Rule of Law Resilience for Populist Times
By
By
Elizabeth Andersen[1]*
The rule of law is in decline and authoritarianism on the rise globally. This multi-year trend has affected all regions of the world and rich and poor countries alike. According to the World Justice Project’s (“WJP”) 2024 Rule of Law Index, since 2016, 77% of countries studied—home to 6.3 billion people—have seen a decline in the rule of law.[2] A noticeable feature of this period of authoritarianism is that most of the transitions have occurred through democratic means, with would-be autocrats winning free and fair elections and then weaponizing legal institutions and processes to consolidate power, undermine rule of law, and rule by law. Put simply, authoritarianism is remarkably popular. This article grapples with this phenomenon, posits explanations for the public’s underappreciation of the norms and institutions of good governance, and identifies strategies for building constituencies willing to stand up for the rule of law.
The article is organized in four sections. First, it provides a working definition of the rule of law and explains its conceptual relationship to “democracy” and “access to justice,” which are also addressed in this Symposium. Second, it presents quantitative and qualitative data on current trends in the rule of law and the rise of authoritarianism in particular. Third, it posits factors contributing to autocratization and its popularity at the ballot box. Finally, it identifies three strategies for rule of law resilience in the face of these trends: improving civics education; strengthening transparency and accountability for key institutions, particularly courts; and expanding access to justice, including through the transformation of justice institutions and justice services.
For purposes of this discussion, I will use the definition of the rule of law that is propounded by the World Justice Project, drawing on research on the development of the concept in multiple legal traditions and peer reviewed by scholars across the globe.[3] It conceptualizes the rule of law as “a durable system of laws, institutions, norms, and community commitment that delivers four universal principles: accountability, just laws, open government, and accessible and impartial justice.”[4] The Project elaborates these principles further. “Accountability” means that “[t]he government as well as private actors are accountable under the law.”[5] “Just law” requires that “[t]he law is clear, publicized, and stable[;] is applied evenly[; and] ensures human rights as well as property, contract, and procedural rights.”[6] “Open government” encapsulates the principle that “[t]he processes by which the law is adopted, administered, adjudicated, and enforced are accessible, fair, and efficient.”[7] Finally, “accessible and impartial justice” means that “[j]ustice is delivered timely by competent, ethical, and independent representatives and neutrals who are accessible, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities they serve.”[8]
This definition largely corresponds to those embraced by the United Nations (“UN”) and the U.S. federal judiciary.[9] It is what is sometimes referred to as a “thick” definition, going beyond the mere existence of laws constraining the exercise of power to incorporate certain substantive rights protections through those laws.[10]
This Symposium focuses on the relationship between the rule of law, access to justice, and democracy, and this paper makes the case for access to justice and rule of law strategies that can strengthen democracy. It is therefore important to dwell briefly on the distinctions and relationships among these concepts.
Though often uttered with a single breath and even used interchangeably in public discourse, the “rule of law” and “democracy” are conceptually distinct. Democracy is a system of government based on the will of the people, generally captured through electoral processes. As one set of scholars has explained, it determines who exercises power, whereas rule of law determines how that power is exercised.[11] Effective democracy requires the rule of law to guarantee trustworthy electoral processes, and some scholars have incorporated the rule of law into their definition of democracy.[12] At the same time, the rule of law is conceptually agnostic as to regime type and does not necessarily require democracy. In principle, a benign dictator could respect the rule of law. In practice, however, democracies are more likely to afford the checks and balances, rights protections, and participatory processes envisioned in a thick notion of the rule of law. In this way, it is appropriate to understand democracy and the rule of law as distinct but complementary.
Similarly, the rule of law and access to justice should be considered as related but separate ideas. The rule of law—at least the thick version adopted by the World Justice Project and used in this paper—incorporates accessible and impartial justice as a core element. Yet this is a narrow conception of access to justice, focused on the capacity, orientation, and effectiveness of courts and other mechanisms to meet people’s needs for dispute resolution. Recent years have seen a broadening of our understanding of access to justice. Led by Rebecca Sandefur and other scholars participating in this Symposium, we have come to appreciate that ensuring access to justice may extend far beyond the legal norms and institutions associated with the rule of law.[13] It may, for example, focus on addressing root causes of people’s justice needs and preventing their justice problems or conflicts from arising in the first place. Conceived in this way, access to justice is a broader idea, strengthened by a robust rule of law, but often requiring more than laws and legal institutions and actors to realize it fully. It is this broader conception of access to justice that is critical to the democratic resilience strategies outlined in this article.
