Policy Briefs on Global Challenges to Democracy

This report outlines the paradoxical situation that Gaza finds itself in, at once in the worst position since 1948 with no political clout yet with unparalleled global expressions of solidarity. With geopolitical deadlock and the widening of the conflict, prospects of an end to Israel’s destruction of Gaza are as distant as ever. But momentum for a ceasefire, and even statehood, would likely be stronger were Palestinian political factions not themselves still divided.

This report summarizes the key discussions and outcomes of the 2025 annual meeting of the Toda Peace Institute’s Global Challenges to Democracy Working Group, held in Geneva on 5–6 June in collaboration with the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peacebuilding (CCDP), Geneva Graduate Institute. The meeting centred on three main themes: the democratic threats posed by Trump’s second presidency, strategies for strengthening democratic resilience, and the Toda Peace Institute’s contributions to this effort —particularly through the Democracy Lighthouse platform. The report captures the group’s shared concerns over democratic backsliding and outlines ongoing initiatives, including a systems map of democratic erosion, research on democratic resilience, and case studies on India and the MENA region.

This policy brief discusses the systematic retreat of the United States from multilateral institutions which threatens global economic reform, coinciding with China's construction of alternative frameworks and rising great-power bilateralism. This leads to a growing incapacity for shared solutions on development finance, climate action, and tax coordination. The analysis identifies three strategic pathways—institutional evolution, adaptive pluralism, and functional cooperation—to preserve multilateral effectiveness. Success depends on recognising structural power shifts, redefining legitimacy through performance, and rebuilding trust by delivering economic justice. Without credible multilateral reform, global systems face cascading failures including debt crises, proliferating tax havens, and inadequate climate adaptation funding. The moment demands bold, inclusive reform or risks a return to systemic economic instability.

This report discusses the rise of transactionalism in the Gulf states' relations with the US, which is set not only to sideline democratic principles, norms, and institutions within Gulf polities, but also within the wider Arab region. Transactionalism in this context favours close American ties with despotic regimes in the Gulf monarchies. The notion of 'democracy promotion in reverse' is introduced in the elaboration of US–Gulf relations in the Trump 2.0 Era. The foreign policies of these authoritarian regimes seem, with the benefit of hindsight and in the context of Arab Spring reforms, to counteract any notion of transformational politics favouring democratization in the rest of the Arab region.

This report provides a comparative perspective on two crucial questions. First, what are the possibilities that the United States might devolve into what political scientists have called a ‘competitive authoritarian regime’—one in which the façade of democratic institutions obscures the reality of political power that cannot be held to account by either constitutional checks-and-balances or by the electorate itself? Second, to what extent can its institutions recover from the damage incurred under Trump 2.0? Few, if any, ‘recovering’ backsliders have regained the level of democratic quality they had achieved prior to the backsliding episode. A likely scenario is one in which a post-Trump democracy would emerge significantly weaker than it was before.