Richard Youngs and Thomas Carothers discuss the future of the global democratic agenda and take stock of what Brussels and Washington can do to support it.
The upcoming elections in the European Union and the United States are crucial tests for democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Richard Youngs, senior fellow at Carnegie Europe, and Thomas Carothers, director of Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, discuss what is in store for the global democratic agenda and the current state of EU-U.S. cooperation on democracy support.
[00:00:00] Intro, [00:02:14] The EU-U.S. Cooperation on Democracy, [00:11:59] The Global Democratic Recession, [00:18:43] The Future of the Transatlantic Democracy Agenda.
Thomas Carothers and Richard Youngs, May 2, 2024, “European and U.S. Democracy Support: The Limits of Convergence,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Thomas Carothers and Frances Brown, February 6, 2024, “Democracy Policy Under Biden: Confronting a Changed World,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Thomas Carothers, January 22, 2024, “The Democratic Price of Countering Authoritarianism,” Just Security, Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law.
Thomas Carothers, January 10, 2024, “Democracy and Geopolitics Are on the Ballot in 2024,” Emissary, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Thomas Carothers, December 18, 2023, “Protests in 2023: Widespread Citizen Anger Continues, With Sources Multiplying,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Thomas Carothers, May 30, 2023, “Is the Global Tide Turning in Favor of Democracy?,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Richard Youngs, April 16, 2024, “Geoliberal Europe and the Test of War,” Agenda Publishing.
Richard Youngs and Ricardo Farinha, April 24, 2024, “Securitization and European Democracy Policy,” Carnegie Europe.
Richard Youngs, April 2024, “Why the European Elections Will Test Democracy,” Journal of Democracy.
Richard Youngs, March 17, 2024, “The Defensive Turn in European Democracy Support,” Carnegie Europe.
Richard Youngs et al., February 5, 2024, “European Democracy Support Annual Review 2023,” Carnegie Europe.
Richard Youngs, Thomas Carothers, et al., April 17, 2023, “How Can Europe Help the Next Phase of the Summit for Democracy?,” Carnegie Europe.
Richard Youngs
Both the European Union and the United States are about to go through vitally important elections that are shaping up to be a stress test for both American and European democracy. Moreover, these elections take place in the context of an apparent global democratic recession. All is not well with democracies around the world, from Asia to Africa, Latin America—and indeed inside the West.
Yet, analysts disagree on how bad democracy’s crisis really is. The standard narrative of democratic regression fails to capture very divergent political trends underway across the world. Different countries are moving in contrasting directions and democracy’s international dimensions are hopefully as well. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has turned the attention of policymakers and analysts mainly towards issues of defense and security. But it has also driven a renewed Western determination to shore up democratic norms and do more to hold authoritarian power at bay.
If trends in democracy look increasingly varied and complex, they are also more consequential to the future direction of global politics. So amid intensifying conflicts and rising security concerns, what is the global state of democracy? Are Europe and the United States doing enough to support democracy? And what lies ahead for the global democracy agenda?
Richard Youngs
Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Europe Inside Out, Carnegie Europe’s monthly podcast about the continent's main foreign policy challenges.
My name is Richard Youngs and I am a senior fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at Carnegie Europe.
Richard Youngs
This episode of Europe Inside Out is about the state of democracy in the West and around the world. I'm joined by Thomas Carothers, director of Carnegie's Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, and one of the world's foremost experts on democracy. Tom, welcome.
Thomas Carothers
Hello, Richard. It's a great pleasure to be here.
Richard Youngs
Let's start with the international dimensions. After the end of Trump's often unsettling presidency, President Biden made much of his commitment to turn US domestic and international policies in a more democratic direction. Indeed, as part of this, his team organized two big and well-known summits for democracy. Tom, as Biden's term now draws to a close, how do you rate his efforts to revive US democracy promotion over the last four years?
