Autocratic Resilience in the Multipolar Age

Donald Trump’s rise in the United States drew fresh attention to democracy’s global decline, but the trend long predates his presidency. Many observers contend that democracy is in retreat worldwide, pointing to authoritarian regimes’ growing agility in adapting their tools of control and to democracy’s waning appeal. Yet this account often overlooks how shifts in the international order bolster autocratic resilience. We argue that democratic backsliding is intimately linked to a drift toward multipolarity—one that enables Western strategic indifference or even complicity towards democratic backsliding, broadens the political and economic lifelines available to such regimes, and intensifies regional conflicts that further entrench them. We substantiate our argument with cases from the West and beyond, consistent with our claim that these dynamics are global and can erode even established Western democracies.