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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians

ereignty, they are aligning themselves with a Russian leader who has sought to dominate neighboring states and who regularly invokes his country’s imperial and Soviet past. Putin has refused to apologize for Russia’s historical subjugation of Central and Eastern Europe. He has defended the Soviet Union’s occupations as necessary to secure its national interests, and denounced the movement of former Soviet bloc countries to join the EU and seek protection in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Far-right parties apparently see Putin not as a threat to national security, but as an exemplar of their own nationalist values. Like him, they hope to build a strong national state without regard for international agreements, domestic checks and balances, or fundamental human rights. Putin’s contempt for democracy carries no stigma among these parties, for which elections and civil liberties are purely instrumental. While Le Pen, Wilders, and their ilk need elections as a means of gaining power and a free press to convey their arguments, they are hostile to the extension of rights to immigrants and minorities, and unenthusiastic about independent courts that might block their initiatives. To the extent that the EU enforces democratic norms in its region, Putin and Europe’s far right have a common enemy in Brussels.

Flacks for autocrats
Paul Manafort, a Washington lobbyist and consultant, had a long career of work for leading Republicans, including presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan. But by the time he became Donald Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, Manafort was best known for his work on behalf of foreign political leaders, including several with distinctly autocratic pedigrees: Ferdinand Marcos, the strongman of the Philippines until 1986; Mobutu Sese Seko, the kleptocratic dictator of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo; Sani Abacha, a Nigerian military ruler; and Viktor Yanukovych, president of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014, when he was forced to abandon the presidency and flee to Russia in the wake of nationwide protests.

Manafort’s work to dress up the images of Marcos and Mobutu stood out at a time when American consultants seldom represented dictators or authoritarians. In the 1980s, U.S. political operatives with experience in major campaigns were expanding their clientele to include foreign governments and political parties, though usually in democratic settings.11

By 2005, when Manafort signed on to work with Yanukovych, political consultants, public relations specialists, and blue-chip law firms were earning fees paid by a majority of the world’s autocracies, dictatorships, and illiberal regimes. Some, especially Middle Eastern monarchies, are American allies. But others are hostile to democracy and regard the United States—and often the EU—as adversaries. The lobbyists and spin masters they employ are not located exclusively in the United States. Authoritarians with the requisite means and interests have hired representatives in London and Brussels as well as Washington and New York.

Lawyers and consultants often represent dictatorships indirectly, through state-owned enterprises. A number of China’s state businesses have hired legal and political consultants in major democracies, as have state energy corporations in oil-rich countries like Azerbaijan, Venezuela, and Angola.

But authoritarian governments generally seek the assistance of global public relations companies in the wake of repressive crackdowns at home or acts of aggression against neighbors. During Manafort’s relatively brief tenure with the Trump campaign, it emerged that several American firms had been contracted to discourage Congress from criticizing the Yanukovych government for its jailing of Yanukovych’s 2010 presidential campaign rival, Yuliya Tymoshenko. That effort failed, as members of Congress and the American media made Tymoshenko’s fate a crucial criterion in their assessment of Yanukovych’s record.12 Manafort had more success in his earlier work to prepare Yanukovych for his candidacy in 2010. Ukrainian observers credited the American adviser with smoothing Yanukovych’s rough edges, convincing him to stay on message, and reminding him that it was important to assure U.S. and European audiences that he was committed to democracy and the fight against corruption.13

In 2016, Reuters reported that five global public relations firms had competed for a contract to improve China’s image abroad. The planned campaign would presumably repair reputational damage caused by the Chinese government’s intensifying domestic repression, its aggressive territorial policies in the South China Sea, and a push by Chinese companies to acquire crucial assets in democratic countries. The firms that participated in the public relations audition were Hill+Knowlton, Ogilvy, Ketchum, FleishmanHillard, and Edelman. According to the Reuters account, the firms were asked to give a presentation “on China’s most pressing image problems and demonstrate their expertise on managing new forms of media.”14

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