For nearly a decade, the world has been mired in a global rule of law recession. The WJP Rule of Law Index marks 2016 as the beginning of this recession, with a majority of countries registering declines in the rule of law every year since.[14] The Index measures eight factors of the rule of law: constraints on government powers, guarantees against corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice.[15] Since 2016, a significant majority of countries have seen declines in all of these factors except order and security.[16] Declines are particularly widespread for the factors measuring constraints on government powers, corruption, fundamental rights, and the functioning of justice systems.[17] Analysis of WJP data over this period shows that constraints on government powers and fundamental rights are the factors that are the most significant drivers of the rule of law recession.[18] These factors, which measure rights of expression, assembly, and association, as well as checks on executive authority by judiciaries, legislatures, independent audit agencies, media, civil society, and elections, are the Index metrics most closely associated with safeguarding democracy and checking authoritarianism.[19] Thus, the current rule of law recession has manifested as an erosion of democracy and rising authoritarianism.
Other indices confirm these findings. Every year since 2005, the rule of law indicators published by Freedom House have shown more countries with declining rule of law than those improving.[20] Similarly, after tracking positive rule of law trends in the first two post-Cold War decades, since 2013, the Varieties of Democracy Institute (“V-Dem”) has found a majority of countries with declining rule of law every year except two.[21] According to V-Dem’s 2024 Democracy Report, in 2003, thirty-five countries were democratizing and eleven autocratizing; by 2023 the trends had flipped, with eighteen democratizing and forty-two autocratizing.[22]
Prior waves of authoritarianism were often characterized by abrupt state capture through coups or revolutions, but the current trend is gradual. Contemporary autocratization often commences through free and fair elections and advances through normal legislative processes. Scholars have documented autocrats across multiple jurisdictions taking similar steps to gain power through democratic elections, followed by systematic steps to shut down opposition and consolidate control. This authoritarian playbook commonly features attacks on independent courts and mechanisms of accountability, systematic control of the media, harassment of civil society, and manipulation of electoral processes.[23] The result of this process in country after country has been the installation of an authoritarian regime with limited checks by the judiciary and other independent mechanisms, a captured media, and cowed civil society.[24]
Once such a regime is in place, rule of law degradation accelerates, and even if regime change is achieved, recovery is slow and difficult. Analysis of the WJP Rule of Law Index data for 2015 through 2022 found that “rule-of-law backsliding was more pronounced in countries that were already authoritarian and where the rule of law was already weak (i.e., Belarus, Cambodia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) or in countries that have been exposed to emerging leaders with authoritarian tendencies (i.e., Brazil, El Salvador, Hungary, Poland, Philippines, Turkey).”[25] The data suggest that there is a tipping point in the erosion process, where suddenly democracies fall off a cliff and into an authoritarian abyss. Moreover, the growing number of authoritarian regimes is contributing to an erosion of the liberal international order as autocrats increasingly capture and manipulate regional and global institutions that might otherwise check their rule.[26] As Gregory Shaffer and Wayne Sandholtz argue in the introductory essay of their new book on these national and international rule of law dynamics, “the combination and enmeshment of populist, authoritarian trends within states and shifts in global power toward authoritarian states will reshape international law and institutions, which, in turn, could further support authoritarian practices within states.”[27]
A particularly challenging aspect of the current pattern of autocratization has been that strongmen are often securing their power through legal—not extra-legal—means, entrenching gains through legislation and constitutional amendments that are hard to reverse consistent with rule of law principles.[28] Poland offers a current, poignant example. Following almost a decade of increasingly authoritarian rule, liberal democratic reformers won parliamentary elections and formed a government in October 2023, but they have struggled to introduce rule of law reforms in the face of a veto threatened by a president beholden to the prior regime.[29] The reformers confront an acute political dilemma: the public that elected them is increasingly impatient with the slow pace of reform, while the opposition claims its efforts to restore the rule of law are violating it.[30] The Polish reformers are not alone in this challenge. The 2024 V-Dem Democracy Report identifies nine countries experiencing a democratic revival following a period of autocratization, and it finds just three of these nine have fully recovered to the levels of democracy experienced before autocratization.[31] These data underscore the importance of halting the authoritarian contagion before it spreads further and deeper and becomes all the more difficult to reverse.
