Reports and Publications

We have created and contributed to a variety of reports and publications across themes of election interference, disinformation, cyber security, and democracy. Please find below a selection of these below.

For further information, please contact [email protected].

Memo on an "Economic Article 5" to Counter Authoritarian Coercion

The world's democracies need a way to fight back against coercive economic actions by authoritarian governments, argue Ivo Daalder and Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Increasingly, authoritarian countries are using economic coercion against democracies. In recent years, China’s economic coercion of Lithuania and Australia stands out as a prominent example. Russia uses economic levers to achieve geopolitical aims, notably by weaponizing its natural resources. The aim of such coercion is to bend the will of democratic countries. This is a test for the free world.

In response, they propose an Economic Article 5 among democracies to counter authoritarian coercion.

Read the full memo, here.

Hostile Influence Operations Ahead of French Elections

On 31 March 2022, the Alliance of Democracies Foundation and the Paris Peace Forum co-hosted - with the support of Microsoft’s Democracy Forward Initiative – a private expert roundtable to exchange on hostile influence operations ahead of the 2022 French presidential and legislative elections.

The discussions focused on identifying the main trends and challenges regarding foreign hostile interferences in the French electoral process in 2022, both in terms of cybersecurity and informational threats. Check out our analysis that was conducted in light of recent and past democratic elections, as well as lessons learned from those elections on how best to protect them.

Report

An Alliance of Democracies: From concept to reality in an era of strategic competition

By Ash Jain, Matthew Kroenig, and Jonas Parello-Plesner

This is the third in a five-part series of Atlantic Council publications calling for the United States and its allies to revitalize the rules-based international system and establish new institutions to strengthen cooperation among democracies to succeed in an era of strategic competition.

The first, Present at the Re-Creation: A Global Strategy for Revitalizing, Adapting, and Defending a Rules-Based International System, sets forth an overarching global strategy for the United States and its allies that focuses on the need to strengthen cooperation among democracies, while simultaneously seeking to engage other global powers in areas of common interest.

The second, From the G7 to a D-10: Strengthening Democratic Cooperation for Today’s Challenges, proposes the creation of a new D-10 as a core group of leading democracies to develop joint strategies for addressing today’s most pressing global challenges.

This report makes the case for an Alliance of Democracies and draws on relevant sections from these two publications.

Read the full report here.

Report

Election Risk Monitor – Germany 2021

The Alliance of Democracies Foundation and its Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity (TCEI) have now released a condensed summary of the most important foreign and domestic interference activities in the context of the recent Bundestag's election: the “Election Risk Monitor – Germany 2021”.

Based on the key findings from the German election, we want to look ahead and discuss how the EU and its member states can further shape our digital societies in the coming years while at the same time protecting them against attacks from the outside as well from the inside. With a heavy European digital agenda in place for the upcoming year, ranging from the DSA, the recent draft on transparency for political advertising, and the strengthened EU Code of Practice on Disinformation, we want to put our findings in the larger context of how the EU and its Member States can improve the protection of election integrity in the digital age.

Read the full report here.

2020

Report

The Alliance of Democracies Foundation  launches its Election Risk Monitor addressing the 2020 parliamentary elections in Georgia (Europe). The report examines Georgia’s persisting vulnerabilities against foreign election meddling through the lens of four key aspects: disinformation in social media, the level of media literacy of Georgian citizens, the state of election related cyber security and foreign links into party funding.

Even the report concludes that these elections have not seen a major overt interference operation, it clearly discloses the system of subliminal infiltration established by pro-Kremlin proxies which impacted this pivotal elections.

With this report, the TCEI evaluates its engagement in Georgia as the facilitator of the Pledge for Election Integrity, the gold standard of ethical and transparent election campaigning in the digital age. Assessment of the parties’ adherence to the decent and transparent campaign principles is one of the objectives of the report.

Key recommendations:

- Secure the “guardian role” of the Georgian parliament
- Strengthen the system of oversight and prosecution on illegal and foreign funding of party finances
- Enhance state cyber defense capacities
- Improve the level of digital media literacy on election interference and disinformation
- Continue and expand civil resilience against election interference
- Ensure more transparency through the cooperation with Social Media platforms

Read the full report here.

Alliance of Democracies joins call to Defend Democracy

The Alliance of Democracies joins more than 500 political, civil leaders, Nobel Laureates and pro-democracy institutions that have signed an open letter to defend democracy, warning that the freedoms we cherish are under threat from governments that are using the crisis to tighten their grip on power.

Read the full Call to Defend Democracy here

For more information, visit www.idea.int

On Thursday, June 18th the Copenhagen Democracy Summit hosted Dr Kevin Casas-Zamora, Secretary-General, International IDEA and other democracy partners to discuss the current issues affecting today's democracies. 

Watch the full session here

Article

The need for an Alliance of Democracies to lead a new world order

Latest article by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Chairman of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation, Prime Minister of Denmark (2001-2009) and Secretary General of NATO (2009-2014).

Democracy is in decline around the world, and Covid is accelerating the fragmentation of the post-World War Two rules-based order. Our inability to see this bigger picture has given succor to autocrats who understand how our collective freedom has become subservient to petty self-interests.

The free world needs urgent reinforcement and renewal around its common principles of freedom, democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. A new world order centered around an alliance of democracies is the best way to prevent the decay of multilateralism. It would create a global ecosystem for freedom and democratic revival through more open trade, investment, intelligence sharing, and support for emerging democracies.

Read full article here

Report

Latest report on Disinformation, Deepfakes & Democracy

The digitalization of society has brought plenty of new opportunities, but also poses a number of questions to our democracies. While it has enabled more people to participate in the political debate, democratized the supply of information and led to positive grassroot engagement, it has also created substantial loopholes which has allowed foreign actors to manipulate and exploit the new communications ecosystem up until today. Ever since the US presidential elections in 2016, democratic governments, social media platforms and academics around the globe have discussed how to best mitigate these negative effects to democracies in the digital age.

Our new report Disinformation, Deepfakes & Democracy, part of the collaboration with Microsoft, explores the issue by providing an in-depth explanation of how and why new information technologies challenges our democracies. Author and research fellow Christoffer Waldemarsson addresses the question of "What can be done to mitigate the effects of disinformation campaigns?" by mapping out the European response to digital election interference and the voluntary measures taken by social media platforms, as well as providing recommendations for governments or policymakers. The report also explain how deepfakes, a way to digitally fabricate video and audio of for example prominent politicians, can put our free and democratic elections in danger.

Read more

2018

Foreign Policy Research Institute

Jack Tomarchio: Making Democracy Great Again

Board Member of the Center for Expeditionary Economics, Jack Thomas Tomarchio, reflects on the 2018 Copenhagen Democracy Summit: It wasn’t the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and it wasn’t meant to be. Bono wasn’t there, nor was Beyoncé, but former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were. The event was the first Copenhagen Democracy Summit held on June 22, 2018. No glam, no glitz, just serious policy discussions from an array of former and current world leaders to discuss the precipitous slide in democracy and democratic values the world over.

Read more

Opinion

EU needs election-meddling stress tests

Commissioner for the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity Marietje Schaake writes for EU Observer about the need for methodical stress tests at the EU level in order to better understand Europe's preparedness for the upcoming 2019 European Parliament elections.

Read here