Policy Briefs on Global Challenges to Democracy

This policy brief examines the growing instrumentalisation of legal and administrative mechanisms to target and suppress civil society organisations. Drawing on recent developments in the United States and global patterns of democratic backsliding, it explores how national security and counter-terrorism rhetoric are being repurposed to silence dissent and constrict civic space. The brief argues that this systematic abuse of legal frameworks, now increasingly amplified by artificial intelligence (AI) and digital surveillance technologies, represents an accelerating assault on democratic institutions. It concludes with actionable policy recommendations for governments, civil society, technology firms, and international bodies to resist this trend and defend an independent civic sector.

This report investigates why a mega slum redevelopment executed by Narendra Modi’s key business ally has triggered political opposition and charges of opacity, arbitrariness, and cronyism. The development threatens to uproot people from the city and banish them to its peripheries as Mumbai’s turn to capitalist urbanism intensifies along with the suppression of its discontents. Fears of dispossession loom as the authorities decide who belongs and who doesn’t—mirroring the wider nativist politics of Hindu supremacism, fused with unfettered neoliberalism.

This policy brief examines how sophisticated rhetorical strategies—combining overt divisive messaging with coded extremist language—operate across multiple communication levels to legitimise violence and undermine democratic institutions. Drawing on recent research in political psychology, comparative analysis of global democratic backsliding, and evidence from successful counter-messaging initiatives, it proposes a comprehensive framework for protecting democratic discourse. Traditional responses such as fact-checking and moral condemnation have proven inadequate against sophisticated extremist communication strategies that exploit emotional and identity-based appeals. Success requires coordinated international action across civil society organisations, educational institutions, technology companies, government agencies, and the business community.

This report examines the alarm felt in Aotearoa New Zealand during the first seven months of the second Trump administration as an autocratic President has managed to undermine basic democratic values and institutions, show open disdain for multilateral organisations, and do harm to global trade through his tariff policy. These developments challenge New Zealand’s deeply held political principles and values as well as a long tradition of empathetic and compassionate politics. This is a moment for co-operation rather than competition, and for building solidarity between progressive social democratic movements and polities all around the world.

This report examines the consequences for India of a second Trump presidential term. With his steep tariffs and cheap insults, Trump has eroded a decades-old Indian public consensus of a pro-America policy and revived old animosities towards the US. If an estranged India’s strategic engagement with America and the democratic world loosens, it can only be more bad news for its troubled democracy. Not that America has ever seemed to care about Modi’s assaults on democracy, or he, about its sensitivities.