STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Executive overreach and foreign aid funding cuts during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first six months in office have hurt international democratization efforts and encouraged populist leaders around the world, an intergovernmental democracy watchdog said on Thursday.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) said it issued 20 alerts between January and April 2025 – twice as many as in any of the previous two full years – documenting instances in which the U.S. government eroded rules, institutions and norms that shape the country’s democracy.
It named efforts to restrict academic freedom, criminalize protest activity, question the legitimacy of certified elections, selectively restrict media access to the executive and circumvent normal due process.
“In less than six months, U.S. domestic political institutions have also lost much of their symbolic sheen, increasingly serving as a reference point for executive overreach and offering more encouragement to populist strongman leaders than to pro-democracy hopefuls,” IDEA said in its annual Global State of Democracy report.
The Trump administration has frozen and then cut back billions of dollars of foreign aid since taking office, saying it wants to ensure U.S. taxpayer money goes only to programs that are aligned with Trump’s “America First” policies.
The cutbacks have effectively shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, a move that could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal.
IDEA’s report also showed its global democracy index declined for a ninth consecutive year in 2024. Some 54% of countries went backwards in 2024 versus five years earlier in at least one of the IDEA’s key indicators, which range from credible elections to freedom of expression.
Last year’s electoral “super-cycle” – when around 1.6 billion people globally cast ballots – saw the indicator for credible votes fall to its worst in 30 years, with declines in a fifth of the 173 nations surveyed.
“To fight back, democracies need to protect key elements of democracy, like elections and the rule of law, but also profoundly reform government so that it delivers fairness, inclusion and shared prosperity,” the IDEA said.
(Reporting by Johan Ahlander in Stockholm; Editing by Nia Williams)
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