The world is in a persistent, multi-decade decline in democratic governance. Yet a few cases point the other way. Brazil’s courts held Jair Bolsonaro to account, and Hungarian voters ended Viktor Orbán’s sixteen-year rule in April 2026.

On October 14, Anna Grzymala-Busse, Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and Alberto Díaz-Cayeros, Senior Fellow at FSI and Co-Director of the Democracy Action Lab, joined moderators Larry Diamond and Debra Satz for the second session in Stanford Continuing Studies' Reimagining Democracy speaker series produced in partnership with the Office of Community Engagement, the Stanford Democracy Hub, and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). They asked what these rebounds teach about democratic resilience, and how they might inform efforts to reimagine democracy in the United States.

Latin America: crime, inequality, and the question “What have you done for me lately?”

Diamond opened the discussion with a skeptical reading of the region. El Salvador under Nayib Bukele has become a byword for human rights abuses, but it is a small country. In Brazil, Flávio Bolsonaro is favored in this month’s presidential runoff and is widely expected to pardon his father. In Mexico, critics worry that Claudia Sheinbaum’s Morena party is rebuilding the one-party hegemony of the old PRI.

Díaz-Cayeros did not dismiss those concerns. “No party in any country should have a majority like the one Morena has,” he said, adding that such a majority “has been tremendously damaging for democracy.” Still, he cautioned against assuming the worst. Despite the temptations such a majority creates for Sheinbaum, he noted, many democratic spaces in Mexico have not closed. Even newly elected populists, such as Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia and Keiko Fujimori in Peru, face real checks and balances on what they can do.

The deeper drivers, he argued, are crime and unmet expectations. Criminal organizations are well armed, increasingly sophisticated — “even into the realm of drones” — and their violence spills across borders, as Ecuador learned when groups displaced from Colombia moved south. “Nobody really knows how to solve this, and anyone who claims they do is lying,” Díaz-Cayeros said. “But the right has been particularly successful in making a claim that they know how to do it better,” promising that mano dura will control the violence.

He also pointed to what Latin American democracies have achieved. Over the past two decades, countries across the region reduced extreme inequality through conditional cash transfers embraced by governments of both left and right. And when roughly eight million Venezuelans fled the Chavista regime, neighbors absorbed them: the Dominican Republic took in two to three hundred thousand, and Ecuador about half a million.

Yet governments have failed on basic health services and decent education, and citizens notice. On Brazil, Díaz-Cayeros contrasted Lula’s transformative first presidency, which opened universities to Afro-descendant Brazilians and expanded poverty programs, with a current term that has “not a lot to show.” Many Brazilians, he said, are rightly asking what democracy has brought them in the last four years. “Can’t a political system find a younger politician that appeals to voters?” he asked, a question he said applies to the United States as well.

Finally, he warned against reading authoritarianism through a Cold War lens. Venezuela under Delcy Rodríguez and Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega show that “authoritarianism doesn’t seem to have a political color. The destruction of democracy is equally possible by someone on the right and someone on the left.”

Europe: volatility, the cordon sanitaire, and a representation gap on immigration

Why do voters who feel unheard turn to leaders who are often corrupt and fail to deliver, Satz asked. Grzymala-Busse noted that no politician advertises themselves as corrupt. Populists run on a critique of the elites who came before, and in Europe they have often been able to deliver material gains. Fidesz “very ably targeted” vast EU subsidies to rural Hungary and made good on its promise to raise living standards. “That house of cards collapsed because the government was so corrupt. But for 16 years, it worked.” Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) government benefited from EU funds in the same way.

Asked whether Europe faces a long period of alternation between liberal and illiberal governments — as with Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic and Robert Fico in Slovakia, both of whom lost power and returned — Grzymala-Busse distinguished between East and West. Since 1989, post-communist Europe has had the highest electoral volatility of any region, including Latin America, so today’s swings partly continue an old pattern.

Western Europe faces a different problem: the elite cordon sanitaire. Outside Italy, where Giorgia Meloni governs, mainstream parties in Austria, Germany, and France have agreed to keep far-right populists out of power. “That bargain has held so far,” she said, “but when you have 30, 40 percent of the population voting for the AfD, how sustainable is that? How democratic is it to keep out of power the party that won the plurality of the vote?” The Alternative for Germany began in the early 2010s as an economists’ party opposed to the Greek bailout before an internal coup turned it into a nationalist, anti-immigrant force.