Thomas Carothers
I think one's ratings depend a lot on one's expectations. Many people's expectations for the Biden administration of democracy were very high because Biden and his team started off with some pretty aspirational rhetoric about making democracy and human rights the centerpiece of their foreign policy. And they've disappointed many of those people who had very high expectations because they've turned out to pursue, particularly in the last two years, a fairly realist path in which democracy concerns have often been sidelined by geopolitical concerns. For example, the case of India. Fair amount to backsliding in India, yet a strong US embrace of Modi as a result of the effort of the United States to line up allies in its struggles with China. So I think many people feel disappointed. I think I was not that disappointed because I think my expectations were lower. The policy is a balancing of realist and sort of more aspirational or idealistic concerns, but that's been the case for decades in us foreign policy, and there has been a democracy component to Biden's policies. We've seen it with Russia and Ukraine, where the United States really made some, I would say, fairly skillful and forceful efforts to line up support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
And that can be seen as both pro sovereignty and pro democratic. But not just in the big areas of concern related to Russia and China has the United States pushed fairly hard, but on other fronts. For example, democratic backsliding in a number of countries, like Brasil, where the United States entered the scene fairly skillfully in 2022 to support pro-democratic dynamics, in Guatemala recently, where the United States helped the newly elected president get seated and so forth. And the United States has pursued the pro democratic diplomacy. You mentioned the summits for democracy, which, you know, are only of probably mid-lean value in the long term, but did represent an effort to signal a commitment to democracy. And the United States has stepped up democracy assistance, both in budgetary terms and in sort of backing for this assistance within the bureaucracy here. So as always in US democracy policy, Richard, it's a balance, a strong realist overlay to the policy, but the Biden folks have taken democracy seriously and tried to insert it into the policy in at least some places.
And Richard, from your point of view, Europeans, of course, warmly welcomed Biden's election for many reasons, one amongst which was Biden's return to a more democratic agenda, at least in rhetorical terms. But has the European Union kept to its own democratic commitments in the last four years?
Richard Youngs
I think, Tom, on the European side, we can see some similar balances in policies that you just outlined from the US side. The European Union and individual European member states have introduced a lot of new democracy initiatives over the last three or four years. They've launched a new human rights sanctions regime, for instance, lots of new funding initiatives. Amounts of money going into democracy assistance have increased slightly. The EU has introduced some new modes of aid delivery that is enabling it to get money more quickly to democracy activists on the ground. And importantly, we've seen new high-level commitments to make democracy a more central core to European security and foreign policies. But the overriding narrative of European foreign policy over recent years has been one of geopolitical power. Europe aspiring to more hard edged geopolitical power. Often, leaders say democracy is central to this new geopolitical identity, but often in practice, it clearly isn't. The EU's very well known Global Gateway project is an example of this. The EU is now channeling billions of euros in investment through this new Global Gateway Initiative, nominally as a democratic alternative to the Belt and Road Initiative, but in practice, putting a lot of money into big infrastructure projects with authoritarian regimes.
So I think, Tom, what we've seen over the last three or four years is what I would term a defensive turn in European democracy support. Some elements have strengthened, but I think the agenda today is much more about protecting democratic space where it exists, but has been under attack, rather than a very proactive agenda of trying to oust authoritarian regimes. It seems to be the main concern on the European side is about democracies cooperating to contain authoritarian regimes, international actions, that is about protecting democratic values within the international order rather than hoping to create new democratic systems at the national level. So I would say in that sense, some similarities between what we've seen from the US and what we've seen from the EU in recent years. In a way, both the US and the EU are showing a mixed record in democracy support. Which brings us onto the question, Tom, you and I have been reflecting on recently, which is the question of how well the cooperation or coordination between the US and Europe has been working on democracy in recent years. What's your stance on the health of transatlantic coordination on democracy support?
Thomas Carothers
Certainly it's in a much more positive phase than it was coming out of the Trump years, where obviously US-European relations hit a lot of serious obstacles and there was a lot of tension. So it's a lot better in terms of communication, tone, but also in terms of real action. Look at Ukraine, where you've really seen the United States and Europe work effectively together. In other areas of democracy related policy there has been, again, fairly good communication, in some cases alignment on the summits for democracy. Europe and the United States basically moved together. There were wrinkles, as we talked about in the past paper a bit, but in general, they move together. On democratic backsliding, in places like Myanmar, the United States and Europe are fairly aligned. In the recent troubles in Senegal over the last year, I think the United States and Europe took a fairly similar approach that we see. The approach to backsliding is largely consistent and in the areas of aid, also fairly good is the United States has stepped up in some areas, like media support, anti-corruption assistance, and others. Europe has been there alongside.
