What’s the Biggest Challenge Facing Democracies Today?

Notes from the Athens Democracy Forum

This post is a summary and synthesis of a recent, wide-ranging discussion, sponsored by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, held under the Chatham House Rule at the Athens Democracy Forum, where participants — experts, academics, and policymakers — addressed the pressing question: “What is the biggest challenge facing democracies worldwide today?”

The consensus was that biggest challenge is not a single issue, but rather a convergence of crises where each element exacerbates the others, creating a political climate of profound instability and pessimism. In short, a polycrisis. These, in brief, were seen as the main drivers:

Driver I: The Crisis of American Leadership

The discussion began, inevitably, with America and the specter of Donald Trump. For decades, the United States, whether welcomed or resented, served as the principal promoter and exporter of the democratic model. Today, the fear is that it is becoming the model’s principal saboteur.

One participant noted the psychological shift: “What happens when the country that has long been considered the beacon of democracy, no longer does that, and indeed maybe does the opposite? The global reverberations are going to be devastating.” It’s not just a foreign policy challenge; it’s a global legitimation crisis for democracy itself. If the lighthouse flickers and threatens to go dark, what hope is there for the smaller ships in the storm?

The irony, an African delegate pointed out, is that this sort of crisis is typical of a young democracy. Many Americans forget that the United States, for all its “250-Year-Old Democracy” rhetoric, in fact only achieved something approaching full democracy in 1965 with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Before then, millions were systematically excluded. The jejune nature of American democracy produces a fundamental misunderstanding of what democracy is in many of its citizens. “For many Americans,” one speaker contended, “democracy is just about holding an election. But that’s only the beginning. It’s really about liberal inclusion — the protection of minority rights, the freedom of the press, the rule of law, and the acceptance that the ‘other side’ has a right to exist and participate. When inclusion and basic rights are seen as conditional or up for debate, the system has already failed.”

Driver II: Economic Exclusion

Several contributors highlighted a fundamental driver of alienation: the alignment of political and economic elites.

The political system is increasingly viewed by the populace as a theater where two wings of the same elite bird squabble over procedural details while the fundamental economic structure — which benefits them both — remains unchallenged. This perception is rooted in the reality of economic and social exclusion.

Decades of deindustrialization, wage stagnation, and unchecked financialization have led to massive wealth concentration. When citizens feel “the system is rigged” — that their elected representatives serve capital, not constituents—they lose faith in the core bargain of liberal democracy. They see the institutions not as safeguards, but as mechanisms of control designed to protect the privileged.

“The rise of populism,” argued one panelist, “is less an ideological revolution than a mass cry of rejection against this felt exclusion. It’s a rejection of the elite consensus that preaches globalization and free markets while their communities wither.”

Driver III: Media Concentration in the Hands of Regime Cronies

The third bucket of concern was about the concentrated control of media and information infrastructure. A Hungarian attendee referred to this as “the Orban playbook,” whereby independent media that might be critical of illiberal or authoritarian governments either decided in advance to start complying, or else get financially and legally harassed to the point where they either start complying, or else have to sell themselves to oligarchic allies of the regime.

This playbook is clearly unfolding now in the United States. We have seen some formerly liberal legacy media start complying in advance — like the Los Angeles Times or the Washington Post already in 2024. Others, like CBS, have been forced to pay huge “fines” to the government for acts which under the old order would clearly have been regarded as free speech and then have further agreed to replace the editorial leadership with regime cronies as part of the de facto settlement (hello Bari Weiss, you lioness of free speech!). Yet others, like TikTok, have been essentially pushed into a forced sale, again to a regime crony, in this case the Ellison family. This is the material process that makes possible what the Germans call Gleichschaltung — that is, the systematic “coordination” of the institutions and organizations of public life.

Driver IV: Epistemic Crisis

The erosion of trust manifests first in the personal and institutional spheres, leading to the most profound of the challenges discussed: an epistemic crisis of data and fact.

Loss of trust in institutions, elected representatives, and the press directly translates into the destruction of those institutions. Why respect a court, an electoral process, or a public health mandate if you believe its operators are corrupt, biased, or incompetent?

