by Olivia Gauvin | May 4, 2026 | Human Rights, Uncategorized
Amidst yet another year of startling declines for democracies everywhere, Hungary has seemingly defied the odds. Despite being the poster boy of the far-right populist threat to European democracies, recent elections ousted Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party from 16 years of power, effectively shifting the tide on one of the starkest democratic erosions in the European Union. And yet, Orbán’s defeat does not necessarily guarantee democratic revival for his international friends and cronies, including President Donald Trump. Today, behind this celebration in Hungary lives the looming shadow of Trump’s executive overreach in the United States, with Orban’s friendship and autocratic legacy offering a roadmap to America’s sharp democratic regression.
According to the V-Dem Institute’s recently published Democracy Report, the United States is no longer considered a liberal democracy. The V-Dem Institute, an independent research organization that measures democratic growth and regression across 202 countries, now labels the U.S. as merely an ”electoral democracy.” The report details that American democracy has “fallen back to the same level as in 1965,” primarily marked by executive branch overreach. For comparison, this single year of democratic erosion under the Trump administration “took Hungary’s Viktor Orbán over four years” and “Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić eight years.” For many Americans, the democratic institutions in 1965 were gained through grueling, consistent, and targeted civil rights activism. Such gains, according to V-Dem, have practically disappeared in America today.
These findings do not come as a surprise to many — at least they shouldn’t. V-Dem’s report emerges in the aftermath of one of the longest federal funding lapses in the Department of Homeland Security, as the United States and Israel continue to wage a deadly and costly war in Iran, while the President clamors to distract from the released FBI files that accuse him of sexually abusing trafficked minors for decades. And while free, fair, and recurring elections with universal suffrage still exist on paper, President Trump’s executive overreach has targeted “proof of citizenship for registration, federal reviewing of electronic voting machines, and restricted mail-in voting,” all without Congressional approval.
These actions have triggered dire democratic erosion on federal and state levels. In fact, on March 3rd, just two weeks before V-Dem even published its report, hundreds of voters in Texas were left unable to vote when the state changed precinct-based primary election locations and closed certain polling locations early. Furthermore, congressional oversight has been repeatedly curtailed, as the President declared war on Iran and ordered a military operation to abduct Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro — both times without prior Congressional approval. Alarming cases of violence against civilians have also gained national attention. In January 2026 alone, eight people died while in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody nationwide. That same month in Minneapolis, two nonviolent U.S. citizens were publicly shot and killed by ICE agents in broad daylight. And all of this is only in the first three months of 2026.
It is difficult to defuse all the alarms currently blaring. As trans people in Kansas have their driver’s licenses revoked, and families are ripped apart during ICE raids, and postpartum patients in Texas are arrested for undergoing emergency abortion procedures, it’s clear that federal and state administrations are setting all these fires to weaken Americans. Moreover, it is necessary to recognize that such repression is strategic and targeted. For years, President Trump and autocratic affiliates have publicly touted their Project 2025, the political roadmap published by the Heritage Foundation that includes sweeping reforms to America’s political culture and institutions.
In its essence, Project 2025 seeks to overhaul the executive branch while dismantling legitimate oversight and authority between branches to consolidate power under the President. Rooted in far-right Christian conservatism and crafted by at least 140 current and former Trump staffers, Project 2025 is not an abstract ideology, but an active guide in accomplishing Trump’s authoritarian grab. If the Trump-backed SAVE Act in Congress or the Supreme Court hearing Trump’s case to end birthright citizenship tells us anything, it’s that the legislative and judicial branches risk becoming fully co-opted. And for anyone who has kept a watchful eye on the President’s executive overreach, this risk may seem a reality, as Project 2025 is already over 40 percent of the way to full implementation.
The solution to America’s rapid democratic decline cannot simply be that, in this deteriorating situation, America’s democracy will vote its way out of it. American elections are facing crises of low voter turnout and weak competition. The Cook Political Report recently shared with NPR that “more than 90% of congressional races will pretty much be decided during primary elections” in 2026. The Brennan Center for Justice reports that since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision to reverse campaign finance restrictions, political power and private wealth have increasingly fused together in U.S. elections. The Center found that “donors who gave at least $5 million to super PACs” in the 2024 presidential race “spent more than twice as much as they did in 2020.” Combined with targeted gerrymandering practices and geographic partisan sorting, both electoral competition and the political playing field are severely weakened.
Combatting such authoritarian encroachment must go, as V-Dem recognizes, beyond the ballot box. Alongside robust societal action, responding to these dangerous threats to all facets of our democracy requires urgency and strong institutional safeguards. Now is the critical moment to join together with organizational supporters of global democracy, such as Democracy Without Borders USA and Citizens for Global Solutions, or even those in your local community, to proactively address institutional weaknesses. Simply upholding the democratic system as it exists today will not protect us from such encroachment; it will merely delay it.
by CGS | Oct 21, 2024 | Peace & Disarmament, Uncategorized
Have human institutions evolved sufficiently to cope with the modern world? When it comes to national security, the answer appears to be: No.
