Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The Biden administration is using the democracy summity to try to set out an agenda to renew democracy, both globally and also in the United States.
The summit’s overall tone should avoid embracing the divisive “democracies vs. autocracies” rhetoric which will keep Latin American governments from engaging in any meaningful way, considering their concern of needlessly antagonizing important economic partners such as China.
When the summit wraps up, people will be quick to judge the impact of the gathering and make broader pronouncements about what it means for global democracy. But evaluating the vitality of Biden’s democracy agenda based on this single summit would be premature.
Equally important, however, is an issue that has not been as widely publicized: That a country considered an especially permissive location for the facilitation of organized crime, corruption, and illicit finance now sits atop the world’s leading global law enforcement agency.
Open questions remain on how all the worthy technical assistance initiatives announced with the summit will be underpinned by U.S. diplomatic leverage, economic pressure, and even security assistance-related policies, in key countries, in the months and years to come.
As U.S. President Joe Biden convenes this week’s Summit for Democracy, governments around the world are gearing up to participate—or not. Here’s what some global players are looking for.
With a deft literary hand, Klaas describes how positions that offer power and possibilities for enrichment feature incentives that attract the wrong sort of people.
Alongside its traditional external democracy support, the EU needs to begin drawing on lessons and influences from other countries to help address Europe’s own democracy problems.
The collapse of centrist parties in Chile’s elections this weekend reflects the demise of the country’s democratic model. Long seen as one of Latin America’s most stable democracies, Chile’s capacity to overcome its polarization could have resounding effects in the wider region.
Yet such promises amount to little more than window dressing meant to assuage international critics. The Brazilian government’s pledges made in Glasgow cannot be taken seriously for a simple reason: they would hurt Bolsonaro’s chances to win re-election next year.