The end of the Cold War marked a turning point in how autocrats related to liberal norms. Prior to this moment, authoritarian regimes typically relied on overt repression and the absolute exclusion of political competition.Footnote 1 Elections, when they occurred at all, were devoid of credibility. Many regimes maintained power through a combination of terror, censorship, and isolation from liberal international institutions. When the Soviet Union collapsed, however, American unipolarity, combined with Europe’s economic power and the normative dominance of liberal ideals, created powerful pressures on authoritarian regimes to alter their practices. Indeed, the post–Cold war period witnessed a significant expansion of the post–World War II liberal international order (LIO) grounded in the mutually reinforcing ideals of human rights, democracy, free markets, and multilateralism.Footnote 2 The “end of history” thesis captured the moment: liberal democracy had become the only legitimate political model.Footnote 3
While the United States had long professed to promote democracy in the 1990s and early 2000s, it became a more central objective shaping American diplomacy, foreign economic policy, and even military interventions.Footnote 4 Meanwhile, the European Union used its considerable economic leverage to promote liberalization abroad, both through conditional membership and association agreements that required alignment with democratic norms.Footnote 5 These strategies were reinforced by the embedding of democracy promotion within regional organizations, such as the Organization of American States, African Union, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization.Footnote 6 Foreign aid flows were conditioned on human rights or democratic reforms,Footnote 7 and institutions like the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development explicitly limited operations to states committed to democracy.Footnote 8 In short, US and European leadership along with the Western liberal consensus produced not just material inducements but also a global normative hierarchy; one in which democracy was the only game in town, and all regimes, democratic or not, were expected to play along.
Of course, international efforts to advance liberal norms did not always succeed.Footnote 9 Initiatives were often constrained by competing geopolitical prioritiesFootnote 10 and by the strategic behavior of authoritarian governments that selectively implemented or co-opted reforms.Footnote 11 Yet even when reforms were insincere, selective, or manipulated, they left an institutional and normative imprint. By elevating the appearance of compliance and by embedding liberal practices, these efforts helped establish a global environment in which authoritarian regimes came under mounting pressure to at least gesture toward democracy.
Increased international democracy promotion unfolded alongside a broader transformation known as the third wave of democracy.Footnote 12 Beginning in the early 1970s and intensifying after the Cold War, this global shift produced an unprecedented wave of regime transitions. Multiparty elections, independent judiciaries, and protections for civil liberties became increasingly common, even if many regimes did not fully democratize. A new class of more open authoritarian regimes held competitive (if not entirely free or fair) elections; allowed limited space for opposition parties and civil society; and implemented legal protections that, although unevenly enforced, opened up political life.Footnote 13 While such regimes did not become liberal democracies, they increasingly resembled them in form, adopting institutions and practices associated with liberal governance in response to both external pressure and internal incentives. Egregious forms of repression—such as violent crackdowns, political imprisonment, and disappearances—declined.Footnote 14 Autocracies introduced national human rights institutions,Footnote 15 invited experts to monitor their elections,Footnote 16 joined the International Criminal Court,Footnote 17 and engaged in international human rights forums such as the Universal Periodic ReviewFootnote 18 and the United Nations (UN) Convention Against Torture.Footnote 19 Many of the reforms favored by autocrats reflected an expansive notion of what “democracy” encompassed that included egalitarian protections and good governance. This is exemplified by autocracies’ embrace of women’s political representation (via mechanisms such as gender quotas) as well as progress in women’s social, economic, and family rights.Footnote 20
Today, however, the international supply of liberal norms is in visible decline. Most notably, the United States has deprioritized support for human rights and democratic governance abroad. The first Trump presidency slashed funding for democracy promotion and withdrew from key international institutions and agreements that had long served as vehicles for liberal norm diffusion like the UN Human Rights Council. While the subsequent Biden administration reversed some of these moves, Trump’s second term in office has doubled down on slashing support for democracy abroad, most notably via the complete dismantling of the US Agency for International Development as well as the State Department’s democracy programs.Footnote 21 In place of these structures, US foreign policy is reorienting toward a different set of values centered on free speech absolutism, a conservative agenda on women and gender, and a nativist defense of Western civilization.Footnote 22 The lack of effective domestic resistance to these moves suggests a deeper and more durable retraction of America’s international liberal project, not simply the result of shifting presidential preferences. Economic pressures at home—including growing fiscal constraints, rising inequality, and political polarization—have weakened domestic support for costly international commitments.Footnote 23 Europe is also changing. Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have scaled back their foreign aid commitments in the governance sector. Budget constraints and shifting priorities in Europe have reduced the appetite for democracy promotion.Footnote 24 At the same time, the internal cohesion of the liberal international order has been strained by signs of democratic backsliding within some Western democracies themselves.Footnote 25 These developments make it harder for liberal states to credibly advocate for democracy abroad.Footnote 26 Meanwhile, China and Russia are expanding their geopolitical influence.Footnote 27 Through their economic and diplomatic partnerships, these regimes hold out a vision of international order that eschews liberal norms in favor of state sovereignty and regime security.Footnote 28
These changes raise a pressing question: will the erosion of Western normative leadership lead to a rollback of liberal reform and a reversion to Cold War-style authoritarianism marked by more overt repression and tightly closed political systems? Many offer pessimistic answers to this question. Matthew Cebul and Sharan Grewal point to the abrupt rupture in US support for democracy and human rights overseas as having already “facilitat[ed] an uptick in global repression” in countries including Georgia, Hungary, and Turkey.Footnote 29 According to Brian Klaas, “despots and human-rights abusers can rest easy now that America has gotten out of their way.”Footnote 30
Drawing on insights from International Relations theory and the literature on comparative authoritarianism, we argue that norm adaptation among autocracies is likely to prove more resilient, even in an era of reduced international support for liberal norms. Most autocrats are unlikely to fully revert to overtly violent or closed models of control. We identify two key forces sustaining autocratic engagement with liberal norms and practices even amid declining external pressure. First, autocrats’ own strategies of political control generate strong domestic incentives to preserve certain liberal practices. Institutions such as multiparty elections, gender equality reforms, or selective media openness not only project legitimacy abroad but also help rulers manage dissent, gather information, co-opt opposition elites, and channel citizen demands into less threatening forms. These liberal practices, once adopted, become valuable tools of authoritarian survival in their own right. Second, institutional reforms tied to treaties, international organizations, and domestic bureaucracies have generated public expectations and empowered civil society, making efforts at wholesale rollback costly and politically risky. Even when adopted for instrumental or insincere reasons, these institutions now serve as platforms for mobilization that regimes cannot easily dismantle.
From Concessions to Control: Autocrats’ Incentives for Liberal Practices
A central reason that autocracies continue to engage selectively with liberal norms is their utility as instruments of domestic co-optation and control. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, liberal reforms were often reactive, defensive, and compatible with an international script. Many autocrats adopted de jure reforms to placate donors, meet aid and trade conditionalities, or gain access to Western-led institutions.Footnote 31 Often, the impetus for these reforms was insincere, pursued to reap reputational benefits while sidestepping genuine de facto compliance.Footnote 32 Regimes also gamed monitoring and aid systems—restricting credible election observers, shifting to less verifiable forms of manipulation, deploying low-quality monitors, or using aid flows to shore up coalitions and signal compliance without substantive change.Footnote 33 This learning process has given rise to a now-familiar repertoire of managed reform: multiparty elections, selective media freedom, gender equality reforms, and bureaucratic mechanisms that simulate responsiveness.Footnote 34 These strategies reflected a broader pattern of tactical concession, role-playing, and rhetorical engagement that is characteristic of the early stages of norm socialization, when external pressure is the primary motive for action.Footnote 35
Over time, leaders discovered that these very institutions could be repurposed to serve domestic political goals: enhancing legitimacy, dividing or co-opting the opposition, and channeling discontent into manageable forms.Footnote 36 For example, autocrats have used elections to provide them with information and legitimacy, and to facilitate the co-optation of elites and wider groups.Footnote 37 Elections can be manipulated in ways that aid regime survival in the long run, even as they introduce short-term risks.Footnote 38 Anticorruption drives can boost public approval.Footnote 39 Research on the spread of gender equality reforms in autocracies emphasizes how well these reforms can serve autocrats’ needs for domestic legitimacy and support, for example, by helping them build coalitions, maintain legislative dominance, and co-opt feminist movements.Footnote 40 Partially liberalizing reforms, once a defensive concession to foreign demands, have become instruments of domestic rule.