Ever since the emergence of individual nations, their governments have sought to secure what they consider their “interests” on an ungoverned planet of competing nations. Amid this international free-for-all, nations tended to pursue national security or national advantage through military might.
Of course, the downside of this arrangement was that it produced military confrontations and wars. Moreover, with advances in modern science and technology, nations began to press ever more devastating weapons into military service. Not surprisingly, vast slaughter ensued.
Over the years, as national leaders and members of the public recognized the drawbacks of an anarchic world, they turned toward developing institutions of global governance, including international law, a League of Nations, and eventually the United Nations. International security, they believed, would help to maintain national security.
Unfortunately, though, since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, the governments of many nations have failed to honor their professed commitments to international security.
Currently, the governments of Israel and Russia provide striking examples of this throwback to the nation-centered, might-makes-right approach to world affairs.
Despite the fact that the nation of Israel owed its creation to a 1947 UN agreement for the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, the Israeli government has forced the removal (and barred the return) of most of the Palestinian population, annexed additional Palestinian land, militarily occupied the remainder of Palestinian territory, and consistently blocked Palestinian statehood.
This June, amid the vast carnage caused by an indiscriminate Israeli government response to a Hamas terror attack, Benjamin Netanyahu ignored a UN Security Council resolution, drafted by the United States, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, where 37,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, had already been killed. In July, the Israeli government denounced as “absurd” the ruling of the International Court of Justice that Israel’s 57-year occupation of Palestinian territory, demolition of Palestinian housing, and establishment of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land were illegal. This October, the Israeli government took the unprecedented step of barring the UN Secretary-General from entering Israel.
The Russian government of Vladimir Putin also has no compunctions about violating international law. In 2014, it defied the UN Charter (which prohibits the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”) by using its military might to seize and annex Crimea, arm separatist groups in eastern Ukraine, and dispatch its armed forces to bolster the separatists. Although condemned by the UN General Assembly, Russian military aggression continued and, in February 2022, the Putin regime, in the most massive military operation in Europe since World War II, launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In early March, with UN Security Council action blocked by a Russian veto, the UN General Assembly―by a vote of 141 countries to 5 (with 35 abstentions)―demanded the immediate and complete withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukrainian territory. Later that month, the International Court of Justice ruled that Russia should “immediately suspend” its invasion.
Nevertheless, the Putin regime continued its massive military assault, as well as its defiance of international law. On September 30, 2022, Putin announced Russian annexation of four Ukrainian regions and plans to defend them “with all our strength.” In response, the UN General Assembly, by a vote of 143 countries to 5 (with 35 abstentions), called on all nations to refuse recognition of Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian land. Yet, despite these and other condemnations by key international institutions, Russian imperialist aggression has persisted, leaving roughly a million people dead or injured, millions more as refugees, about a fifth of Ukraine under Russian military occupation, and much of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure in ruins.
These and other blatant violations of international law have convinced some observers that international security is a fiction, and that nations are better served by returning to the traditional national security model based on national military might.
But a more sensible conclusion is that international institutions, if they are to succeed, need strengthening. Instead of reverting to a system of national power politics―which has repeatedly led to war, destruction, and massive suffering over the centuries―why not institute stronger global governance?
Recognizing that the veto has often sabotaged the mission of the UN Security Council, UN members increasingly support carving out exemptions from its use.
There are also serious efforts underway to give the UN General Assembly greater power to handle international security issues, to increase the number of nations accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, and to secure wider ratification of the founding statute of the International Criminal Court.
Moreover, in late September, 130 heads of state, meeting at the United Nations in a Summit of the Future and pressed by more than 10,000 civil society representatives, adopted a Pact for the Future―the culmination of a years-long process to update the world organization. According to a UN press release, the Pact represented “a strong statement of countries’ commitment to the United Nations, the international system and international law,” and included “the most progressive and concrete commitment to Security Council reform since the 1960s.” Predictably, at the last moment, the Russian government introduced amendments to water down the Pact. But the delegates rejected this effort by an overwhelming vote.
Influential forces, from civil society organizations (which drafted a People’s Pact for the Future) to prominent national leaders, called for even more substantial measures to strengthen global governance. At a General Assembly meeting one day after the Summit, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for “reforming the Security Council,” particularly its “veto power,” and “revitalizing the General Assembly, including in matters of international peace and security.”
These actions exemplify a growing recognition that there will be no national security without international security.