On immigration, she cited polling conducted with the Hoover Institution this summer. The top issue for European voters is not immigration but “public services and the economic situation — they care about the same stuff that voters everywhere care about.” Immigration, however, is the issue on which voters feel least represented. Supporters of center-right and center-left parties alike see their parties as far to their left; only right-wing populist voters feel aligned with their party.

She added that disinformation, much of it seeded by Russia, China, and Iran, takes hold because “the uptake is domestic.” In Europe, populists in power can also capture public broadcasters, as in Poland, where the equivalent of NPR “became a government propaganda channel.”

Rebuilding democracy is possible

How do democrats rebuild once they return to power? Grzymala-Busse contrasted Poland and Hungary. In Poland, Donald Tusk’s coalition defeated PiS in 2023, but a president from the illiberal camp has vetoed reform after reform. The sharpest problem is the judiciary, where the previous government appointed roughly a third of the judges. “They need to be dealt with democratically,” she said. “You cannot reestablish democracy through anti-democratic means.”

Hungary is “a much simpler story.” Péter Magyar and the Tisza party won a landslide and a parliamentary supermajority, and they are reversing Fidesz’s institutional changes while the EU releases more funds. “But that’s not really a lesson for other countries,” Grzymala-Busse cautioned, “because very few of them enjoy that kind of absolute landslide victory.”

Asked what citizens and institutions can do, she offered two lessons:

• Citizens must keep demanding and participating. “Autocrats really benefit from popular indifference, from popular alienation, and above all from popular despair.” Illiberal incumbents are defeated through landslides that cannot be denied.
   
• Oppositions must make corruption concrete. Calling a government anti-democratic “doesn’t get us very far.” What works is telling citizens that “this government’s corruption is costing you” better schools, better roads, and a better life.

Satz pressed further: democracy is not only an instrument for delivering goods but has value in itself, because it gives people control over their lives. Díaz-Cayeros agreed that this liberal dimension is what has been lost. Majoritarian impulses have eroded the sense that an independent judiciary or electoral authority matters “just because the people have voted.”

Grzymala-Busse said European democrats have succeeded by framing liberal values in patriotic terms: abandoning checks and balances is a betrayal of national history, and attacking the free press is an outrage “in the birthplace of the freedom of speech.” In the American context, she suggested, the equivalent message is that dismantling checks and balances or going after the media is un-American.

Díaz-Cayeros raised a further concern for the United States: its outsized influence on Latin American elections. In Peru and Colombia, he said, voters described how President Trump’s endorsements on Truth Social created echo chambers around favored candidates. He also warned about unregulated platforms. In Brazil, evidence suggests that anti-Bolsonaro outlets were disproportionately left exposed to cyberattacks, and the Facebook page of one of the last human rights organizations operating in El Salvador has been down for weeks.

How bad could it get?

To close, Diamond asked both speakers to look over the horizon. What if Marine Le Pen wins the French presidency and the AfD performs nationally as it has in eastern German states? What if Flávio Bolsonaro returns to power, pardons his father?

Grzymala-Busse was cautiously optimistic that Europe will not repeat the 1930s. Then, voters faced a choice between anti-democratic options on the far right and the far left, and the economic situation was far worse. Today, parties legitimate themselves through elections. Meloni also offers another path: “someone who makes very extreme statements while campaigning, but then once in office” governs as a conservative without violating democratic norms.

Díaz-Cayeros likewise doubted that Latin America would return to the era of military dictatorships and mass disappearances. The Bukele regime in El Salvador “is as bad as it can get,” he said, but Brazil’s federalism, vibrant civil society, and fifty-year human rights legacy make that model unlikely there. His greatest concern was global rather than national: “The Amazon is a humanity commons,” he said, and the world “should not let Flávio Bolsonaro burn the Amazon.”

Satz closed by returning to Grzymala-Busse’s call to demand and participate. Reining in illegitimate power, she said, depends on citizens who know their rights and refuse to feel hopeless or helpless.

The Reimagining Democracy series continues next week, when Brandice Canes-Wrone of the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions and Didi Kuo of CDDRL will discuss money, parties, and political reform.

Key takeaways

Listening to Grzymala-Busse and Díaz-Cayeros side by side, I came away with a few lessons that cut across both regions and that are extremely informative for those fighting for democracy anywhere.

1. Backsliding grows out of three gaps. Democracies falter when they fail to deliver, when mainstream parties ignore the issues voters care about most, such as immigration in Europe and crime in Latin America, and when majorities stop valuing courts, electoral bodies, and a free press. Illiberal leaders don’t create these gaps; they exploit them.
    
