MAGA's war continues wearing down democracy and the rule of law

The experts at the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg keep tabs on global democracy. Its annual 2026 report (full report here), Unraveling The Democratic Era?, assess the US situation to be a major deterioration of democracy in the last year. The report asserts that the US Liberal Democracy Index score fell 24% in one year. The US dropped from rank 20 to 51 out of 179 countries. The V-Dem report refers to the rate of cratering of US democracy as "unprecedented". US democracy is currently deteriorating much faster deterioration than any other democracy in modern times.

The report also notes that democratic backsliding is happening in all well-established democracies. But US democracy is deteriorating at unprecedented speed. The American collapse includes authoritarian attacks on what is left of independent media and journalists. That is also happening worldwide.  

In addition to the backsliding into tyranny and corruption by the US and democracies that emerged from authoritarianism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, countries that were autocratic or authoritarian are experiencing a deepening of autocracy into more brutal forms of tyranny.

Despite that trend of rising global tyranny, the annual analysis indicates that 18 nations are currently democratizing. That includes Brazil and Poland continuing their democratization processes despite efforts to sabotage and reverse democratization by tyrants like Trump and Putin. In most of these countries, media freedom has improved.