The authoritarians examined in this study are pursuing a comprehensive set of illiberal policies that are contesting democracy in practical terms, as well as in the broader battle of ideas. Increasingly sophisticated and backed by considerable resources, these efforts are challenging assumptions about the inevitability of democratic development.

• Democracy Redefined: Leading authoritarian regimes are working to reshape the public understanding of democracy. A redefined and heavily distorted version of the concept is communicated to domestic audiences through state-dominated media. Especially on television, these regimes put forth a dual message that stresses their own achievements while belittling the core institutions of genuine democracy, which is often kept at arm’s length with the appellation “Western.” In Russia, the authorities have placed a chokehold on independent media and systematically shut out foreign news broadcasts. Meanwhile, using its own tightly controlled domestic media, the Kremlin pumps out ideological smokescreens—national renewal, historically indiscriminate nostalgia, anti- Western xenophobia, and the curious notion of “sovereign democracy,” which essentially provides a semantic shell for each authoritarian ruler to fill as he pleases. A similar usurpation of the term democracy by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) complicates domestic arguments about its political system. President Hu Jintao’s report to the 17th Party Congress used the words democracy and democratic some 60 times. Russia and China are working to muddy the waters abroad as well. The CCP plans to spend billions of dollars on expanding its overseas media operations, and Russia Today, the Kremlin’s relatively new international television outlet, had benefited from more than $100 million in funding as of May 2008. Venezuela and Iran, both of which consider themselves democracies of a sort, have also launched international broadcasting platforms.
• Internet Under Threat: The leading authoritarians—particularly in China, Iran, and Russia—are using advanced and well-funded techniques to subvert legitimate online discourse. In addition to controlling access through physical, economic, and technological means, these regimes have enlisted loyal commentators and provocateurs like the “Fifty Cent Party” in China and the “Brigades” in Russia to overwhelm or disrupt undesirable discussions. Furthermore, they use draconian laws to punish outspoken online critics and discourage any who might emulate them. Both Iran and China earned a Not Free ranking in Freedom House’s recent analysis of internet freedom, and Russia was not far behind. These activities cast doubt on the prevailing assumption that the internet will inevitably serve as an open forum for the free exchange of ideas and the organization of constructive grassroots activism. Even in Pakistan, where the government has only occasionally engaged in crude attempts to block opposition or separatist websites, the fallout of authoritarian rule has arrived in the form of the Taliban and other extremists, who actively use the internet to coordinate their activities, attract recruits, and spread their antidemocratic ideology.
• Authoritarian Foreign Aid: These regimes are using soft-power methods to advance their interests internationally, particularly through billions of dollars in no-stringsattached development aid. Chinese leaders enunciate a doctrine of win-win foreign relationships, encouraging Latin American, African, Asian, and Arab states to form mutually beneficial arrangements with China based on the principle of noninterference. As part of this strategy, the win-win philosophy is implicitly contrasted with that of the West, which Beijing portrays as pushing a self-serving and alien “democracy agenda” onto developing nations. The Chinese aid program appears to attract willing recipients; the World Bank estimates that China is now the largest lender to Africa. Russia, Iran, and Venezuela have similarly used their oil wealth to build foreign alliances and bankroll clients abroad, particularly in their home regions. This unconditional assistance—devoid of the human rights riders and financial safeguards required by democratic donors, international institutions, and private lenders—is tilting the scales toward less accountable and more corrupt governance across a wide swath of the developing world.
• Rules-Based Organizations Under Siege: At the regional and international level, these authoritarian regimes are undercutting or crippling the democracy-promotion and human rights efforts of rules-based organizations including the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Organization of American States (OAS). In the European context, Russia and its allies in the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have pressured the OSCE to move away from election monitoring, the promotion of democratic standards, and the observance of human rights, and urged it to focus instead on economic, environmental, and security issues. Russia has also blocked reform within the European Court of Human Rights. The OAS has been a target of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who has obstructed almost any initiative that promotes democracy or human rights, and has apparently cowed other delegates with his threats to withdraw from the organization. These regimes have also worked—in some cases cooperatively—to blunt criticism, block proposed sanctions, and advance antidemocratic measures at the United Nations. The governments of Venezuela, Russia, and China have been particularly active in creating new institutions to serve as counterweights to existing rules-based multilateral organizations.\
• Illiberal Education—Tainting the Next Generation: By either actively promoting or encouraging the presentation of history through a strongly nationalistic or extremist lens, authoritarian regimes are inculcating in the next generation attitudes of hostility toward democracy and suspicion of the outside world. In China, regime-authorized textbooks stress the theme that calls for expanded human rights are an instrument in the West’s grand design to “keep China down.” History courses ignore or explain away the dark chapters in the country’s decades of Communist rule, including the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen massacre of 1989. In Russia, textbooks introduced at the Kremlin’s direction depict Stalin as one of the country’s greatest leaders and suggest that the Great Terror was simply a product of the times. In Iran, school textbooks seek to perpetuate the regime’s theocratic ideology and promote an intolerant and illiberal view of the world, while many of Pakistan’s thousands of madrassas teach children to demonize all who do not subscribe to an extreme interpretation of Islam.