With U.S. democracy support receding, progressive leaders from Spain and Latin America have pioneered a global initiative to combat backsliding. Can it succeed?
As U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration have dismantled international democracy support over the past ten months—gutting aid programs, withdrawing from multilateral agreements, and transforming the U.S. from a standard-bearer of global democracy into a case study in democratic backsliding—world democracies have struggled to formulate a collective response. Reports have been authored, statements issued, and joint letters signed—but real action remains limited. Of these efforts, the most organized so far is In Defense of Democracy: Fighting Against Extremism, a bloc of “like-minded democratic states” convened by the progressive leaders of Spain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay to “advance an active democratic diplomacy” in the face of institutional erosion.
In Defense of Democracy has met three times since Brazilian President Lula da Silva and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez launched the initiative at the 2024 UN General Assembly, citing the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack and the 2023 Brasília attacks as their catalyst. That inaugural summit featured an array of democratic leaders—including progressives from Norway, Timor-Leste, and Senegal, as well as centrist and center-left figures such as Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau—and touched on themes familiar to democracy watchers everywhere: ideological extremism, institutional distrust, and affective polarization, among others. Mostly, participants seemed preoccupied with making sense of the crisis at hand. “Where,” Lula asked in his final remarks, “did democracy go so wrong?”
The subsequent In Defense of Democracy meetings have answered this question with growing clarity—or at least more ideological certainty. In their joint statement at the follow-up summit in Santiago in July, Lula, Sánchez, Chilean President Gabriel Boric, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and Uruguayan President Yamandú Orsi repeatedly invoked “big capital” and “austerity policies” as the principal causes behind the demise of the democratic consensus. Although their course of action appeared vague, they showed little doubt that future democratic consolidation would be led by “progressive leaders.” The September gathering at the UN General Assembly opening reflected as much: Gone were the moderate figures of the original quorum, replaced by a uniform front of left-wing leaders, including representatives from Albania, Bolivia, and Honduras.