In some cases, Europe leads in these areas, and the United States has stepped in other cases, vice versa. Yet at the same time, so cooperation and coordination much better than before. But there's still limits. There are limits on some of the big issues, like China, where we see the United States and Europe are somewhat on the same page, but they're a bit different. You know, you read the accounts of President Xi in Paris meeting with Macron, the tone is different. Still, I know France is a bit of a leading edge on european policy with respect to China. But on China, the United States and Europe, I'd say, are only partly aligned due to differences of philosophy. I think about how to approach a strategic rival like China. But in other areas, like on the United States and Europe summits for democracy, the United States and Europe worked fairly well together. But there was a sense on the european side of this is mutuality us style, which means the US leads and asks Europe to sign on the dotted line. And that's sort of US-European coordination from Washington's point of view. Similarly, on backsliding there have been places where the United States and certain European governments have maybe not been closely aligned on Tunisia in some cases.
The response to the backsliding there, Paris and Washington had slightly different attitudes or approaches. Similarly, with respect to some of the coups and the Sahel, again, France and the United States not always together. I think what we see is, yuo know, coordination is fairly good, but it's never quite what we dream of when we think, wait, aren't the United States and Europe really natural partners on democracy? Shouldn't they be a kind of unified block in the world supporting democracy? Because the United States finds Europe hard to coordinate with. There's a common saying in Washington of, you know, there's too many Europes, and it's very hard to know with whom to, you know, whom to cooperate on specific issues. Europe, as we know, is a complicated entity, and that sometimes puzzles or frustrates Washington. Conversely, Europe finds the United States pretty hard to get along with. Sometimes the United States is too assertive, sometimes for the European point of view about how to approach democracy issues too confrontational, too ideological, just kind of too pushy in how it does things. And so very good friends, but continuing tensions that limit the coordination, limit the cooperation, and there are real differences in interests.
The United States and Europe both have a mix of realist and more values-based policies, but each has its own mix, and they don't always see eye to eye. And how do you get that balanced exactly, right? What do you think of my assessment, Richard? Have I left anything out?
Richard Youngs
I'd just invite the listeners to have a look at the report we just put out and reinforce the basic conclusion, which is, as you say, some areas of cooperation have definitely improved over the last three or four years, but democracy is becoming a little bit of a poor relation in transatlantic coordination. Transatlantic cooperation has definitely strengthened on issues like climate, trade, economic issues, technology issues, but it hasn't really been ratcheted up to the same degree on democracy, which we find curious, given that leaders repeat so frequently now that democracy is the one thing that supposedly holds the West together as it faces these heightened geopolitical challenges.
Richard Youngs
Inevitably, a full picture of European and American democracy policies requires going into questions about the nature of the problems that they're trying to address. So let's turn now to that. Tom, you've been arguing in several recent pieces that we should actually be quite wary of single, all-embracing narratives about the global state of democracy, and arguing that some of the explanations that are normally given for democratic backsliding are questionable, or at least they don't apply to all countries across the board.
Tell us a bit more about that.
Thomas Carothers
There has been a tendency in recent years, in talking about, thinking about trying to respond to this global democratic recession. There has been a tendency, both in the expert community and through the policy community, to search for the single overarching explanation or the single overarching picture of the crisis. So here are some of the overarching explanations that I hear that I find not adequate. The first is not really an explanation, but is an assessment of the picture, which is that it's sort of the same crisis everywhere. There's the global democratic crisis. It's here, it's there, it's everywhere. Whereas, in fact, significant backsliding has largely occurred in developing democracies like Brazil for a while, in India, in Turkey, lots of other places, Bangladesh, the Philippines for a time. And although Europe and North America, Australia, New Zealand, have faced what I would call democratic tremors, they have not really experienced institutional breakdown. They have not experienced the emergence of regimes that would be called electoral autocracies. And we need to be forthright in realizing that there's some areas in much more trouble than others. And so the tendency to see a picture of unrelieved gloom, I think, is not helpful analytically.