2. Illiberal governments can deliver, for a while. Orbán held power for sixteen years in part because EU money let him raise living standards. Warning that he was undemocratic did little. What finally hurt him was corruption that voters could see and feel.
    
3. Reversal requires decisive wins. Hungary is rebuilding quickly because Tisza won a supermajority. Poland is stuck because the illiberal camp still holds the presidency. A narrow victory may be enough to take office, but not to repair institutions, and repair has to happen by democratic means.
    
4. Society sets the floor. Díaz-Cayeros believes Brazil will not become El Salvador because of its federalism, its vibrant civil society, and its strong human rights tradition. These structures decide how far a democracy can fall. They can’t be built in a crisis, though, so the time to raise that floor is while democracy is still healthy.
    
5. Recovery is not permanent. Babiš, Fico, and possibly Flávio Bolsonaro show that defeated illiberal movements return when restored governments disappoint. Lula’s second term is a warning: democrats must keep delivering and renewing their leadership.
    
6. Democracy must be argued for, not assumed. The speakers pointed to strategies that work: making the costs of corruption concrete, framing checks and balances in patriotic terms as part of national identity, and taking on hard issues without abandoning liberal principles.

In summary, democracy came back when broad coalitions won convincingly on concrete grievances and then governed well enough to keep their majorities. Above all, as Grzymala-Busse put it, autocrats benefit from indifference and despair. Democracy's most important resource is citizens who keep demanding and participating.

On Thursday, April 16, Daniel Kelemen (UC Merced) and CDDRL predoctoral fellow Hanna Folsz discussed the consequential outcome of the April 2026 Hungarian election: the victory of Peter Magyar’s Tisza Party over Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz Party in a Rethinking European Development and Security (REDS) seminar co-hosted by the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law and The Europe Center.

Daniel Kelemen opened the talk, first offering an overview of Viktor Orbán's rise to power. In 2010, Orbán won Hungary’s nationwide election with over two-thirds majority, a majority large enough to allow him to amend the constitution. Having suffered an electoral defeat in the past, Orbán worked to centralize his power. He captured referees — courts and independent bodies — seized control of the media, and demonized and undermined the opposition. Orbán effectively changed the rules of the game, tilting the electoral playing field. 

Kelemen states that there are cases in which smaller authoritarian groups within a larger system are tolerated or protected by national parties because they deliver votes. Orbán operated with the support of Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor of Germany, who largely stopped the EU from taking action against Orbán. Orbán’s party, the Fidesz Party, was a part of Merkel’s EU-wide party, the European People’s Party (EPP), a center-right, Christian party. This support, along with the emigration of dissatisfied voters and continued funding from the EU, helped Orbán stay in power. 

However, Orbán’s Fidesz Party was kicked out of the EPP in 2021. Merkel, who was a strong supporter of Orbán, left office in 2022. Orbán’s policy also became more extreme, raising more concern from European member states. In 2022, the EU Commission cut funding to Hungary, suspending 32 billion euros. Kelemen identifies this suspension of funds as an effective step against Hungary’s regime. 

Kelemen then outlined the implications of Orbán’s fall for Hungary, the EU, and international actors, including Russia and the United States. For Hungary, it means full regime change, as the Tisza Party will likely take efforts to undo Orbán’s autocratic policy changes. For the EU, it means that policy on Ukraine and Russia will be different, because Orbán was using his veto to prevent support for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. For the US and Russia, Russia lost its supporter and ear in the EU, and the Trump administration lost its closest ally in Europe. On a global note, Orbán was a key figure in trying to bring together far-right populists. After he was kicked out of the EPP, he formed a more autocratic-focused party called MEGA (Make Europe Great Again). 

In a recent REDS (Rethinking European Security and Development) seminar co-hosted by Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) and The Europe Center (TEC), Professor Kim Lane Scheppele offered a clear and urgent account of a growing crisis inside the European Union (EU): the erosion of democracy within some of its own member states. Her central claim was that the EU now faces two different democracy deficits. The first is the traditional, institutional problem — often described as the EU being “too technocratic” and “too distant” from voters. The second, and far more dangerous, is the rise of internal democratic backsliding, where member states that were once consolidated democracies begin to dismantle their own checks and balances.

Scheppele began by explaining the older, familiar form of the democracy deficit. Many key EU institutions — the European Commission, the Council, and the European Court of Justice — are not directly elected. The EU historically justified this by assuming that democratic legitimacy flowed upward from its member states. As long as all national governments were democratically elected and accountable at home, the EU’s supranational structure remained legitimate.

