How the U.S. Can Still Defend Democracy: Global Lessons on Building Broad Coalitions

Signs of public dissent have begun to grow in the United States from many different corners. People are mobilizing in the streets, in statehouses, in places of worship, and in town halls against perceived corruption, fear of interruption of government services, and democratic backsliding. From Tesla showrooms to courtrooms, Americans are rising to defend specific laws and legal rights. Many are frustrated by the lack of meaningful response from either political party in Congress and the absence of leadership and an alternative vision from the Democratic Party.

But protest alone is not enough to secure democratic change. Defending democracy requires broad coalitions committed to protecting universal rights, impartial justice, and constitutional order. And when transformative change is needed, it cannot be imposed unilaterally on a deeply divided population.

Global examples offer lessons for the United States. They show the importance of building broad coalitions of political leaders, civic organizations, and everyday citizens who unite not around shared ideologies, but around a common commitment to the republic’s well-being.

Three lessons emerge from these examples: coalitions should cross partisan divides to form coalitions for elections, coordinate organizations in different industries to resist intimidation, and mobilize protests with specific, unifying demands.

Lesson 1: Broad, cross-partisan electoral coalitions can defeat democratic backsliders.

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When a backsliding leader or party begins to limit rights or the rule of law, research shows the best option is to assemble an electoral coalition that encompasses a wide ideological range. Around the world, opposition coalitions that unite early had far greater success defeating authoritarian-leaning incumbents in elections.

One example is Brazil’s 2022 presidential election. Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva rallied a large and diverse alliance, including parties from the political far left, center-left, and center-right, to challenge Jair Bolsonaro. The leftist Lula chose Geraldo Alckmin as his running mate, a center-right leader he had defeated in the 2006 presidential election. This move drew in many moderates who might not have otherwise supported Lula’s Workers’ Party. In the runoff election, academics, economists, and former political rivals rallied behind Lula’s message of hope and the need to defend democracy to defeat Bolsonaro.

In the U.S., a similar coalition would include Democratic factions, disaffected Republicans, and independents. It would include all those who care about defending constitutional democracy and personal liberties.

But the U.S. also requires a vision for such a coalition. It must make a substantive case for democracy: one where freedom, liberty, and the rule of law form the basis for a system that works for everyone. It cannot simply be a negative coalition against the incumbent. But even more, people are not sufficiently motivated to defend democracy in the abstract; instead, they react when specific rights or benefits affecting their personal lives or those they know are affected, and this can be the catalyst to a broader coalition protecting rights, accountability, and the rule of law.

Lesson 2: Coordination across sectors is essential to resist bullying tactics.

Authoritarian regimes have perfected the art of intimidation and fear. Where they were successful in intimidating and dividing their subjects, they succeeded in weakening or destroying democracy and the rule of law. Where people have been able to resist—with legal resistance, allies from home and abroad, and mass public support—they have been successful in defying intimidation and fear.

The democracy-attacking tactics follow a pattern. First, governments sue journalists and media organizations for criticizing, “insulting” or “defaming” the president. Ecuador’s Rafael Correa used this strategy frequently, targeting individual journalists with unfounded defamation suits and removing government advertising from newspapers, crippling them financially.

Second, governments target universities for hosting dissenting voices or controversial debates. Hungary’s Viktor Orban hounded out of the country the Central European University, founded by Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros in 1991 to teach democracy and free market values to Europeans who had been under Soviet occupation and influence until then.

Third, civic watchdogs who monitor government actions and transgressions and lawyers and judges who defend citizens and their rights face legal and financial crackdowns. In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, have long targeted civic groups, including election monitors, anti-corruption groups, and human rights groups. They controlled access to justice for their adversaries by packing the courts with loyalist judges, dismissing independent judges, appointing new ones on a provisional basis so their tenure is not secure, and controlling the entities that promote and monitor judges.

The solution is not to hunker down and hope one won’t be targeted. Nor is it to negotiate, lobby, or capitulate in isolation for the benefit of one’s own organization. Above all, the solution is not to voluntarily comply in advance with orders that are illegal, unethical, or harmful.

The solution is to coordinate, strategize, and resist collectively. It is to publicize the assaults and welcome support from other sectors and the public at large. It is to act politically—building alliances in red and blue states and mobilizing solidarity across sectors.

Lesson 3: Protests are most effective when they have specific demands and unite broad sectors of society.

Mass protests often start with a specific issue, such as a rise in transport costs or citizens not receiving intended benefits, and then escalate to demand the removal of the government. Sustained, broad-based, peaceful protests with a specific demand can pressure governments to change course.

In Israel in 2023, mass protests forced the government to pause drastic judicial reforms. Groups mobilized not just political opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but also members of the military reserves, tech sectors, law firms, the bar association, and watchdog groups to warn about the negative consequences of the reforms. Far from a simple democratic rallying cry, which is vague and ineffective, protests need to identify specific harms to rights, liberties, the rule of law, or the delivery of government services, and translate these to explicit demands for change.

Protests can give political parties, courts, universities, and corporations the courage to act. Senegal is an example where citizens demanded that their institutions defend their democratic rights. In Senegal in 2024, mass protests erupted around President Macky Sall’s attempts to delay elections and potentially seek an unconstitutional third term, while leading opposition candidates were barred from contesting the elections. Public pressure was at a peak when the Constitutional Court asserted its authority ultimately forcing elections to proceed, maintaining constitutional order—paving the way for an opposition victory.

Unity in Liberty and Law

When a constitutional democracy is threatened, broad movements must form and act urgently to defend it and improve it. They must rise above short-term partisan or organizational interests to unite business leaders and employees, labor unions, legal associations, academics, and community groups across partisan and policy differences. Only after democratic principles and the rule of law are defended can the country return to debating legitimate policy differences under free and fair political conditions in the future.

Jennifer McCoy is Regent’s Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University and a Nonresident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Rachel Beatty Riedl is the Peggy J. Koenig ‘78 Director of the Center on Global Democracy and a professor of Government at Cornell University's Brooks School of Public Policy.