From Budapest to Brasília: What Is Driving Democracy’s Resurgence?

Democracy can recover after an illiberal government, but that possibility depends on governments responding to people’s needs and voters continuing to participate, political scientist Anna Grzymala-Busse and researcher Alberto Díaz-Cayeros agreed during a Stanford Continuing Studies event.

During the Oct. 14 session, part of the “Reimagining Democracy” series, the two experts compared experiences in Europe and Latin America and analyzed what cases such as Hungary, Poland and Brazil can teach those seeking to strengthen democratic institutions.

Grzymala-Busse is a professor of international studies and a scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; Díaz-Cayeros is a senior fellow at the same institute and co-director of the Democracy Action Lab.

The session was moderated by Larry Diamond and Debra Satz and produced in collaboration with the Office of Community Engagement, the Stanford Democracy Center and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

The world is experiencing a democratic decline that has persisted for decades, although some recent developments point in the opposite direction: Brazilian courts held former President Jair Bolsonaro accountable, and Hungarian voters ended Viktor Orbán’s 16 years in power in April 2026.

Díaz-Cayeros said democratic decline often takes root when governments fail to keep their promises, traditional parties leave voters’ most pressing concerns unanswered and majorities stop valuing institutions such as courts, electoral authorities and a free press.

In Latin America, he said, insecurity and a lack of reliable public services fuel discontent, while in Europe corruption and the feeling of being unrepresented in the immigration debate have driven some voters toward populist options.

Moderator Larry Diamond opened the conversation with a skeptical view of the region, mentioning human rights violations in El Salvador under Nayib Bukele, Flávio Bolsonaro’s presidential candidacy in Brazil and concerns in Mexico about Morena’s concentration of power.

Díaz-Cayeros did not dismiss those concerns and said, “No party in any country should have a majority like the one Morena has,” adding that the majority “has been tremendously harmful to democracy.”

At the same time, he urged people not to assume the worst outcome is inevitable, noting that several democratic spaces remain open in Mexico, while populist leaders elected in other countries also face checks on the reach of their decisions.

The researcher identified crime and unmet expectations as central factors behind discontent in Latin America, and warned that criminal groups are increasingly well-armed and use tools such as drones, in addition to operating across national borders.

“No one really knows how to solve this, and anyone who claims to know is lying,” Díaz-Cayeros said, noting that the right has successfully capitalized on fear by promising that a hard-line policy can control violence.

He also recalled regional gains, including the reduction of extreme inequality through conditional cash transfer programs promoted by governments with different political orientations.

Díaz-Cayeros also highlighted neighboring countries’ response to the departure of nearly eight million Venezuelans, noting that the Dominican Republic received between 200,000 and 300,000 people and Ecuador around half a million.

However, he warned that many governments have failed to guarantee basic health services and quality education, and that the public also judges democracy by the results people see in their daily lives.

In comparing the governments of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the researcher recalled that Lula’s first presidency expanded access to universities for Afro-Brazilians and extended anti-poverty programs, while he considered that his current term “doesn’t have much to show for itself.”

Many Brazilians, he added, are asking what democracy has given them over the past four years and whether the system can offer younger leaders capable of attracting voters, a concern that, in his view, is also heard in the United States.

Díaz-Cayeros urged people not to associate authoritarianism with a single political movement and said that “the destruction of democracy is equally possible for someone on the right or someone on the left.”

In Europe, Grzymala-Busse explained that populists often present themselves as a response to previous elites and, in some cases, have indeed achieved material improvements for their supporters.

Orbán’s Fidesz party directed European Union subsidies to rural areas of Hungary and kept its promise to raise living standards for years, until corruption eventually undermined that support, the scholar said.

“That house of cards collapsed because the government was very corrupt. But for 16 years, it worked,” Grzymala-Busse said, adding that Poland’s Law and Justice party also benefited from European funds.

The political scientist described Eastern Europe as a region marked by high electoral volatility since 1989, meaning current changes in government are partly part of a long-standing pattern of alternation.

In Western Europe, by contrast, she identified a dilemma surrounding the so-called “cordon sanitaire”: traditional parties in Austria, Germany and France have agreed to keep the far right out of government, although Italy is an exception under Giorgia Meloni.

Grzymala-Busse questioned how long that strategy can be sustained when parties such as Alternative for Germany (AfD) have the support of a significant share of the electorate, and asked whether excluding from power a force that receives between 30 and 40 percent of the vote is fully democratic.

On immigration, she cited a survey conducted over the summer by the Hoover Institution that found European voters mention public services and the economy more often than migration as their top concerns, although they consider migration the issue on which they feel least represented.

Disinformation also finds fertile ground when it is spread within countries themselves, the scholar said, warning that populist governments can influence public media, as happened in Poland, where the public broadcaster equivalent to NPR “became a government propaganda channel.”

The panelists agreed that democratic recovery requires decisive electoral victories and reforms carried out through democratic means.

In Poland, Donald Tusk’s coalition defeated the Law and Justice party in 2023, but an illiberal president has blocked several reforms; one of the main challenges is the judiciary, where the previous government appointed about one-third of the judges.

“You cannot restore democracy by undemocratic means,” Grzymala-Busse said, referring to the need to reform the system while respecting democratic rules.

Hungary offers a different scenario, she added, because Péter Magyar and the Tisza party won a broad parliamentary majority and have begun reversing institutional changes introduced by Fidesz, while the European Union releases funds.

The scholar warned, however, that the Hungarian case is not easy to replicate: “very few enjoy such a decisive victory.”

Among the lessons for citizens, Grzymala-Busse urged people to stay involved and demand results, because “autocrats benefit enormously from popular indifference, popular alienation and, above all, popular despair.”

She also recommended that the opposition explain concretely how corruption affects daily life—from the quality of schools to the condition of roads—instead of limiting itself to calling a government undemocratic.

Díaz-Cayeros agreed that democracy is not only about providing goods and services, but also about allowing people to have control over their lives, and warned that majorities have weakened the idea that independent courts and electoral authorities are necessary even when a government has won an election.

Grzymala-Busse said democracy’s defenders can present checks and balances as part of national identity, arguing that dismantling them betrays a country’s history and attacking a free press runs counter to its values.

In the United States, she suggested, that message could be framed as a defense against the “un-American” act of dismantling institutional checks or attacking the media.

Díaz-Cayeros also drew attention to the United States’ influence on Latin American elections, noting that voters in Peru and Colombia described how Donald Trump’s endorsements on Truth Social created echo chambers around candidates favored by the president.

The researcher also warned about the vulnerability of unregulated platforms and mentioned indications that media outlets critical of Bolsonaro in Brazil were disproportionately exposed to cyberattacks, while the Facebook page of one of the last active human rights organizations in El Salvador had been inactive for weeks.

When asked about possible future scenarios for Europe and Latin America, Grzymala-Busse expressed cautious optimism and said current conditions differ from those of the 1930s, when voters faced antidemocratic options on both the far right and the far left, as well as a much more serious economic situation.

Díaz-Cayeros considered it unlikely that Brazil will return to the era of military dictatorships and mass disappearances, partly because of its federal structure, civil society and human rights tradition, although he warned about the future of the Amazon as “a common good of humanity.”

The two experts agreed that democratic gains are not permanent: illiberal movements can return when the governments that defeated them fail to keep their promises or renew their leadership.

The “Reimagining Democracy” series will continue with a conversation about money, parties and political reform, featuring Brandice Canes-Wrone of the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions and Didi Kuo of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.