank que combina investigación jurídica rigurosa con litigio estratégico, incidencia directa y formación de capacidades en antidiscriminación, justicia transicional y protección del espacio cívico.

Instituto Sou da Paz (Brazil)

Referente en política de seguridad pública en Brasil durante 25 años, influyendo en la legislación nacional sobre regulación de armas y reducción de homicidios mediante un enfoque basado en evidencia que centra a las comunidades más afectadas por la violencia, en particular la población negra brasileña.

Pacto pela Democracia (Brazil)

La principal coalición pro-democracia de Brasil, integrada por más de 200 organizaciones y reconocida internacionalmente como modelo de defensa democrática colectiva. Su protección coordinada de las elecciones de 2022 — más de 80 acciones entre 35 organizaciones — demostró el poder de construir coaliciones antes de que llegue la crisis.

Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) (Perú)

Una de las instituciones de ciencias sociales más antiguas y distinguidas de América Latina, el IEP ha construido durante seis décadas la base empírica del análisis democrático en el Perú — desde encuestas de opinión pública y estudios electorales hasta investigación interdisciplinaria sobre poder, desigualdad y el Estado.

Recambio (Perú)

En un país que ha tenido ocho presidentes en una década, Recambio reconstruye la cultura democrática desde dentro del sistema político — con una red de más de 500 egresados de 28 partidos políticos, diálogo interpartidario y la iniciativa 'Voces Contra la Polarización'.

Espacio Crítico (Regional, LAC)

Una organización regional que brinda apoyo estratégico personalizado, formación técnica y asesoría en seguridad a organizaciones de la sociedad civil, periodistas independientes y líderes políticos en la primera línea del retroceso democrático en América Latina y el Caribe.

D-Hub (Regional, Global)

Una comunidad global de defensores de la democracia que conecta a activistas de primera línea y organizaciones de la sociedad civil con expertos que han enfrentado desafíos similares — construyendo la infraestructura para la solidaridad democrática transfronteriza que ninguna organización puede sostener sola.

Un Hito Histórico

The Democracy Garage es el primer programa acelerador de este tipo diseñado específicamente para defensores de la democracia en América Latina y el Caribe. Al combinar el rigor de la investigación basada en evidencia, la agilidad de un modelo acelerador y la profundidad de una alianza a largo plazo, DAL está abriendo un camino inédito para fortalecer la resiliencia democrática — basado en la convicción de que las organizaciones más cercanas a la crisis están mejor posicionadas para afrontarla, cuando se les proporcionan las herramientas, el conocimiento y las conexiones adecuadas.

“Nos enorgullece inmensamente lanzar The Democracy Garage junto a estas ocho organizaciones extraordinarias," afirmó Beatriz Magaloni, codirectora del DAL y Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations en el Departamento de Ciencia Política. "Cada una de ellas representa lo que es la defensa de la democracia en la práctica, no en la teoría. Juntos, estamos comprometidos con algo sin precedentes: construir una comunidad de estrategia y solidaridad que fortalezca la democracia, país por país.”
 

The Democracy Action Lab (DAL), a practitioner-centered initiative of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, is proud to officially announce the first cohort of its Democracy Garage, the first accelerator program of its kind dedicated to strengthening frontline democracy defenders across Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Democracy Garage was born from a simple but urgent conviction: democratic resilience is built not only through ideas, but through the capacity of organizations to act strategically, use evidence effectively, communicate persuasively, and adapt to rapidly evolving political environments. DAL built this program to close a persistent gap in democracy support, bridging high-level research with the real-time, operational needs of the organizations doing the hardest work on the ground.

Over the next few months, DAL will work side by side with eight extraordinary organizations across the region, applying a structured accelerator methodology to co-develop strategies tailored to the specific democratic challenges in each country. This is not a traditional growth program: it is a deep collaboration grounded in evidence, strategy, and solidarity.

A Three-Track Accelerator Model

The accelerator model of the Democracy Garage is organized around three mutually reinforcing tracks designed to address a key gap in the democracy support ecosystem: many programs either provide high-level training disconnected from immediate needs or short-term technical assistance that does not build lasting capacity. The Garage bridges this divide.

