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

Beijing has revived the practice of coerced pub-
lic “confessions” and escalated its surveillance
of the Tibetan and Uighur minorities to totalitar-
ian levels; and Azerbaijan has made the Aliyev
family’s monopoly on political power painfully
obvious with the appointment of the president’s
wife as “first vice president.”

• Modern authoritarian systems are employing
these blunter methods in a context of increased
economic fragility. Venezuela is already in the
process of political and economic disintegra-
tion. Other states that rely on energy exports
have also experienced setbacks due to low oil
and gas prices, and China faces rising debt and
slower growth after years of misallocated invest-
ment and other structural problems. But these
regimes also face less international pressure to
observe democratic norms, raising their chanc-
es of either surviving the current crises or—if
they break down—giving way to something even
worse.

In subsequent sections, this report will examine the
methods employed by authoritarian powers to neu-
tralize precisely those institutions that were thought
to be the most potent weapons against a revitalized
authoritarianism. The success of the Russian and
Chinese regimes in bringing to heel and even har-
nessing the forces produced by globalization—digital
media, civil society, free markets—may be their most
impressive and troubling achievement.

Modern authoritarianism is particularly insidious in its
exploitation of open societies. Russia and China have

both taken advantage of democracies’ commitment to
freedom of expression and delivered infusions of pro-
paganda and disinformation. Moscow has effectively
prevented foreign broadcasting stations from reach-
ing Russian audiences even as it steadily expands the
reach of its own mouthpieces, the television channel
RT and the news service Sputnik. China blocks the
websites of mainstream foreign media while en-
couraging its corporations to purchase influence in
popular culture abroad through control of Hollywood
studios. Similar combinations of obstruction at home
and interference abroad can be seen in sectors in-
cluding civil society, academia, and party politics.

The report draws on examples from a broad group
of authoritarian states and illiberal democracies, but
the focus remains on the two leading authoritarian
powers, China and Russia. Much of the report, in
fact, deals with Russia, since that country, more than
any other, has incubated and refined the ideas and
institutions at the foundation of 21st-century author-
itarianism.

Finally, a basic assumption behind the report is that
modern authoritarianism will be a lasting feature of
geopolitics. Since 2012, both Vladimir Putin and Xi
Jinping have doubled down on existing efforts to
stamp out internal dissent, and both have grown more
aggressive on the world stage. All despotic regimes
have inherent weaknesses that leave them vulnerable
to sudden shocks and individually prone to collapse.
However, the past quarter-century has shown that
dictatorship in general will not disappear on its own.
Authoritarian systems will seek not just to survive, but
to weaken and defeat democracy around the world.

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