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In January 2025, the United States government launched a far-reaching restructuring of its foreign assistance architecture, closing USAID, consolidating its functions into the State Department, and freezing all foreign aid programming. By March 2025, the review concluded with the termination of 86 percent of USAID awards and 41 percent of State Department awards, amounting to roughly USD 80.5 billion in cancelled funding.

On 5 November 2024, US voters will head to the polls to elect a new president. These elections will shape the future of American democracy and influence global relations.

In 2024, with dozens of elections taking place worldwide and the U.S. election drawing near, the International and Comparative Law Program at GW Law is hosting a timely panel on democratic backsliding and the evolving role of international law in recent elections. This discussion will explore global challenges to democracy, the erosion of free and fair elections, and the legal frameworks that address these concerns.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2024. Created as the only political-military alliance in the world based upon democratic values, NATO inherently recognizes the strong nexus between democracy and security as highlighted in the NATO 2022 Strategic Concept.

Join the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and the Embassy of Canada to the United States for a discussion on the risks and opportunities for AI in elections and the launch of International IDEA’s new report "Artificial Intelligence for Electoral Management.” The event will be held in-person at the Embassy of Canada and will also be live streamed for people abroad to watch the event.          &

Please join International IDEA's North America Programme on 15 November 2023 for a launch event in Washington, D.C. to celebrate the publication of ‘Special Voting Arrangements (SVA): The International IDEA Handbook’. 

On April 15th, 2023, tensions between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) turned into fighting, escalating into a severe armed conflict that has engulfed the country in what risks turning into a large-scale civil war. The warring factions took power together through a military coup on October 25th, 2021, which upended a fragile democratic transition that started after the removal of long-time ruler Omar Al-Bashir.

Do you want to learn more about International IDEA’s support to constitution building processes around the world, the new dataset of the Global State of Democracy Indices and IDEA’s most recently launched tool to track democratic developments around the world?

International IDEA, the Embassy of Switzerland to the United States and The Organization of American States (OAS), convened a high-level gathering on 31 October 2025 in the Hall of the Americas of the OAS to commemorate 24 years of the Inter-American Democratic Charter and 30 years since the founding of International IDEA.

On 25 March 2025, President Donald Trump signed the Executive Order ‘Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections’. The order outlines sweeping reforms that aim to protect US elections from fraud, foreign interference and systemic error.  

The principal mandates of the Executive Order (EO) include:

While new 2023 regulations for political ads are more comprehensive, loopholes persist and are reinforced by the US Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) limited enforcement capacity. The study recommends expanding the FEC’s role to include digital finance, addressing for example anonymous cryptocurrency transactions that risk illicit contributions to political campaigns.

Ahead of the Tuesday, November 5 general elections in the United States, some aspects of the US electoral system stand out globally, particularly in its innovations to make voting more accessible, such as through postal voting.

In a time when the health of democracy is a global concern, this report provides an analysis of the state of American democracy over the past decade.

In this episode of Peer-to-Peer, we speak with Alice Hill and Erik Asplund to explore how extreme weather, intensified by climate change, impacts elections and disenfranchises voters. Alice and Erik share their insights on the challenges disasters pose to voting, the role of climate change in increasing the frequency and/or intensity of extreme weather events, and how natural hazards are already affecting elections around the world.

Extreme weather events are often described by meteorologists as the ‘fingerprint of climate change’. These climate-induced disasters are becoming more damaging and more frequent, at times occurring close to elections and impacting upon them. As climate-related natural hazards will continue to do so, states must consider protecting elections and building resilience.

International IDEA condemns the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and we wish him a speedy recovery. Our thoughts go out to all the victims of the shooting at the Pennsylvania rally.

In 2024, half of the world’s adult population will vote in 62 national and local elections around the world, marking a historical record.

 Join a Q&A meeting on Day 2 of the Summit on Wednesday, 28 February 2024, at 2 pm CET/8 am EST.

This Brief presents some findings on the Summit for Democracy process from the perspective of participating countries based on a selected number of interviews with representatives from the governments of six countries (Germany, Lithuania, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Zambia) and the European Union (European External Action Service).