For most of the past thirty years, democracies’ approach to international cooperation rested on a quiet assumption: that democracy would keep spreading, and that global institutions would increasingly reflect liberal values. That assumption no longer holds. After a decade of democratic backsliding, autocracies now outnumber democracies and are no longer marginal players in global governance; they have become central actors able to shape institutions, norms and outcomes.
In a new policy brief, we argue that this shift is transforming global governance in ways that are easy to miss, because it rarely takes the form of dramatic, headline-grabbing ruptures. Instead, it works through three slower developments, each posing a distinct challenge for democratic policymakers.
Institutional drift
Autocratic and backsliding governments rarely need to “take over” international organisations (IOs) to change what they do. They reshape them from within, adjusting what gets prioritised, who gets heard, and which standards are enforced. We call this institutional drift: the formal mandate stays intact, but the practice of cooperation quietly shifts. The UN Human Rights Council is a telling example. Its mandate is unchanged, yet as its membership has come to include more backsliding and autocratic states, the share of members willing to vote to condemn violations has steadily declined since 2006. The mechanics are familiar: illiberal governments build coalitions, reframe civil and political rights as Western interference, and lean on consensus and veto rules to stall scrutiny — Russia’s 2012 “Traditional Values of Humankind” resolution was an early marker. Drift also works through the machinery of access: in 2016 the UN’s NGO accreditation committee rejected the Committee to Protect Journalists, with Azerbaijan, China and Russia voting to keep it out — and when civil society is shut out, the transparency channels that make IOs valuable to democracies erode with it.
Informal governance
A growing share of international cooperation now happens outside formal treaties and institutions — through clubs, networks and flexible platforms such as BRICS and the G20. These can be genuinely useful, lowering the cost of coordination when formal bodies are gridlocked. But the same features that make them flexible — weak rules, consensus decisions, limited transparency — also let states “customise” their commitments and dodge the legal and reputational constraints of formal institutions. That makes them attractive to autocracies seeking to advance norms like non-interference and sovereignty absolutism without putting them to a vote. And because these venues look technical or temporary, they draw less scrutiny from parliaments, media and civil society — creating blind spots in democratic oversight while illiberal norms diffuse through them.
Backlash at home
The third development plays out inside democracies themselves. Foreign policy in democracies depends on public support, and citizens in democracies do not judge all cooperation equally. They are markedly more willing to back cooperation with fellow democracies, and more sceptical — sometimes outright hostile — when the partner is an autocracy. Democratic partners are even cut more slack when agreements run into trouble, while the same behaviour from an autocratic government is judged more harshly.
This matters because cooperation is rarely friction-free, and many of the problems that need cooperation the most — climate change, armed conflict, large-scale displacement — increasingly require working with autocratic states. As those states become more central to global governance, democratic leaders may find their domestic room for maneuver shrinking at exactly the moment when sustained cooperation is most necessary.
What democratic policymakers should do
None of this means liberal norms are doomed. But it does mean they can no longer be assumed to hold on their own; they have to be actively defended, both inside institutions and in public debate at home. We recommend three priorities.
Coordinate inside IOs. Democracies should align positions earlier, jointly defend monitoring mechanisms, and treat civil society access as a strategic interest, not a courtesy. The aim is not to split the world into rival democratic and autocratic clubs — mixed-membership institutions are still where most problems get solved and walking away just hands agenda-setting power to illiberal actors.
Engage informal governance on clear terms. Withdrawal from informal cooperation cedes ground to authoritarian actors; uncritical participation risks legitimising illiberal norms. The better course is to treat informality as a contested space and work to embed accountability mechanisms — transparency policies, civil society access — into these platforms wherever possible.
Make the case for cooperation at home. Citizens’ scepticism is not fixed: support rises sharply when cooperation is tied to concrete security and economic interests. That calls for honest communication about why engagement — including, at times, with autocracies — is necessary, and what the costs of not cooperating would be.
The rise of autocracies is not ending international cooperation — but it is changing whose interests and values that cooperation reflects. Democratic governments can still defend liberal norms and shape what comes next, if they act decisively and together.
This post summarises the policy brief, “The rise of autocracies and the transformation of global governance” (May 2026). The full brief, with sources and references, is available here.
