IDEA report finds 90% of democratic recoveries reversed within five years

Shah identifies United States as ‘clearest example’ of democratic decline

The Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance released its annual Global State of Democracy report Tuesday, drawing on data from 174 countries going back to 1975 and focusing on changes in democratic performance between 2020 and 2025.

NPR asked Shah about countries that have seen democratic resurgence in recent years — Poland, Hungary and Syria — and what her research shows about the durability of those recoveries. She pointed to a discouraging pattern.

“What the research shows is that, depressingly, in 90% of cases, a democracy that has suffered decline and then comes back and what’s called a U-turn in 90% of the cases, they suffer another democratic decline within five years,” Shah said.

Shah said candidates promising change typically find that, when voters give them power, they often cannot deliver on those promises because remnants of the old guard prevent those changes. “And unless,” she said, “you’re willing to break your own democratic laws to get them out, what can you do?”

Shah said IDEA researchers have observed a global pattern of democratic decline: “Severe drops in scores that measure freedom of expression, freedom of the press, credible elections, effective parliament.”

“It’s getting worse and worse,” Shah said. “So that’s really worrying, especially because we also see that people are more willing in some cases to consider non-democratic leadership or non-democratic governance.” Shah said that over 50 years of compiling the survey, she has seen undemocratic trends like these correct themselves — “but not this time.”

Shah identified the United States as the “clearest example, unfortunately” of democratic decline in the survey. The report says that in 2025, “President Donald Trump quickly amassed power in the executive branch and wielded it to further a narrow set of personal goals and pursue retaliation against perceived enemies. … The results have been far-reaching, undermining the rule of law domestically and internationally and testing long-standing alliances and multilateral cooperation.”

According to IDEA, the United States has seen declines in nearly half of the 30 indicators the organization measures for democratic performance. Shah said those indicators have hit their lowest levels in 50 years of gathering data on democracies.

Shah said the United States has historically served as a bastion of democratic governance, with strong performance in the rule of law and judicial independence and a prominent role in promoting democracy around the world. “But that’s no longer the case,” she said.

The organization’s survey shows that 57% of countries surveyed showed declines in at least one key indicator of democratic performance, with rule of law serving as the weakest-performing area of democracy globally.

“Inside the U.S. and outside the U.S., we’re seeing in the U.S. administration policies harming domestic democracy … but also really weakening global norms and actually providing fodder for other non-democratic leaders,” Shah said.

Shah said democracy is no longer the central focus of U.S. foreign policy. Democratic values are also no longer the basis for new alliances globally, she said, noting that the democratic aid the U.S. used to provide to developing countries has been dismantled.

President Trump has signaled this shift himself. At a summit last year in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he criticized previous U.S. administrations as “interventionist” and said the U.S. would no longer give other countries “lectures on how to live.”