Today, even as international democracy promotion declines, these institutional innovations continue to serve autocrats’ domestic political ends. They help rulers co-opt societal actors, deter mobilization, and govern with a degree of popular consent that reduces the risks (and significant costs) of overt indiscriminate coercion. Repression imposes heavy domestic costs: it not only undermines legitimacy and risks fueling protest, but also requires substantial investments in security forces, surveillance, and patronage networks that strain state resources and can strengthen actors that become political threats. In an era where violent repression is more visible and risky, liberal norms and practices—once encouraged from the outside—have become embedded tools of authoritarian governance. These incentives are likely to remain despite shifts in the international environment.
It is tempting to dismiss liberal norm adaptation in authoritarian regimes as little more than lip service that does not alter the fundamental logic of autocratic rule. And in many cases, these reforms were initially intended to be cosmetic.Footnote 41 Even so, the diffusion of liberal norms brought about real—if circumscribed—gains for political competition, civic participation, and citizen welfare. Women’s representation in government and participation in the economy saw meaningful increases.Footnote 42 Elections, though unfair, became more competitive than in the past, with positive effects for citizens’ health, education, and well-being.Footnote 43 Opposition parties, while marginalized, were able to contest power and sometimes gain a foothold in legislatures or local government, leading to greater policy transparency and improved economic outcomes.Footnote 44 Civil society organizations expanded their reach.Footnote 45 Independent media, where permitted, created spaces for debate and held at least some officials to account. These reforms disrupted the monopoly of power and information that characterized Cold War-era autocracies.Footnote 46
For citizens in electoral autocracies, the result was greater voice, improved access to politics, and more responsive governance in some domains. In certain cases, most famously the Color Revolutions, electoral autocrats miscalculated and lost power due to protests following stolen elections.Footnote 47 In other cases, liberalization did not lead to regime change, but did mark a notable departure from past practices. Crucially, liberal reforms raised public expectations for rights, accountability, and participation, making it costly for leaders to return wholesale to more closed forms of rule.
From Commitments to Constraints: Public Demands and the Risks of Reversal
These rising expectations highlight a second source of resilience: once liberal reforms are introduced, they generate constituencies and mobilizational opportunities that make reversal costly. International commitments are an important part of this story. Even if adopted for instrumental reasons, they can become embedded in domestic law and institutions, shifting the locus of pressure from external actors to citizens and civil society. International commitments change the contours of domestic political contestation, providing activists with new channels for making rights claims.Footnote 48 Membership in international institutions is notoriously sticky: outright withdrawal from IOs and treaties is costly, and autocracies tend not to leave frequently.Footnote 49 As Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink observe, “governments entangle themselves in an international and domestic legal process which they subsequently find harder and harder to escape.”Footnote 50
For example, now that most states meet minimal standards related to multiparty elections, departing from them represents a major break that is likely to cause domestic backlash. This is so for at least two reasons. First, popular support for democracy is high. Across global regions and regime types, citizens share many ideas about the value of democracy and the essential meanings of “free and fair elections,” which suggests that radically altering domestic practices may be viewed as inappropriate.Footnote 51 Second, fully repressing civil society is difficult. State agents may refuse to crack down on civil society using violence, which exposes them to criminal liability and violates international treaties, among other risks like galvanizing greater opposition.Footnote 52 Because of this, states increasingly use legal means to undermine, rather than eliminate, civil society organizations. But that strategy also has downsides; such organizations often “fund and implement valuable development, health, and humanitarian aid programs” that states do not want to sacrifice.Footnote 53
International commitments magnify these domestic sources of demand for liberalism. Countries’ IO memberships leave governments vulnerable to enforcement in the wake of flawed elections.Footnote 54 The presence of credible observers—which many IOs require of their member states—can inform the public and galvanize citizen mobilization when fraud occurs.Footnote 55 Indeed, civil society actors often borrow tactics used by groups to protest flawed elections elsewhere.Footnote 56
Numerous additional mechanisms have been argued to “domesticate” international pressures, including the incorporation of treaties into domestic law,Footnote 57 the creation of national human rights institutions and feminist agencies,Footnote 58 and the empowerment of nongovernmental actors through transnational advocacy networks.Footnote 59 Indeed, previous scholarship suggested that internationally inspired human rights reforms during the Cold War laid the foundations for future liberalization even in Communist regimes.Footnote 60 In the realm of women’s rights, when domestic laws for gender equality are strengthened, it tends to produce shifts in societal attitudes and norms which lead, over time, to increased enforcement and compliance.Footnote 61 Activists can use the benchmarks created by international legal commitments as mobilizational tools.Footnote 62