Another thing that's related to this is the tendency to say, it's all about populism. Oh, my gosh, there's a virus of populism in the world, and populism is dooming democracy. That's problematic in a couple of different ways. First, not all populists are anti-democratic, and not all backsliders are populists. President Putin has hardened the regime over the last 20 years in Russia, he's a major backslider. I would not call him a populist. If a populist is somebody who is outside the system, who is us against them, he's very much an insider in the Russian system. He's not an anti-elite, he's part of the Russian elite. And so this idea of ascribing to populism, the major blame for democratic backsliding everywhere, is a very simplistic idea that is leading us to a loss of analytic sharpness in a number of cases. Similarly related to that, particularly from the Washington perspective, is that people often think it's sort of all about Trump everywhere. Maybe it's just the Trump Derangement syndrome here in Washington, but people see a leader elected somewhere and say, oh, my gosh, it's a new Trump. And it's all about Trumpism everywhere. We saw that recently with the election of Milei and Argentina, immediately in the American press, there were the Argentine Trump.
Here he is. Look at his hair. It's even kind of similar. Different color, but the same kind of messiness. He's not Trump. It's a very different situation in Argentina. The dynamics for why he was elected, what he represents, how he's sort of trying to wield power, very different from Trump. And so this tendency to ascribe everything to a sort of projection of American disabilities onto the world is also a mistake. And finally, I'd say, what sort of gets to me sometimes is this constant sense of surprise in the last ten years. Oh, my gosh, what's happening to democracy? Why is this? We thought this century was just going to be hunky dory democratically. Well, it's not. Why did you expect it was going to be that way? Democracy arrived in a rush in the nineties, in the second half of the eighties, the nineties, and the first decade of the century in many countries that have very little experience with democracy, very shaky institutions, very weak experience with the practice of tolerating opposition, and guess what? It's proving difficult in a lot of those places. That should not be a surprise if we'd studied the third wave of democracy carefully.
So those are some of the ways in which the narratives about democracy are a little too overarching, in my opinion, and often lack a certain analytic clarity or sharpness. You're working on a book on this. In fact, I think you've pretty much finished a book that looks at some of these similar questions about both the present state and the future of democracy and some of the big crises the democracy has been experiencing, where it's going. Tell us a bit about that. And is that similar to some of the themes I'm bringing out, or what do you highlight in the book?
Richard Youngs
Yeah, so what this book does is to basically unpack the different strands of what's come to be known as the polycrisis that's affected the world over the last decade and a half and assess their impacts on global democracy. So the climate crisis, the pandemic, and its aftermath the shift to a post-neoliberal model of economic policy and, of course, the geopolitical challenges, in particular, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And of course, all these major overarching crises are putting extra strain on democratic systems around the world. And in some ways, they're turbocharging authoritarian dynamics. But interestingly, they also seem to be acting, at least to a degree, as catalysts for some democratic renewal. Both through very local level civic engagement, social mobilization, including many quite qualitatively new or innovative forms of democratic engagement that are appearing all around the world, and also through stronger state efforts to defend democracy. So I think the interesting thing is the current era seems to be one of quite contrasting movement, in a way, building on your theme of variation, these really big, major, epoch-defining crises are clearly weakening democracy, but they're also strengthening some degree of democratic actions, at least in some places.
And crucially, they're both pushing power and agency up to the state level, but also down to the level of kind of micro level political engagement. So quite a complex series of trends unfolding. And I think what we're seeing could be the beginning of quite a significant political transformation in this sense. The book basically concludes still that if democracy is to show itself capable of managing all these really major, overarching macro crises, it still needs to adapt much more radically than has been the case to date.
