Freedom House Eurasian countries and elsewhere in the world. While without affecting nonsensitive information, requires today there is nothing that resembles the Comintern tremendous financial, human, and technological re- of Soviet times, authoritarian countries have devel- sources to maintain. Other regimes have not attempt- oped an ad hoc network of cooperation that has ed anything approaching the scale of China's system, proven effective at the United Nations and in regional but some have constructed more limited versions or bodies like the Organization of American States. simply relied on inexpensive offline techniques like arrests of critical bloggers, direct pressure on the Adapting to survive owners of major online platforms, and new laws that Modern authoritarianism matured as regimes sought force internet sites to self-censor. to defend themselves against the sorts of civil society movements that triggered “color revolutions” in Alternative values Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere in the early 2000s. While modern authoritarians initially mobilized for On their own, formal opposition parties were relatively defensive purposes, to thwart color revolutions or easy to marginalize or co-opt, and traditional mass the liberal opposition, they have become increasingly media could be brought to heel through pressure on aggressive in challenging the democratic norms that private owners, among other techniques. But civil prevailed in the wake of the Cold War, and in setting society organizations presented a formidable chal- forth a rough set of political values as an alternative lenge in some settings, as they were able to mobilize to the liberal model. Examples of this phenomenon the public—especially students and young people— include: around nonpartisan reformist goals and use relatively open online media to spread their messages. 1. Majoritarianism: A signal idea of many author- itarians is the proposition that elections are It is now a major objective of modern au