Defending Democracy

Dangerous times for democracy

For years, we have been observing a very dangerous trend: from around the year 2000 - and accelerated from 2015 - the worldwide spread and deepening of democracy came to a temporary end. Instead, a mostly gradual, but sometimes rapid relapse into illiberal or autocratic forms of government set in.

According to the renowned Regimes of the World classification system, approximately 17% of the world’s population lived in a “liberal democracy” in 2004. This term refers to highly developed democracies that comprehensively protect civil liberties and uphold the rule of law. One example is the political system that was established in West Germany after the Second World War and, following reunification, across Germany as a whole—enabling a previously almost unimaginable degree of freedom, peace, security, and prosperity ever since. By 2025, only just under 8% of the world’s population still lived in such liberal democracies.

The proportion of the population that still lived in what is known as an “electoral democracy”—a form of democracy in which the rights and freedoms that people in Germany or Switzerland take for granted, institutions, and processes are now only available to a limited extent—declined from 33% in 2004 to just 19% by 2024. Since 2025, the United States have also been classified in this category, having previously been classified as a “liberal democracy” for over 50 years.

Setbacks in the middle of Europe

The example of the rapid shift toward autocracy in the United States under the second Trump administration—a pace unprecedented in U.S. history—is certainly particularly striking and alarming: According to the V-Dem Institute, it had fallen back to the development level of 1965 by 2025.

But even in Europe, there have been numerous setbacks for years, along with a widespread erosion of civil liberties and democratic institutions:

• For some time now, scholars have no longer classified Hungary and Serbia as democracies—they are what are known as “electoral autocracies.” These are countries under autocratic leadership with mostly very unfair electoral systems designed to maintain the appearance of a democratic constitution while massively favoring incumbents. Thanks to the surprisingly successful defeat of the Fidesz party in the 2026 parliamentary elections, there is now, for the first time after 16 years of democratic decline, hope for improvement in Hungary.

• In recent years, several European countries have slipped back into the category of “electoral democracy,” including Greece, Poland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Poland has been striving since 2023 to return to the ranks of liberal democracies, though the results of the June 2025 presidential election have made this significantly more difficult.

• Although various other countries are still classified as liberal or electoral democracies in retrospect based on scientific data collection, they have right-wing populist or far-right parties participating in government that are constantly working toward the autocratization of these countries: This applies to Finland, Italy, Croatia, Slovakia, and (indirectly) Sweden as well. Only the Netherlands has been able to reverse this trend in the recent past.

That even Germany is at risk was made clear to a broad public by the publication of the CORRECTIV investigation “Secret Plan Against Germany” on January 10, 2024. And at the latest, the results of the EU, state, and federal elections in 2024/25 have now shown that participation of extremist, illiberal forces in governments is no longer unthinkable in Germany.

How devastating the effects of such developments can be - also purely instrumentally on other topics such as Global poverty reduction or Climate Action – has become strikingly clear in the U.S. since early 2025. The criminalization of USAID and its staff, as well as the partial suspension—in some cases illegal—of large portions of U.S. development aid makes it clear, for example, that effective measures to strengthen democratic institutions in the USA may have contributed more to global poverty reduction than many direct development policy approaches.

Defending democracy effectively

Donations can make an important contribution to defending and strengthening democracies worldwide. The decision of which organization you donate to can make a big difference (often by a factor of up to 100 or more). Our goal at Effektiv Spenden is to make such effective giving as easy as possible. We therefore need to answer the key questions of effective giving for the field of democracy as well:

Where are the greatest threats to democracy - or the greatest opportunities for strengthening it? Which pro-democracy measures are particularly effective? Which organizations are particularly successful and efficient in implementing these measures? In short: Where can we achieve the most with pro-democracy donations?

These questions are at the heart of the research institute’s work Power for Democracies. Having launched operations in 2024, Power for Democracies reached the initial recommendations published, focusing on particularly effective organizations dedicated to defending democracy in Turkey, Argentina, Italy, and the United States. Indonesia followed in April 2026. We look forward to a growing international portfolio of recommendations. Power for Democracies also plans to conduct special analyses, for example on the far-reaching impacts of artificial intelligence on democracy.

You can learn more about the work of Power for Democracies in the guest article their Managing Director Markus N. Beeko in our blog.