A vexing aspect of the current wave of authoritarianism has been strongmen victories at the ballot box, through free and fair elections and in established democracies. Certainly, some autocrats have seized power (and certainly held onto it) through rigged elections, coups, or extra-legal power grabs, but a remarkable number have come to power through regular democratic processes in which they made their authoritarian intentions clear. Political candidates with an authoritarian bent have found a winning strategy in employing populist rhetoric to demonize institutions that uphold the rule of law as captured by self-dealing and out-of-touch elites.[32]
Put simply, authoritarianism is popular. A 2023 Pew Research Center study of attitudes in twenty-four countries found that majorities in most countries favor representative democracy, but a significant minority (median of 31%), and in some countries a majority, favored strongman rule.[33] Lower income and less-educated populations are more likely to favor authoritarianism.[34] In some countries, the data also show differences in support for authoritarianism among different age groups.[35] Younger respondents in the United States, India, and Australia are much more likely than those over fifty to support undemocratic governance, while in Greece, Japan, and South Korea, older citizens are more comfortable with authoritarianism.[36] The Pew study aligns with a 2023 poll conducted in thirty countries by the Open Society Foundations (“OSF”), finding a significant majority of respondents prefer democracy, but on average 20% favored authoritarian regimes to meet people’s needs.[37] Moreover, among the Open Societies Barometer respondents, on average across the thirty countries studied, 35% among those eighteen to thirty-five favored authoritarian rule, as compared to just 26% among those fifty-six and older.[38] As the report authors concluded, “although most people globally still have faith in democracy, that faith is running on fumes . . . [and] may be set to weaken with each generation.”[39] Any strategy to reverse authoritarian trends must grapple with these facts, understand why people are drawn to authoritarianism, and find ways to build new constituencies for the rule of law.
The answer to those questions is complex and context-specific, depending on a complicated set of factors that vary across jurisdictions. Nonetheless, the data point to two factors over the past two decades that in many countries have likely been major contributors to waning support for democracy and the rule of law institutions that sustain it. The first is the degraded state of the information ecosystem that undermines people’s understanding of, appreciation for, and trust in institutions and renders them vulnerable to disinformation. The second is economic inequality and hardship, and the perceived failure of democracy to provide people with opportunities to get ahead and otherwise achieve just outcomes.
Once heralded as a boon for democracy, the internet and social media have presented unforeseen and unprecedented challenges to the information ecosystem so critical to people’s trust in and support of democratic institutions.[40] In the internet age, the demise of the legacy media and the shared narrative it provided, coupled with the rise of fake news and disinformation, has made citizens vulnerable to polarizing and populist messages that undermine the credibility and authority of institutions, including, perhaps most significantly, institutions that uphold the rule of law. The Edelman Trust Barometer, which has surveyed publics across the globe for over twenty-five years, has found a persistent decline in trust in institutions over this period.[41] According to the 2025 report, “the multi-decade erosion of trust in institutions has turned into an avalanche.”[42] The report identifies erosion in trust in media and “the battle for truth” as a major contributing factor.
Institutions that uphold the rule of law, such as courts, independent audit agencies, and prosecutorial authorities, have been significant targets of disinformation and have struggled to promote a balanced understanding of their work in this context. For example, a 2024 World Justice Project report on the rule of law in the United States found a marked decline in trust in justice institutions, especially courts, and respondents’ views sharply divided along partisan lines.[43] In his 2024 year-end report on the U.S. federal judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts cited disinformation (along with violence, intimidation, and threats to defy lawfully entered judgments) as one of four serious threats to the independence of the judiciary.[44] The Chief Justice cites partisan disinformation about the factual or legal basis of adverse rulings as well as a growing threat from foreign actors that hack judicial systems, leak information, and spread disinformation to sow polarization and discord.[45] Similarly, in a 2024 report, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, drawing on examples from numerous countries across the globe, expressed concern about attacks on judges and lawyers that go beyond appropriate critiques of decisions to include ad hominem personal attacks on judicial actors.[46]
As the WJP definition reminds us, the rule of law requires not just laws, institutions, and norms, but also community commitment to a system of governance by law.[47] That community commitment relies on a common understanding of and appreciation for the role of rule of law institutions. In the age of disinformation, sustaining that shared commitment is challenging, creating an opportunity that autocratic leaders have exploited to discredit institutions and garner support for their authoritarian alternative.
