Thomas Carothers is director of Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program.
Carothers is a leading authority on comparative democratization and international support for democracy, human rights, governance, the rule of law, and civil society. He has worked on democracy assistance projects for many organizations and carried out extensive field research on aid efforts around the world.
He is the author or editor of ten critically acclaimed books and many articles in prominent journals and newspapers, including most recently, Democracies Divided: The Global Challenge of Political Polarization (Brookings Press, 2019, co-edited with Andrew O'Donohue). He has been a visiting faculty member at the Central European University, Nuffield College, Oxford University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS.
Prior to joining the Endowment, Carothers practiced international and financial law at Arnold & Porter and served as an attorney adviser in the office of the legal adviser of the U.S. Department of State.
What can the elections of 2024 tell us about the state of democracy worldwide? Sophia Besch sits down with Thomas Carothers to unpack key theories and narratives shaping our understanding of this pivotal election year.
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The disparate cases and hard questions of interpretation underline the need for nuance.
More than 160 significant anti-government protests erupted around the world this year, according to Carnegie’s Global Protest Tracker, with many driven by voting-related grievances.
If Trump’s new administration were to walk away from all elements of global leadership, U.S. democracy support would evaporate. More likely, however, is that Trump’s second presidency will see various shifts in U.S. global engagement but hardly a full abrogation.
Democracies the world over are not being undone by disenchanted citizens but by leaders with predatory political ambitions that use all opportunities to defy constraints to their power.
Some contests have been depressing spectacles of authoritarian control, while others offer a brighter snapshot.
Backsliding is less a result of democracies failing to deliver than of democracies failing to constrain the predatory political ambitions and methods of certain elected leaders. Policymakers and aid providers seeking to limit backsliding should tailor their diplomatic and aid interventions accordingly.
Despite a favorable political environment in recent years on both sides of the Atlantic for close European-U.S. cooperation on international democracy support, only policy convergence has been achieved.
Democracies are divided
Responding to rising autocratic assertiveness and an ongoing democratic recession, the Biden administration has advanced multiple new policy and aid initiatives to support democracy globally. An examination of its efforts reveals six main elements, each of which embodies a complex mix of promising opportunities and nagging dilemmas.
