Strategic Democracy Initiatives

The international development community has long operated under two assumptions about democratization. The first is that building democratic institutions is a gradual process requiring technical assistance delivered steadily over generations. The second is that democracy can develop to a threshold at which it grows irreversibly consolidated.

For more than a decade now, these assumptions have been overturned by the rise of rulebreaking autocrats.In the current sharply contested political environment, powering durable democratic development often requires big-bang moments when countries enjoy historic surges in political will for reform—typically after voters, protesters, and other engaged citizens take down a notorious autocrat. And as demonstrated repeatedly in recent years, both fledgling democratic institutions and those based in long-established democracies come under threat from domestic and foreign autocrats who reinforce each other’s efforts to undermine free and fair democratic processes and the rule of law in their own countries and abroad.

As autocrats collaborate across borders, so, too, must civic actors collaborate to defend and advance democracy, mobilizing faster than the traditional pace of international development assistance. GMF’s Strategic Democracy Initiatives (SDI) surges analytical resources by conducting research and building coalitions to transfer lessons learned from other embattled democracies to strategically pivotal national civic reform movements. In doing so, SDI works closely with local civil society experts, government reformers, and international partners across three lines of effort:

• Tracking and analyzing threats to the rule of law, fair elections, and other critical institutions and processes amid democratic backsliding. SDI experts have researched these issues as they play out in Russia, Turkey, Georgia, Moldova, Hungary, Poland, the United States, and elsewhere.
• Recommending policy reforms to prioritize during openings. The team’s policy research focuses on governance reforms institutionalized in Ukraine since 2014, and more recently in Moldova, Poland, and Brazil.
• Aligning domestic and international stakeholders on reform priorities, action strategies, and support needs. SDI uses GMF’s transatlantic platform to connect civic actors with their foreign and domestic partners by building and hosting coalitions dedicated to democracy issues in linchpin countries.

The brave and hard work of defending and accelerating democratization—through processes that are manipulated and contested by insidious autocrats—is spearheaded by local civil society actors and other engaged citizens. At SDI, it is our honor to walk with these civic heroes, learn from their successes and setbacks, and share their lessons with other champions of democracy.