Woman Voting
Centers & Programs

Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy

Democratic government has been regressing across the globe for more than a decade. Even the United States, the world’s oldest continuous democracy, has seen its democratic norms and practices eroded by rising inequality, populism, political polarization, institutional decay, and misinformation. Other current democracies teeter on the verge of becoming autocracies, potentially producing tectonic shifts in global power and exacerbating economic inequality and social tensions. And the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated many of these trends.


The Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) aims to identify threats to the health of democracies around the globe and to recommend steps that policymakers, business leaders, civil society organizations, and citizens can take to reverse the erosion of democratic norms and values.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Foundation.

All CFR Work on Democracy
To see all work on democracy from the Council on Foreign Relations, please click here.

Program Experts

Elliott Abrams

Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies

Max Boot

Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies

Steven A. Cook

Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies and Director of the International Affairs Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars

Liana Fix

Fellow for Europe

Will Freeman

Fellow for Latin America Studies

Thomas Graham

Distinguished Fellow

Yanzhong Huang

Senior Fellow for Global Health

Miles Kahler

Senior Fellow for Global Governance

Joshua Kurlantzick

Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia and South Asia

Steven Levitsky

Senior Fellow for Democracy

James M. Lindsay

Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy and Director of Fellowship Affairs

Matthias Matthijs

Senior Fellow for Europe

Shannon K. O'Neil

Senior Vice President, Director of Studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg Chair

Linda Robinson

Senior Fellow for Women and Foreign Policy

Gideon Rose

Adjunct Senior Fellow

David Sacks

Fellow for Asia Studies

David J. Scheffer

Senior Fellow

Timothy Snyder

Senior Fellow for Democracy

José Miguel Vivanco

Adjunct Senior Fellow for Human Rights

Jacob Ware

Research Fellow