While disinformation has played a major role in undermining rule of law and building support for authoritarianism, it is only part of the story. It is too easy to explain away the strongman’s appeal as a function of disinformation: if only those voters knew better! Rather, there is a real grievance behind their rejection of liberal democracy, and it is these factors to which I now turn.
A second significant factor fueling the popularity of authoritarianism in recent years has been the failure of liberal democracy to deliver on its promise of economic opportunity. Against the backdrop of the global financial crisis and Great Recession of 2008, as well as the multi-decade trend toward increased inequality within many countries across the globe, those left behind have been most likely to find authoritarian alternatives to liberal democracy appealing.
Polling data indicates that strongman rule is more popular in lower income countries, as well as among lower income people within many countries.[48] As illustrative, the Pew Study cited above found authoritarianism favored among 47% of UK respondents with income below the median, as compared to 27% of those with income at or above the median.[49] In the same vein, the Edelman Trust Barometer has tracked a persistent, significant trust gap between the highest and lowest income respondents across twenty-one countries.[50] The 2023 Open Societies Barometer found that survey respondents on average have greater faith in democratic governments to deliver what citizens need, but a significant minority favor authoritarian regimes for creating jobs (27%) and growing the economy (31%).[51] Similarly, significant proportions of 2023 Open Societies Barometer respondents said human rights are important, but in nearly every country studied, greater proportions chose economic and social rights over civil and political, digital, or environmental rights, as most important to them and their communities.[52]
Such economic considerations may weigh heavily in people’s regime preferences at a time when many face economic hardship. When asked which national problems were most likely to affect them personally, the largest share (21%) of Open Societies Barometer respondents cited “poverty and inequality.”[53] Across the thirty countries surveyed, 49% said they had struggled to feed their families in the past year.[54] Economic hardship may also help explain the relative popularity of authoritarianism among young people, who have come of age amidst the economic shocks of the 2008 crisis and the global coronavirus pandemic.[55]
Justice institutions cannot be blamed for the economic dislocation that is giving many people doubts about liberal democracy. Nonetheless, the data suggest they are not helping much nor providing voters with reasons to stand by them in the face of authoritarian attacks. Numerous studies over the past decade have highlighted the massive gap in access to justice around the world. A 2019 WJP study found 5 billion people globally with unmet justice needs, including unmet civil and administrative legal needs (1.4 billion), victims of unreported non-violent crime (1.1 billion), those employed in the informal sector (2.1 billion), and those lacking proof of legal identity (1.1 billion) or legal land or housing tenure (2.3 billion).[56]
Legal needs surveys in many jurisdictions consistently find that everyday civil legal problems, such as those relating to money and debt, housing, family issues, and consumer disputes, are highly prevalent, with nearly half of respondents globally reporting such a problem in the past two years.[57] These legal problems negatively impact people’s lives: 29% of respondents to a global WJP survey reported their legal problem contributed to a negative health consequence while 23% had to change employment or relocate.[58]
Such legal deprivations are often overlapping and disproportionately affect low-income and marginalized populations.[59] WJP analysis of legal needs surveys in 104 countries found that in the vast majority of countries, poor people are more likely to have legal problems, less likely to obtain redress, and more likely to suffer negative consequences from their unmet legal needs.[60] For many lower-income people, everyday legal problems flow from or exacerbate experiences of economic dislocation and inequality.