Track 1  |  Evidence Analysis for Democratic Strategizing  —  Hands-On Advisory

The first track provides direct, problem-driven advisory support. Each of the selected organizations enters the Garage with a defined, real-time challenge. DAL mobilizes its analytical capacity, including faculty expertise, student engagement, and data tools, to help address it collaboratively. This is not one-directional technical assistance: it is a joint process that builds organizations' own capacity to use evidence as a strategic tool, shifting from reactive to anticipatory modes of operation.

Track 2  |  Training and Capacity Building  —  Four Core Areas

The second track offers structured training in four areas critical to democratic action: (1) Strategizing for democratic defense — understanding the state of democracy in the region and its main challenges; (2) AI for activism — practical applications of artificial intelligence for monitoring, communication, and decision-making; (3) Evidence for democratic defense — data collection, analysis, and interpretation linked directly to strategic decisions; and (4) Storytelling for change — translating complex analysis into compelling narratives that resonate with policymakers, media, and citizens alike.

Track 3  |  Platform Building for Democratic Defense  —  Scaling for Systemic Impact

The third track supports participating organizations in becoming foundational nodes of country-level democratic defense platforms. Democratic erosion rarely unfolds in isolation: it requires coordinated responses across civil society, media, academia, and institutions. Through actor mapping, network articulation, and the development of coordination mechanisms, the Garage helps build structured ecosystems capable of collective action. This track culminates at the Regional Synergy Meeting in August 2026, where organizations will present their platform visions and lay the groundwork for regional coordination.

Image

^{DAL's Accelerator Methodology (click to enlarge)}

Eight Organizations. Three Countries. One Region.

After a rigorous selection process, The Democracy Garage is proud to welcome the following participating organizations:

CESJUL — Centro de Estudios Socio Jurídicos Latinoamericanos (Colombia)  

Works at the intersection of criminal law, human rights, and democratic governance, bringing rigorous legal analysis to the most pressing challenges in Colombian democracy — including the use of law as both a tool of repression and a vehicle for accountability.

Dejusticia (Colombia)

One of Latin America's most respected human rights organizations — a true think-and-do tank combining rigorous legal research with strategic litigation, direct advocacy, and capacity-building across anti-discrimination, transitional justice, and the protection of civic space.

Instituto Sou da Paz (Brazil)

A 25-year leader in public security policy in Brazil, shaping national legislation on firearms regulation and homicide reduction through an evidence-first approach that centers the communities most affected by violence — particularly Black Brazilians.

Pacto pela Democracia (Brazil)

Brazil's preeminent pro-democracy coalition of more than 200 organizations, and an internationally recognized model for coalition-based democratic defense. Its coordinated protection of the 2022 elections — over 80 actions across 35 organizations — demonstrated the power of building coalitions before the crisis arrives.

Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP) (Perú)

One of Latin America's oldest and most distinguished social science institutions, IEP has spent six decades producing the empirical foundation for democratic analysis in Perú — from public opinion surveys and electoral studies to interdisciplinary research on power, inequality, and the state

Recambio (Perú)

In a country that has seen eight presidents in a decade, Recambio is rebuilding democratic culture from within the political system — with a network of over 500 alumni from 28 political parties, cross-partisan dialogue, and the 'Voices Against Polarization' initiative.

Espacio Crítico (Regional, LAC)

A regional organization providing tailored strategic support, technical training, and security advice to civil society organizations, independent journalists, and political leaders on the front lines of democratic backsliding across Latin America and the Caribbean.

D-Hub (Regional, Global)

A global community of democracy defenders connecting frontline activists and civil society organizations with experts who have faced similar challenges — building the infrastructure for cross-border democratic solidarity that no single organization can sustain alone.

A Historic First

The Democracy Garage is the first accelerator program of this type designed specifically for democracy defenders in Latin America and the Caribbean. By combining the rigor of evidence-based research, the agility of an accelerator model, and the depth of long-term collaboration, DAL is pioneering a new approach to democratic resilience — one grounded in the conviction that the organizations closest to the crisis are best positioned to address it, when equipped with the right tools, knowledge, and connections.

"We are immensely proud to launch the Democracy Garage alongside these eight remarkable organizations," said DAL co-director Beatriz Magaloni, the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations. "Each of them represents what democratic defense looks like in practice, not in theory. Together, we are committed to something unprecedented: building a community of strategy and solidarity that makes democracy stronger, one country at a time."
 

