BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians Beijing has revived the practice of coerced pub- both taken advantage of democracies’ commitment to lic “confessions” and escalated its surveillance freedom of expression and delivered infusions of pro- of the Tibetan and Uighur minorities to totalitar- paganda and disinformation. Moscow has effectively ian levels; and Azerbaijan has made the Aliyev prevented foreign broadcasting stations from reach- family’s monopoly on political power painfully ing Russian audiences even as it steadily expands the obvious with the appointment of the president's reach of its own mouthpieces, the television channel wife as “first vice president." RT and the news service Sputnik. China blocks the websites of mainstream foreign media while en- ¢ Modern authoritarian systems are employing couraging its corporations to purchase influence in these blunter methods in a context of increased popular culture abroad through control of Hollywood economic fragility. Venezuela is already in the studios. Similar combinations of obstruction at home process of political and economic disintegra- and interference abroad can be seen in sectors in- tion. Other states that rely on energy exports cluding civil society, academia, and party politics. have also experienced setbacks due to low oil and gas prices, and China faces rising debt and The report draws on examples from a broad group slower growth after years of misallocated invest- of authoritarian states and illiberal democracies, but ment and other structural problems. But these the focus remains on the two leading authoritarian regimes also face less international pressure to powers, China and Russia. Much of the report, in observe democratic norms, raising their chanc- fact, deals with Russia, since that country, more than es of either surviving the current crises or—if any other, has incubated and refined the ideas and they break down—giving way to something even i