For many with justice problems, justice institutions are irrelevant at best. In most jurisdictions, the vast majority of people do not turn to formal legal or administrative channels to solve their legal problems, and many problems go unsolved.[61] WJP analysis found that in seven out of ten countries, 62% of those who needed dispute resolution services were unable to access them.[62] Barriers to justice vary but often include lack of information, lack of access to representation, and inadequate resources.[63] Among the minority who do access justice services, many report dissatisfaction. In half of the 100-plus countries WJP surveyed, 37% of those whose problem resolution processes had concluded reported they found the process unfair; 10% said it took longer than a year; and 17% struggled to afford the process.[64]
People stand up and vote for institutions that serve them. Particularly for those experiencing economic dislocation and hardship, democracy is increasingly perceived as failing to deliver, and this failure extends to the justice institutions that are so critical to upholding the rule of law. As a result, calls to vote for democracy and the rule of law are falling flat, and voters in many countries are embracing authoritarian alternatives instead. As elaborated below, a critical strategy for reversing these trends and rendering rule-of-law institutions more resilient to populist attacks will be to ensure that they are seen and experienced as contributing to just outcomes.
Reversing the negative rule of law trends is an urgent cause. The further that institutions and norms of good governance erode, the more difficult any recovery will be.[65] Authoritarian ideas are increasingly politically popular in many countries, requiring a counter-offensive to build constituencies for rule of law values and institutions and to shore up the “community commitment” so critical to sustaining them. Based on the foregoing analysis of the sources of authoritarianism’s appeal, this article outlines three strategies for an effective response.
As publics across the globe express a growing willingness to entertain authoritarian forms of governance, educational programming that reminds people of the purpose and benefits of the rule of law is an important strategy. The collective memory of World War II and the Cold War dictatorships of the left and right are fading, and with them an appreciation for the risks posed by authoritarianism. Established democracies—the United States most notably—have taken their democracy for granted and under-invested in civics education. But building and sustaining the rule of law is a never-ending project, requiring that each generation of citizens understands and appreciates the norms and institutions of good governance and has the skills and aptitude to play their part in ensuring democratic accountability.[66]
Recent years have seen an increased awareness of the importance of civics education and corresponding investment in such initiatives in various jurisdictions and globally. This has been reflected, for example, in the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s “Education for Justice” initiative, the CivxNow coalition in the United States, and the Council of Europe’s recently launched “European Space for Citizenship Education.”[67] But in the face of the very substantial challenges posed by disinformation and populist attacks on institutions, more needs to be done to shore up people’s understanding and support of democratic institutions. Such efforts should incorporate outreach to adults as well as youth; enlist diverse actors ranging from private sector employers to community groups, cultural institutions, and celebrities; and employ cutting-edge communications tools to meet people where they are.
The importance of such civics education initiatives can be measured by the vehemence of efforts to counter or co-opt them. Unfortunately, contemporary efforts to strengthen civics education have seen just such a backlash, with countervailing efforts to distort historical narratives and craft “rule-of-law” curricula to serve authoritarian “rule-by-law” agendas.[68] Initiatives to strengthen civics must resist such politicization and emphasize non-partisan, pluralistic approaches to citizen education and engagement.
A valuable strategy that is complementary to civics education is increased transparency and accountability for rule of law institutions. This is particularly important for justice institutions, which are notoriously poor at public relations, set apart from society to safeguard their independence, and often communicating only through court filings and judicial opinions that are difficult for the general public to access and understand. While these traditional features of justice institutions are understandable, the advancement of technology and changes in communications and the media mean these institutions must embrace new, more open and participatory approaches that engage and build support among the people they serve.
The Open Government Partnership provides helpful standards, models, and best practices, including those specifically addressing justice institutions, which were among ten priority reform areas identified in its 2023–28 Strategic Plan and Open Government Challenge.[69] Notable approaches to increasing transparency include publication of policies and decisions or summaries thereof in accessible language; increased access to data that enables the public to evaluate institutional performance; and engagement with the media by judicial and other institutional actors to promote informed and accurate coverage.[70] The World Justice Project has developed and piloted in Mexico an “Open Justice Metric” that provides justice sector policy makers with data to set priorities and evaluate such strategies for increasing transparency in the justice system.[71] In a similar vein, a 2023 Pew Charitable Trusts report provides a framework for civil court modernization, including recommended measures to expand openness, effectiveness, and equitable accessibility.[72]
Investments in civil society and media initiatives to complement official transparency efforts and hold policy makers accountable are also important. This might include education and advocacy initiatives, such as Justice Not Politics, a broad-based nonpartisan coalition working in Iowa to advocate for merit-based judicial selection, educate the public about the courts, and defend judicial independence;[73] non-profit news organizations, such as the Marshall Project, which provides in-depth news reporting and analysis of the U.S. criminal justice system,[74] or the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global network of investigative journalists focused on holding corrupt officials to account;[75] or court monitoring initiatives, such as Trial Watch, a global effort of the Clooney Foundation for Justice that shines a light on justice systems weaponized against rights defenders.[76] Against a backdrop of rising authoritarianism, such nongovernmental initiatives are critically important, increasingly embattled, and deserving of significant political and financial support.
