Michael Emerson

FH_Authoritarians_Report_2017.indd

Breaking Down Democracy surveys how 21st-century authoritarians, led by Russia and China, survive and spread by masking autocratic rule as pluralism: conducting formal elections while skewing the playing field, saturating domestic and international media with propaganda, hollowing out civil society, rewriting history, and embedding illiberal practices within liberal institutions. It shows how these regimes co-opt open economies, exploit global networks, and foster illiberal democracies in places like Hungary and Poland, while exporting tactics through NGOs, lobbyists, and overseas media to influence democracies abroad. The report argues this modern authoritarianism is durable and increasingly adept at seizing power from within and eroding the liberal international order, threatening freedom unless democracies repair their resilience across government, media, academia, business, and civil society, with Ukraine as a frontline case study and a set of concrete recommendations for a coordinated response.

Source: House Oversight Committee