But this assumption has collapsed. Over the past decade, some member states, most notably Hungary, and, until recently, Poland, have shifted away from liberal democracy while still enjoying full voting rights and benefits inside the Union. Scheppele emphasized that the EU’s treaties never anticipated a scenario in which a member might stop being a democracy yet continue to shape EU policies, budgets, and laws.

The heart of the talk outlined how Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán gradually transformed into what scholars call an “electoral authoritarian” regime — a system that holds elections but systematically tilts the playing field. Scheppele detailed how Orbán’s government captured the Constitutional Court, restricted judicial independence, took control of public media, pressured private media owners, rewrote electoral laws, weakened civil society, and used EU development funds to reward loyalists. Despite this, Hungary still nominates a European Commissioner, sends Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) elected under unfair conditions, and holds veto power in the Council of the EU.

Scheppele explained why the EU’s main disciplinary tool, Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, proved ineffective. Article 7 is designed to sanction members that violate EU values, but the final step requires the unanimous consent of all other member states. Hungary and Poland protected each other for years, making sanctions impossible.

A major turning point came when the EU created three financial conditionality systems: the Rule-of-Law Conditionality Regulation, the Recovery and Resilience Fund, and the Common Provisions Regulation. Unlike Article 7, these tools allow the EU to freeze funds when a member state violates rule-of-law standards. Scheppele noted that these mechanisms froze €137 billion for Poland and €36 billion for Hungary — pressures that contributed to Poland’s democratic opening in 2023 and helped fuel a new political challenge to Orbán.

Still, problems remain. In late 2023, the European Commission released €10.2 billion to Hungary for geopolitical reasons, despite rule-of-law violations. Scheppele warned that such political bargaining undermines the credibility of the new system.

She ended on a cautiously optimistic note: recent EU court decisions suggest that democracy itself, not just technical legal standards, may soon become an enforceable EU obligation. Yet the ultimate question remains one of political will. The EU now has tools to defend democracy from within — but must decide whether it will use them.

In a REDS Seminar co-sponsored by CDDRL and The Europe Center (TEC), Cornell Assistant Professor of Political Science Bryn Rosenfeld explored a compelling question: Why do people in authoritarian regimes take bold political actions — such as protesting, voting for the opposition, or criticizing the government — despite the threat of severe consequences? Her research highlights the role of emotions, particularly anger, in motivating these high-risk decisions and provides fresh insights into the dynamics of dissent under repressive regimes.

Rosenfeld challenged the common assumption that high-risk political activism requires strong organizational ties, such as membership in activist groups or networks. While this holds true in some cases, she argued that recent civic uprisings in authoritarian regimes often involve ordinary individuals — novices with no prior links to organized activism. These participants act despite the threat of repression, presenting a puzzle for traditional theories of political participation.

Central to Rosenfeld's argument is the critical role of emotions in shaping political behavior. Authoritarian regimes often use repression as a tool to silence dissent, but her findings show that this strategy frequently backfires by triggering anger. When people experience acts of repression — such as arrests or violence during protests — they often view these actions as deeply unjust, fueling their anger. This anger reduces fear of risks, shifts focus from personal consequences to collective grievances, and creates a sense of urgency to act. As a result, anger motivates bold political actions like protesting or voting against the regime. In contrast, fear amplifies the perception of danger, discourages action, and reinforces passivity. Rosenfeld’s work demonstrates how anger can transform repression into a catalyst for resistance, showing that attempts to suppress dissent often inspire even greater mobilization.

Her research is grounded in extensive data collected between 2021 and 2023 in Russia, a period marked by significant political upheaval, including the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, widespread protests, and the invasion of Ukraine. Through surveys and experiments, she measured participants’ emotions, risk attitudes, and political intentions in response to different scenarios. Participants exposed to information about repression reported higher levels of anger, which translated into a greater willingness to protest or take other political risks. For example, participants in the repression treatment group showed significantly higher risk acceptance scores than those in the control group, highlighting anger’s pivotal role in driving political action.

Rosenfeld’s findings have far-reaching implications. They challenge the assumption that repression is an effective tool for silencing dissent, showing instead that it often fuels resistance by mobilizing anger and encouraging the acceptance of risk. Her work also explains why ordinary citizens — those without activist ties — sometimes take extraordinary risks to stand up to authoritarian regimes. By focusing on the interplay of emotions and risk, Rosenfeld underscores the paradox of repression: rather than quelling dissent, it can inspire ordinary people to take extraordinary risks in the pursuit of justice. Anger, often seen as a destructive force, emerges in her work as a powerful driver of political change.