Overall, decades of research on international law and institutions underscores that autocratic adaptation to liberal norms was never driven solely by the policies of outside powers. IO membership and treaty commitments are sticky even as democracy promotion diminishes. Transnational advocacy networks and domestic civil society remain key protagonists that can draw from broad popular support for democracy the world over. There is potential for the continued magnification of “bottom-up” demand for liberal values, as long as the institutional platforms for action—in the form of treaty commitments, monitoring bodies, regional institutions’ democracy clauses, and domestic bureaucratic structures—remain. This perspective echoes Robert O. Keohane’s analysis for the prospects of continued global economic cooperation after the decline of US hegemony: “Although hegemony helps to explain the creation of contemporary international regimes, the decline of hegemony does not necessarily lead symmetrically to their decay.”Footnote 63
The Persistence of Liberal Practices in Illiberal Regimes
This discussion underscores that autocratic regimes face persistent incentives and pressures to preserve the more open stance that many adopted during the post–Cold War period. As Figure 1 shows using data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project,Footnote 64 average physical violence scores for both closed and electoral autocracies have remained relatively stable even through 2024. While closed autocracies have recently experienced lower respect for physical integrity rights (noted by lower index scores), those scores have not returned to their average levels during the Cold War period of the 1980s. Similarly in electoral autocracies, while recent years have shown more variation, the gains from the post–Cold War era appear to remain sticky. We observe these trends even though the number of autocracies increased in the past decade; those regimes have not shifted toward a totalitarian governance model that is characteristic of “fear” dictatorships.Footnote 65 Autocrats have not thus far rejected liberal practices and institutions wholesale.
Average physical violence scores in closed and electoral autocracies
Source: V-Dem
Examples of autocracies that have resisted or rebounded from backsliding include Zambia (2022), Armenia (2019), Honduras (2022–23), Guatemala (2023), and Philippines (2022), where law-flouting and increasingly repressive incumbents were replaced in elections fueled by a surge in citizen opposition. The Philippines has not fully democratized, but it has reversed a slide toward a more oppressive and closed form of rule under former president Rodrigo Duterte. In March 2025, the Filipino government handed Duterte over to the International Criminal Court (ICC), in a noteworthy show of support for the Court—and the LIO writ large—during a time when its legitimacy was under attack.Footnote 66 Notably, Duterte is only the second head of state to be transferred into ICC custody. In Zambia, Armenia, Guatemala, and Honduras, incumbent removal ushered in more democratic models in which rule of law and civil liberties were accorded greater respect. When this fragile equilibrium was challenged in Honduras by a power grab during President Xiomara Castro’s first year in office, civil society mobilized to defend democracy.Footnote 67
Malaysia’s experience over three decades exemplifies a more gradual path from hegemonic authoritarianism toward greater political competition, spurred by the “Reformasi” democracy movement that formed in response to opposition leader Anwar Ibraham’s imprisonment in 1998. Malaysia’s opposition parties had long competed in open but unfair elections. Reflecting shifting popular support, breakthrough electoral victories occurred in 2018 and 2022, in a contest that brought Ibraham to power after decades in opposition. That the Malaysian government did not repress its way to political survival reflects both the role of civil society activismFootnote 68 and the perceived legitimacy costs of abandoning competitive elections.Footnote 69
To be sure, these examples of persistent or deepening liberal features contrast with other authoritarian regimes, such as Russia, Turkey, and Cambodia, that have moved toward more complete political closure. Yet closed autocracies remain far fewer in number than electoral autocracies. And while they do not embrace electoral competition, many do possess mechanisms for consultation and responsiveness to citizens.Footnote 70
That there are few examples of autocracies fully abandoning liberal façades underscores how costly repression is and how strong the incentives remain to uphold at least some liberalizing reforms. One could argue the constraints of the liberalizing norms have forced autocrats to turn to less violent means of preserving power, such as the use of courts.Footnote 71 Indeed, research has found that the repertoire of repressive tactics has become increasingly narrow.Footnote 72 When autocrats do turn to harsher repression, it is usually under conditions of acute political or economic pressure, in regimes where an already weak civil society or passive populace reduce the need for a liberal façade.Footnote 73 Russia illustrates this pattern clearly. While its democracy scores eroded gradually from the 1990s onward, it remained within the category of electoral autocracy and did not adopt sweeping repressive measures until the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. At that point, facing unprecedented domestic and international pressure, the regime passed draconian “fake news” and “discrediting the army” laws, shut down nearly all independent media, and detained thousands of protesters—an escalation designed to secure regime survival in wartime conditions.
