At first blush, events of recent days suggest that the democratic world remains in long-term retreat and growing disarray.
President Donald Trump has cozied up to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, helped Moscow fund its attempted conquest of Ukraine by buying Russian diesel fuel, waived US sanctions on Russia, downplayed its human rights horrors in Ukraine, withheld “critical missile supplies” from the Ukrainian government, pressured Kyiv to cede territory as part of a Russia-Ukraine peace deal, and called for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s ouster because he’s prosecuting Ukraine’s war aggressively.
A US-imposed peace that favors Russia (such as the one Washington previously floated) could further democracy’s global decline. It would doubtless embolden an expansionist-minded Moscow, which is already testing Western resolve through cyberattacks, sabotage, military provocations, and other hybrid warfare in Europe. It would also embolden China, North Korea, and Iran, Russia’s partners in an “axis of upheaval” that seek to upend US-led freedom and democracy around the world by promoting an authoritarian alternative.
In addition, Trump’s reported push (in concert with China and Russia) for former Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán to serve as the UN’s next secretary-general would put an authoritarian leader atop the world’s most influential global institution—further emboldening autocrats around the world and sending a disturbing message about the US commitment to promoting freedom and democracy.
But beneath these and other troubling front-page headlines, hopeful signs of a democratic revival are appearing in disparate places such as Hungary, Serbia, Brazil, and Venezuela, driven largely by popular disgust with authoritarian rule and a widespread yearning for self-governance.
These democratic stirrings reflect two facts about democracy worldwide.
First, it has ebbed and flowed in waves over the years, with periods of expansion followed by periods of contraction. Expansions of democracy in the 19th and early 20th centuries, in the early post-World War II period, and for 30 years after the mid-1970s were interspersed with periods of contraction between the two world wars, in the 1960s, and since 2006.
Second, whatever the dispositions of political elites, grassroots democratic activists and the movements they inspire often prove too powerful for even authoritarian leaders to resist. That helps explain why Orbán, who weakened democratic institutions in Hungary while serving as prime minister from 2010 to 2026, was toppled in parliamentary elections, reflecting the popular appeal of democratic rule even in what was a communist Soviet satellite not that many years ago. Orbán’s ouster also came despite Trump’s official endorsement and outright politicking by top US officials.
More recently, Orbán’s demise in Hungary appears to be helping inspire democratic revival elsewhere.
In this month’s parliamentary election in Serbia, which borders Hungary, a student-led protest movement ousted strongman Aleksandar Vucic, who governed in authoritarian fashion and who reportedly considered launching a post-election coup to retain power before others talked him out of it. Showing how events in one country can affect others, Hungary’s new prime minister, Peter Magyar, said student leaders in Serbia told him “how much strength our victory in April had given them.”
In Brazil, incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won a surprise victory that eased fears over threats to that nation’s democracy. In a run-off, he defeated Flávio Bolsonaro, the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was convicted of trying to overturn Lula’s 2022 victory. After initially vowing to challenge the election result over what he described as fraud, the younger Bolsonaro essentially conceded and, under a Supreme Court investigation for alleged financial misconduct and facing possible arrest, has fled Brazil and was granted a visa to enter the United States.
Even in Venezuela, where the United States seized strongman Nicolás Maduro in January to face drugs and weapons charges and his vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, is now serving as acting president, hopes of a democratic revival are rising. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who most observers believe handily defeated Maduro in 2024, has returned home after 11 months in exile. At the same time, and at the urging of US officials, another key opposition figure, Dinorah Figuera, has engaged in talks with the government in Caracas over a timetable for the return of democracy.
No one knows whether the democratic stirrings of late in parts of Europe and South America will mark the end of what Freedom House calls a 20-year decline in political rights and civil liberties around the world. But the April events in Hungary and more recent developments elsewhere show that a determined electorate can overcome even the strong-armed tactics of long-serving autocrats and return power to the people.
Those events, in turn, offer hope that the long-suffering people of such authoritarian countries as Iran, where public protests have grown larger and more frequent in recent years, will eventually find the wherewithal to free themselves from regimes that abuse their rights and offer them little opportunity or prosperity.
Lawrence J. Haas is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and the author of, among other books, Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World. Haas writes widely on foreign affairs, is quoted often in newspapers and magazines, and appears frequently on TV and radio. He previously served as communications director for Vice President Al Gore and, before that, for the Office of Management and Budget.