This institutional distrust is compounded by a deep loss of social/interpersonal trust. The fragmentation of media, driven by algorithmic sorting and echo chambers, means people are literally living in different realities, operating on different facts.

“When people have lost trust in science, in experts, in objective data,” noted a scholar, “we no longer have the shared foundation necessary for public debate. You can’t negotiate a compromise on policy when one side believes the facts you are using are a deliberate fabrication.” This is where the challenge moves beyond politics and into the realm of philosophy: without a shared reality, there is no shared public sphere.

Driver V: Hopelessness

Crucially, the pro-liberal-democratic forces are fighting a purely defensive battle. The conversation returned repeatedly to the notion that antidemocratic forces represent a rejection of a system that everyone knows is broken, which puts prodemocratic forces in the position of defending a failed order.

This is tied to a profound loss of hope in the future and a lack of shared narratives or a vision of what democracy is for.

“The populists and illiberals,” one expert summarized, “offer a clear, simple, even if hateful, narrative: The system is broken, the elites are the enemy, and we will destroy it and restore a mythical past. What is the liberal alternative? Usually, it’s just ‘Stick with the current system, because the alternative is worse.’ That is not a rallying cry. It is a surrender.”

The democratic establishment has failed to articulate a compelling, forward-looking vision that connects democracy to tangible improvements in people’s lives—to better healthcare, less inequality, and a secure future. They defend the structures while ignoring the suffering within them.

Driver VI: Illiberal Strategy vs. Liberal Reaction

A point that galvanized the group was the stark contrast in organization and strategy between the two sides. The conversation noted the high level of coordination among illiberals — citing recent meetings between figures like Meloni, Orban, and Bukele, and instances like Donald Trump openly backing Javier Milei and explicitly framing it as electoral interference an attempt to produce a “positive” electoral outcome. They are actively defining a coordinated, international illiberal agenda.

By contrast, the liberals are totally reactive. They wait for the next crisis, the next outrageous statement, and then issue a defensive, procedural, and largely technical response. They fail to tell a positive story of what liberal democracy offers beyond merely averting a disaster.

This strategic failure is compounded by the fact that people feel unsafe. Whether it’s economic insecurity, concerns about crime, or the perceived chaos of an open society, the illiberals are masters at exploiting the human need for order and security. They present a false promise of a simple, safe, and controlled world, a powerful counterpoint to the apparent complexity and dysfunction of the liberal one.

Driver VII: Elites Who Seek to Rule Without Restraint

The final, and perhaps most disturbing, point raised was the idea that some powerful, non-elected elites are not merely benefiting from the chaos, but actively wishing for the destruction of the institutions.

These elites, whether in technology, finance, or media, see democratic structures—like regulation, the rule of law, and the political power of an informed populace—as limits on their own power. The discussion referenced the explicit rhetoric of figures like Marc Andreessen, who has advocated for an accelerationist, technology-driven future where the old political forms are simply discarded.

“It is a nihilistic impulse,” a participant argued. “It is the desire to destroy institutions and people’s very sense of their own political power so that the powerful can operate entirely without moral or legal restraint. It is a belief that democracy is inefficient, and a benevolent (or at least self-serving) dictatorship of capital and technology is the preferable path.”

The Need for A New Covenant

To me, the main takeaway from all this is democracy is not being defeated by external foes, but by an internal, self-inflicted wound.

The bottom line: Liberal forces must cease simply defending a failed order in the name of democracy, as that will only delegitimate democracy itself. They must build a new covenant — a compelling, inclusive, and forward-looking social vision that proves the democratic system can deliver tangible security, dignity, and a shared future for all its citizens. They must offer genuine hope for the future, that begins with a shared vision that a significant majority can put their differences aside to rally around.

What is called the Far Right is actually a mix of different ideological strands, including techno-oligarchic accelerationists, religious fundamentalists, race and gender reactionaries, xenophobes and ethnonationalists, and others. These people don’t themselves agree on the world they want to create. But what they do all agree on is the first step: tear down as much of the rotten old institutional order as possible. That’s a plausible promise — destroying things is easy — and in many cases they are in fact delivering on it. Until those who favor liberal democracy can’t come up with a plausible story about how they’re going to fix these institutions to produce better results, the illiberal right will continue to gain ground.