For the second time in history, UN Member States adopted a Political Declaration on AMR in 2024. This declaration outlines ambitious commitments to tackle one of the most pressing health challenges of our time. These commitments will only be successful if the public understands, supports, and ultimately changes behavior to make them work.

Ahead of UNGA, we asked citizens in six countries what they thought about different policy proposals across six themes: Equity, Access and Stewardship; Infection Prevention; Food Security; Awareness and Education; Target setting; and Surveillance.

Working with the Trinity Challenge, we brought together 2,419 citizens from Brazil, Colombia, Nigeria, Tanzania, India, and Indonesia using Deliberative Polling®, a method that assesses what a representative and informed sample would think about policy proposals after extended, evidence-based discussions. Deliberations took place on the innovative Artificial Intelligence (AI)-assisted Stanford University Online Deliberation Platform across two days.

Citizens left the process not just more informed, but more engaged with the solutions required.

What is Deliberative Polling® ?

Deliberative Polling® is a research methodology developed by Professor James Fishkin at Stanford University's Deliberative Democracy Lab. Unlike standard opinion polling, it measures not just initial public opinion but informed public opinion - what people think after genuine engagement with the issues, trade-offs, and expert perspectives.

It has been applied in over 160 cases around the world, from national referendums to climate policy.

Learn more about the Deliberative Polling® methodology.

In a CDDRL research seminar held on November 20, 2025, Gerhard Casper Postdoctoral Fellow Ana Paula Pellegrino presented her research on the emergence of police-led armed illicit groups (PLAIGs) in Brazil. Pellegrino defines them as illicit organizations with coercive capacity led by active-duty police officers. Her seminar explored what makes these groups distinctive, why they form, and the conditions that allow them to take shape.

As discussed by Pellegrino, unlike ordinary corruption, informal protection rackets, or gangs that employ off-duty police as security, PLAIGs are fully organized and independently governed armed groups that operate illicitly, possess their own coercive capacity, and are led by active-duty police officers who remain part of the state. Because of this unique position inside the public safety apparatus, these groups can draw on the authority and resources of the state, becoming spoilers of efforts to monopolize violence.

To better understand how these groups arise, Pellegrino examines both the motivations behind their formation and the conditions that enable them. She argues that officers create these groups primarily as a rent-extraction strategy when they perceive the costs of policing to be rising, typically in response to a growing armed threat. As violence escalates, both politicians and the police feel pressure: politicians face public demands for safety, while officers face greater personal danger on the ground. This imbalance produces frustration within the police ranks and motivates some officers to exploit their coercive capacity for profit. 

However, motivation alone is not enough, as the opportunity to form PLAIGs depends on two enabling conditions. First, police must have greater coercive capacity than the threat they face, allowing them to compete with or expel armed groups. Second, they must have sufficient discretion to use their capacity outside of official duties. Pellegrino emphasizes that this autonomy is shaped by the degree of political control over police. When oversight is strong, officers cannot use state resources to build private organizations. When oversight is weak, however, officers have both the means and the opportunity to organize. Pellegrino refers to this dynamic as the Warrior’s Paradox: the increased investment in police capacity meant to combat disorder also creates the conditions for police to generate disorder themselves.

To test her argument, Pellegrino draws on extensive process tracing and three years of fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Despite similar histories of police violence, only Rio developed PLAIGs. Pellegrino shows that Rio consistently expanded police coercive power while failing to impose meaningful oversight, creating the conditions for PLAIGs to flourish after the rise of the Red Command and the Third Command of the Capital, prison gangs turned drug trade organizations. São Paulo, by contrast, implemented institutional reforms in the 1990s and early 2000s that tightened accountability, standardized use-of-force rules, and constrained police discretion, even after the rise of the First Command of the Capital, an equally powerful drug trade organization. As a result, officers in São Paulo lacked the autonomy and impunity necessary to form armed organizations.

Pellegrino closed by emphasizing that PLAIGs emerge not from state weakness but from well-equipped police forces operating with insufficient oversight, enabling officers to convert state authority into private coercive power. This, she claims, illustrates how police can become actors who undermine, rather than protect, the state’s monopoly of violence.