Richard Youngs
To move towards conclusion, then, let's zoom in from these big global trends to look more specifically at the state of western democracy. Tom, I think many of our listeners will be keen to hear, above all else, your assessment of U.S. democracy and how strong its guardrails are are against a possible Trump presidency. Since the shock of the assault on the Capitol, do you think US institutions have developed stronger resilience against possible threats to democracy? Or are you now, in fact, more worried that a second Trump presidency could have an even deeper anti-democratic imprint?
Thomas Carothers
Well, the prospect of a second Trump presidency has many people in the United States worried about the potential health of US democracy. Both experts and non experts alike, I think, look ahead with the sense of foreboding, at least on one side of the political spectrum here. And they're concerned, really, because if Trump comes back to the presidency for a second time, he'll be more knowledgeable about how the levers of power work. He will come into office bringing in a team that's probably more aligned with his thinking and more fleshed out, more prepared. And third, because he's going to be angrier. He talks about retribution, he's very angry, and he feels that there has to be a kind of retribution carried out against those who he feels have persecuted him. And that kind of retribution signals the promise of the politicization of the rule of law, which he feels he's been subject to, but which he sort of promises to turn around and inflict on others and attack on other institutions, whether it's the free press, you know, prosecutorial independence, independence of civil society and so forth. So there are a lot of serious concerns.
There are kind of two. The concerns go in two lines, in the sense, the first is, what if he loses the election? Will he respect the result? And will we see a replay of the events of January 6, 2021, in which there was this attack on the electoral process? Very directly, I think if he loses, it does seem likely that he would challenge the result. He has already signaled sort of uncertainty about whether he would accept the result, and many of his supporters would feel betrayed by the system. On the other hand, he wouldn't be in power and therefore wouldn't have all the levers that he had last time to pursue an attack on the election. And I think people would be more prepared, both in terms of responding to potential violence from citizens related to the election and more prepared on the legal front to respond to some of the challenges that might be mounted. So I think that's definitely a concern, but probably people are not worrying so much about a direct replay of January 6. And then the other scenario is he wins and then tries to inflict damage on democracy through some of his acts of retribution and his general approach to governing.
Here I think we could say that the institutions of US democracy are still strong. There's still a lot of faith in the constitution in this country and bipartisan consensus on that. Courts are still respected and still have power and independence. Congress is still an able institution in the sense that it's, you know, represents the views of the major parties and engages in real political deliberation of a type, at least. The media is very active and independent in many ways, and so on. So the guardrails are there. They have been tested. But I think, it's not going to be just a walkthrough in which President Trump just shuts down the institutions of US democracy. Instead, I think what it would be would be a highly conflict, conflictual presidency. What I think it would be is a highly conflictual presidency with a lot of political friction, a lot of noise, a lot of dysfunction. But I don't think it would spell the end of US democracy per se. What about the European side, Richard? There are also mounting worries about the radical right in Europe ahead of the EU Parliament elections in June. How much of a stress test will these elections be for European democracy?
Richard Youngs
I think quite a severe one, Tom. As all the debate in the US is focused on Trump, all the debate here in Europe is focused on the far right or the hard right or the radical right, depending on your preferred definition. It may be that the far right is not set to win outright. It's, of course, divided across different groups in the Parliament at the moment. But it could begin to challenge the traditional coalition of pro-European mainstream parties in quite significant ways. If the far right does do well, this is undoubtedly a risk to EU cooperation in many spheres. How far is a systemic threat to democracy? I think it's a slightly more complex question. Some of these far-right parties clearly do hold very authoritarian positions, or they're so illiberal on some rights questions that their positions begin to subvert the practical functioning of democratic norms. Others of them are illiberal on certain policies like migration or climate, but they don't seem directly to threaten democracy as such. So I think at the policy level, there's a difficult balancing act for governments here. Governments need to find more concerted ways to push back against the hard right, but do that in a way that doesn't narrow down debate, so that it becomes too exclusively about the hard right and actually gives the hard right an undue level of importance.
