For almost two decades, democracy has been in retreat across the globe. In 2024, about seventy-two percent of the world’s population lived under some form of autocracy.  Authoritarian leaders around the world are deploying a common set of tactics to consolidate power—subverting judicial independence, eliminating oversight mechanisms, stifling independent media and civil society, persecuting minorities, and corrupting elections.

Autocrats entrench control not only by eliminating domestic checks and balances but also by collaborating and learning from each other. Since 2010, Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, has emulated Vladimir Putin’s illiberal model, capturing the Hungarian judiciary and other independent institutions and controlling the media through oligarchs who are loyal to him, while weaponizing anti-globalization, anti-migration, and anti-LGBTQ propaganda.

Orbán, in turn, has inspired President Trump, who has declared, “There’s nobody that’s better, smarter, or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic.” Kim Scheppele has described how Trump’s second term has followed Orbán’s model of mass civil servant firings and weaponizing the national budget to neutralize resisting institutions dependent on state funding. President Trump’s tactics have been mirrored in the efforts of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to sow distrust in the Brazilian electoral system and discredit the results of the 2022 presidential elections which he lost.

Notably, Trump’s emulation of Orbán is supported by an intellectual strategy. The Heritage Foundation, which prepared Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump’s second term, signed a “landmark cooperation agreement” and holds annual joint conferences with the Danube Institute, a conservative think-tank in Hungary with ties to Orbán’s Fidesz party. Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, has said “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft, but the model.” Chris Rufo, the architect of Trump’s attacks on higher education, spent six weeks as part of a visiting fellowship at the Danube Institute gleaning lessons for American conservatives. Since 2022, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)—an annual political conference attended by US conservatives—has also been hosted in Hungary.  

Paradoxically, autocratically-inclined leaders advocating nationalist agendas appear to be deploying a transnational, internationalist strategy for sustaining themselves. In May this year, CPAC’s annual Budapest conference was attended by Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party leader Alice Weidel, as well as Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch far-right Party for Freedom (PVV). For the first time, CPAC also convened this year in Poland, where U.S. Department of Homeland Secretary Kirsti Noem endorsed Karol Nawrocki, the presidential candidate backed by Poland’s autocratically-inclined Law and Justice party, who later won the election.

This transnational strategy has received a shot in the arm from the Trump administration. In July, the administration announced sanctions against Brazilian Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes who was overseeing the case against Bolsonaro for attempting a violent coup in 2022. President Trump also issued an executive order imposing a 50% tariff on Brazil in retaliation for the case brought against Bolsonaro.

In August, following the Trump administration’s deal with President Nayib Bukele to imprison in a notorious Salvadoran prison non-citizens deported from the US without due process, the U.S. State Department’s Country Report on Human Rights Practices in El Salvador found “no credible reports of significant human rights abuses” in the country. The report contradicted numerous human rights organizations and experts who had documented systematic human rights abuses in the country, as well as its own findings in previous years. Breaking from its historical criticism of prolonged presidential terms in Latin America, the State Department also defended the Bukele-controlled legislature’s removal of presidential term limits while rejecting comparison of the legislative process with “illegitimate dictatorial regimes.”

As autocrats join forces and embolden one another, they are depriving millions of people around the world of their freedoms. At the same time, the common experience of people across national boundaries presents opportunities for learning how to restore democracy, including through collective action. Broad-based, cross-sectoral civil society coalitions in Brazil and Poland, for example, proved crucial in resisting authoritarian advances. To be sure, challenges in those countries remain, and the lessons learned will need to be adapted to countries that differ in material respects. Nonetheless, civil societies—broadly construed—would do well to reach across national boundaries to learn from each other and develop practical tools for defending democracy and the rule of law.