The IFES Democratic Resilience Lab innovates and marshals evidence to support our local partners to respond to autocratic threats and reverse democratic backsliding, in pursuit of greater resilience globally. The Lab brings together expertise from across IFES and collaborates with practitioner, academic, and private sector partners to help democracies weather shocks to their core accountability architecture: government checks and balances; public accountability, as mediated by elections; and media and civil society oversight and engagement. 

Investments in resilience will take different forms depending on the implementing context: in some cases, there may be an opening to help a democracy “bounce back” from episodes of backsliding; at other times, democracy assistance may be limited to helping democracy to persist in diminished form, reinforcing what remains of the democratic architecture, or simply preserving the normative foundation and public demand for democracy for a future opening. Recognizing the layers of complexity and varied context for these investments, the Democratic Resilience Lab aims to generate evidence-informed insights into the forms of assistance most likely to succeed in different backsliding scenarios.  

To help meet the challenges posed by a rising tide of autocracy, the Lab work-plan includes targeted research and analysis on effective approaches to bolster the architecture of democratic resilience, including institutions and pro-democracy actors; and dismantle the emerging “communities of bad practice” that are spreading autocratic learning, practices, and resources around the globe.