Civics education and increased transparency and accountability are important strategies for countering disinformation about rule of law institutions, but such approaches can only do so much to build constituencies for those institutions, if they are not also experienced as relevant and helpful to people in their everyday lives. Defenders of the rule of law in Poland over the past decade learned this lesson. After years of advocacy efforts aimed at explaining to the public the threat posed by the government’s assault on Poland’s independent courts, it was only after the government-controlled constitutional court banned all abortion that masses took to the streets and electoral outcomes changed.[77] In the words of one Polish legal scholar, “this was the moment when people understood” why judicial independence mattered to them.[78]
As noted above, in most countries, significant majorities of people lack meaningful access to justice, most do not turn to lawyers and courts, and these unmet legal needs have profound consequences in people’s lives. The impact is particularly acute on the lower income populations that the data show are also more willing to entertain authoritarian forms of government.[79] In this context, increasing access to justice offers a promising strategy for demonstrating that democracy can deliver, building new constituencies for justice institutions, and reversing authoritarian trends.
Effectively closing the massive global justice gap requires a major transformation in conceptions of justice services and the institutions that provide them.[80] Fortunately, there is an emerging global movement to effect just such a transformation. Inspired by Sustainable Development Goal 16’s promise of “access to justice for all,” a growing number of international organizations, development agencies, governments, researchers, and civil society organizations have coalesced as the Justice Action Coalition and committed to advancing a new paradigm of “people-centered justice.”[81]
Whereas justice policy makers traditionally focused on the needs of justice institutions and actors, a people-centered approach takes as its point of departure data about people’s justice journeys—the problems they have and their experiences trying to solve them. Leveraging this data, a people-centered approach harnesses innovation and cross-sectoral collaboration that often stretches far beyond the formal legal system in order to meet people’s justice needs. As other contributors to this Symposium will elaborate, there is growing evidence that this approach can dramatically increase just outcomes for people.
The contribution that such people-centered approaches stand to make to the rule of law is reflected in the prominence they were given in USAID’s 2023 Rule of Law Strategy.[82] As the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers has emphasized, it is a critical strategy for democratizing legal systems and ensuring they respect the dignity of all people.[83] When such systems work for people, those people become stakeholders in them and less likely to trade them away in response to populist appeals.
In the post-Cold War period, governments, international organizations, and civil society have worked globally to strengthen the rule of law, widely seen as a critical foundation for democratic governance and economic development. While the 1990s and early 2000s saw important gains in many countries, rule of law has been in decline for at least a decade, corresponding in many countries to processes of democratic erosion and autocratization.[84] In many cases, autocrats have come to power through free and fair elections but then weaponized the legal system to accrete power and eliminate checks and balances. Even in countries that have managed to reverse these trends, a full rule of law recovery has proven difficult.
This article grapples with the apparent popularity of authoritarians at the ballot box, in order to identify potential strategies for countering these forces and rendering rule of law and democracy more resilient. Focusing on weaknesses in the information ecosystem and economic hardship as two factors contributing to the appeal of authoritarianism, I argue for civics education, transparency and accountability for justice institutions, and people-centered approaches to justice as strategies for building more robust constituencies for the rule of law. For much of the past three decades, efforts to strengthen the rule of law have focused on developing institutions to provide checks and balances deemed essential in liberal democracy. These efforts have been dominated by legal professionals to whom the benefit of these institutions seems self-evident. Unfortunately, until recently, too little attention has been given to how they were perceived and experienced by ordinary citizens. We have ignored this perspective at our peril, and populist authoritarians have seized the opportunity to undermine institutions that people consider irrelevant at best. Building and serving constituencies for our rule of law institutions, particularly justice institutions, is a critical strategy for democratic resilience and an urgent cause of our time.