There may be some signs that governments are actually being tempted in this direction. One would also have to say that the focus on the hard right can sometimes rather conveniently mask the way that the so called mainstream governments themselves have sought to narrow or abridge civic liberties in the rule of law in recent years. So, for example, there's a lot of concern about hard-right leaders attacking media independence, for example. This is now a big issue in Italy these last few days. But most, more centrist governments have taken some steps in the same direction. So they haven't necessarily helped their own case in terms of shoring up really good quality democracy in Europe. And we do see something of a paradox here, that as governments now begin to move to take firmer measures in the name of containing the far right and protecting democracy, some of these measures have themselves been criticized for risking some of those same democratic norms. So, I think that's a situation in Europe, obviously, big concern about how well the far right will do in the elections. But I think my overarching point would be that the focus needs to be on a range of very deep seated problems that European democracy is suffering from, and not just the more dramatic question of how many seats the right will win in the elections and what kind of political horse-trading has to take place as a result of the elections after June, which may not seem a particularly happy note to finish on.
But let's just conclude here, Tom, if I may, by my asking you one final, slightly broader question, which is this, that you and I have been writing on democracy for many, many years, and we're often asked with great skepticism how we can still be working on international democracy support, how international democracy support can have any legitimacy, any life left in it at all, when the likes of Trump and the European far right are trampling on liberal norms within the West itself. Of course, the skeptics, the whole notion of democracy promotion now belongs to an age that is dead and gone, and really, the whole enterprise is no longer fit for purpose. So the skeptics would argue. What's your view on this, Tom, given all the internal problems we see in the US and elsewhere, can the transatlantic partners hope to have any kind of positive influence at all on all these problems related to democracy that we've been discussing?
Thomas Carothers
There's no question that the troubles of democracy in the West have tremendously damaged the enterprise of supporting democracy internationally. There's just no question about that. The earlier generation, in which of the eighties and nineties, maybe part of the first decade of this century, in which the West assumed a certain pride of place and a certain role for itself, and that was well questioned in many places, did have a certain amount of traction. That's gone. It's just gone. The United States and Europe and other sort of established Western democracies cannot travel abroad and say to others, we have an answer, all they can say is, we understand your problems, because we have a lot of them, too, in different forms and different degrees of intensity. But we're struggling, too. But it does remain the fact that when Western countries, as well as non-Western countries, India, South Africa, Brazil and others, have a role to play in supporting democracy beyond their borders, that when a country that has a certain amount of power or influence asserts itself on the side of democracy, it can still make a difference. I mentioned the case of Brazil. US weighing in on the side of supporting a constitutional process in Brazil and heading off a potential coup did make a real difference in Brazil.
And my colleague Oliver Stuenkel has written about that in foreign policy. European support for Moldova means something in Moldova. And if Europe just said, well, we have nothing to contribute on democracy anymore, we'll just let Moldova go where it goes. I think many people in Moldova would feel let down by that and would say that, no, Europe does have a role here, Moldova. In Myanmar, the United States and Europe have not turned around the situation there with respect to the coup and the horrific civil war, but they have been on the right side of things. And the pressure on the military there and the power holders has been real in some ways. And so the fact that there's this tremendous damage to legitimacy does not remove the fact or sort of annihilate the simple fact that when the West really puts itself to the task, focuses on uncertain values and goals, and applies the levers it has, it can make a difference. It just has to earn that credibility in every case, time after time. It cannot assume it anymore. It has to earn, it has to show it's serious. It has to show it has at least a certain modicum of consistency and a certain analytic sharpness in what it's doing, but it can still make a difference.
Richard Youngs
Tom, it was a pleasure having you on this month's episode of Europe Inside Out. Thank you very much for taking the time.
Thomas Carothers
Good to talk with you, Richard, and good to be here.
Richard Youngs
For those who are interested in learning more about global democracy and what the US and the EU can do to support it, I encourage you to the follow the work of Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program on X (formerly Twitter) @CarnegieDCG. That’s C-A-R-N-E-G-I-E-D-C-G.
You can find me at @YoungsRichard. That is @Y-O-U-N-G-S-R-I-C-H-A-R-D.
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This episode of Europe Inside Out was produced with the support from the US Mission to the European Union. Our producers are Francesco Siccardi and Mattia Bagherini. Our editor is Futura D’Aprile of Europod. Sound engineering and original music by Jeremy Bocquet.