Conclusion
How resilient is liberal norm adaptation in autocracies in the context of declining Western support for democracy and human rights? While much of the existing literature has focused on how international incentives encouraged reforms after the Cold War, we argue that the retrenchment of these incentives does not foretell a wholesale reversal of norm adoption. Our central claim is that autocratic engagement with liberal norms—though often insincere or strategically instrumental—has become embedded and even politically advantageous in ways that make full reversion to overtly repressive models costly and difficult. As significant scholarship has argued in our field, institutions, and the behaviors that they incentivize, are sticky. While the golden age of liberal international norm promotion may have passed, its legacies persist in surprising and sometimes paradoxical ways. Authoritarian adaptation was never purely the product of international pressure, and its future will depend as much on domestic political incentives and institutional inertia as on the evolving balance of global power.
We advance this argument in two steps. First, we show how autocrats’ strategies of political control create enduring incentives to retain liberal practices. Institutions such as elections, gender reforms, and limited media openness, even when introduced under external pressure, have become valuable tools for legitimacy and co-optation. Second, we emphasize how these reforms generate citizen expectations, empower civil society, and create mobilizational opportunities that make wholesale reversal politically costly and prone to backlash. What began as tactical concessions has evolved into embedded practices that continue to shape authoritarian rule, even in the absence of strong external enforcement.
We would be remiss not to acknowledge that many of the domestic reforms we highlight are modest in scope and fall short of genuine democratization. Yet the relevant comparison is not with liberal democracies, but with the more repressive authoritarian models of the Cold War, marked by political violence, mass censorship, and the complete exclusion of opposition. From this perspective, even selective concessions to liberal norms marked a significant opening that brought benefits for citizens in terms of sounder economic policy, growth, and better performance on education and health.Footnote 74
Our analysis focuses on the implications of diminished Western democracy support—not on the scenario in which it is replaced by an assertive alternative. The possibility of coordinated autocracy promotion, particularly by China and Russia, raises new questions. While scholars debate the robustness of these efforts,Footnote 75 recent developments suggest that some illiberal powers are actively promoting alternative norms. These include not only sovereignty and regime security, but also normative alternatives to liberalism—emphasizing traditional values, state-led development, and geopolitical nonalignment.Footnote 76 The literature analyzed here implies that the success of these efforts will depend not only on the extent of external pressure for illiberal counternorms but also on whether these norms become embedded within IOs, align with the political interests of domestic elites, and have an underlying resonance with global publics. Together, these are high bars for aspiring autocracy promoters to clear. Building on the burgeoning research on autocratic international institutions,Footnote 77 more research could explore the conditions under which illiberal norms gain societal support,Footnote 78 when leaders are more likely to embed themselves in illiberal international institutions, and when leaders need the support of those institutions to promote their survival.Footnote 79
While our analysis has focused primarily on the domestic political implications of weakening Western support for liberal norms, it also offers insights into the future of the LIO. On a positive note, new opportunities may arise for other states to assume greater ownership. Philippines’ recent show of support for the ICC, South Africa’s litigation of the Genocide Convention at the International Court of Justice, and the Economic Community of African States’ creation of a new human rights tribunalFootnote 80 all exemplify developing-country leadership on human rights—small but important signs that the LIO still enjoys their support. What is likely to emerge is thus not a wholesale subsumption of liberalism, but rather fragmentation in norm promotion: liberal IOs will continue to reinforce standards, perhaps even with the renewed support of developing countries, while autocratic regimes and their allies promote alternative variants. Our analysis suggests that the dimensions of the LIO to most robustly endure will be those more compatible with liberalized authoritarianism, such as multiparty elections and women’s rights. Some aspects of the liberal order will survive while others recede—just as the “end of Bretton Woods” left core arrangements intact but repurposed, the decline of international liberalism is more likely to produce selective retreats and institutional adaptations than a complete collapse. If we are wrong and liberal values significantly erode across the board, it suggests that International Relations theory has underappreciated the reliance of institutions and norms on Western political support.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the editors and three anonymous reviewers for insightful comments and suggestions.
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