Learning From the International Struggle

The Heritage Foundation recently announced that Andrzej Duda, former president of Poland, has joined the organization as a visiting fellow. Interestingly, the announcement stated that Duda—widely considered illiberal at best and authoritarian at worst—would be working on “democratic resilience.” This assignment tracks with Heritage’s close alignment with President Donald Trump’s own authoritarianism. It is also a stark reminder that the global right has spent the past decade building durable networks of exchange sharing legal theories, institutional tactics, personnel pipelines, and long-term strategy. These relationships are not incidental. They reflect an understanding that power is sustained through institutions, not just elections.

The political establishment has tended to treat democratic crises as aberrations that will resolve themselves, worrying that they will be “painted as anti-democratic if they move quickly or use the full extent of their institutional powers to hold the demagogue accountable,” according to anti-authoritarianism researcher Hardy Merriman. However, his research shows that in successful efforts against democratic backsliding, institutional actors respond to openings created by mass movements, such as those occurring today in the United States in response to Donald Trump. This kind of direct and indirect collaboration has only just started, and the left needs to catch up. Collaboration between figures like Duda and major American conservative institutions underscores the far right’s deliberate efforts to share strategy and learn from authoritarian movements across the globe as they face different forms of liberal resistance. Those committed to liberal democracy should do the same.

Poland under Duda offers a clear illustration—not just of democratic backsliding, but of the kinds of resistance required to counter it. Beginning in 2015, as president aligned with the Law and Justice Party (PiS), Duda signed legislation that reshaped Poland’s judiciary. Judicial appointments were restructured in ways that increased political control, disciplinary mechanisms were introduced to pressure judges disfavored by the regime, and the Constitutional Tribunal was transformed from a check on extremism into a contested instrument of partisan governance. These moves were framed as reforms, but their cumulative effect was to weaken judicial independence and concentrate authority in centers of power held by PiS. 

Similar dynamics are increasingly visible in the United States. By capturing the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump’s first term, Republicans have been able to pursue aggressive gerrymandering, electoral rule changes, and judicial restructuring to institutionalize power even when demographic and electoral trends threaten their dominance. The recent Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais removing the last real teeth from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the ongoing Republican gerrymandering efforts it enabled underscores how institutional mechanisms can be used not merely to win elections, but to lock in durable power advantages divorced from public opinion.

Yet Poland’s story did not end with institutional capture. Rather than staying in their institutional lanes, judges organized publicly, forming associations and staging demonstrations and court walkouts in their robes. Legal professionals documented abuses and pursued cases in European courts. Civil society groups translated abstract rule-of-law concerns into concrete threats to everyday rights. Pressure from European institutions created external leverage, while domestic activists sustained internal legitimacy. Over time, this layered resistance reshaped the political landscape and contributed to electoral change.

Once institutions have been politicized, restoring liberal democracy without reproducing illiberal methods becomes extraordinarily difficult. Post-Duda Poland has confronted a series of “institutional traps,” following a familiar pattern where illiberal movements design systems specifically to force successors into legitimacy crises, creating a situation in which every attempted repair can itself be portrayed as anti-democratic. The Tusk government’s struggles to depoliticize public media, reform the judiciary, and reverse partisan institutional packing have demonstrated how democratic erosion can outlast electoral defeat. But that is exactly why the left needs to coordinate internationally to find effective ways forward as more countries overthrow illiberal rulers.

The Polish experience demonstrates that institutional erosion must be met with coordinated institutional strategy. It requires actors inside and affiliated with governmental systems such as judges, bar associations, and civil servants who are willing to act collectively rather than retreat into professional neutrality. It also requires civic organizations capable of sustaining attention long after headlines fade.

A complementary model comes from South Korea. The 2016–2017 Candlelight Revolution mobilized millions of citizens in disciplined, weekly protests that culminated in the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. Beyond sheer numbers, the movement demonstrated a sophisticated civic strategy: protesters coordinated through decentralized networks, maintained rigorous schedules, and developed norms of nonviolent engagement and public accountability. Importantly, the movement fostered durable civic infrastructures—associations, digital communication channels, and community-led assemblies—that cultivated habits of constitutional vigilance. These practices went beyond a single campaign, embedding civic discipline, collaboration, and legal literacy across multiple sectors of South Korean society. The Candlelight Revolution thus exemplifies how sustained grassroots organization can create enduring mechanisms for democratic oversight.

Years later, these civic networks proved decisive in checking executive overreach under President Yoon Suk Yeol. When Yoon attempted to bypass democratic institutions by declaring martial law and refusing judicial and legislative orders to relinquish power, the infrastructure and culture cultivated by the Candlelight Movement enabled rapid, coordinated responses. Mass protests reemerged, leveraging the same organizational channels and civic habits established nearly a decade earlier, while legal professionals and civil society groups applied institutional pressure to constrain authoritarian actions. This combination of public mobilization and institutional resistance led to his removal from office, and in February 2026 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for leading an insurrection. The episode underscores how long-term civic organizing can translate into accountability and that movements that invest in social networks, procedural norms, and political literacy can shape the trajectory of governance well beyond any single protest cycle.

In Brazil, long‑standing organizing by Indigenous peoples and other marginalized communities helped anchor broader opposition to Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency and contributed to the political environment that led to his electoral defeat. Indigenous networks such as the Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil (APIB) had long organized around land demarcation, constitutional protections, and resistance to encroachments by agribusiness and extractive interests, drawing on decades of grassroots advocacy to defend rights guaranteed in Brazil’s 1988 constitution. These Indigenous movements frequently joined with environmental groups, human rights organizations, faith leaders, journalists, student movements, and legal advocates to contest Bolsonaro’s rollback of land protections, weakening of environmental enforcement, and rhetoric dismissive of Indigenous rights, especially in the Amazon’s territories.

That coalition strategy was visible in sustained protests and public actions during Bolsonaro’s term, including mass demonstrations and legal challenges that kept attention on environmental destruction and democratic erosion even as political polarization deepened. Broad civic mobilization around issues such as climate policy, land rights, and respect for institutional norms helped strengthen civil society networks, increase public scrutiny of governance, and build alliances across social movements. This coordination helped leverage Bolsonaro’s divisive rhetoric and the intense backlash to his policies to mobilize voters against him in the 2022 election, which he narrowly lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. After leaving office, Bolsonaro’s efforts to contest the electoral outcome and resist the democratic transition—including involvement in the Brasília riots when supporters stormed key government buildings—led to his conviction for plotting to subvert democracy.

There are also important cautionary lessons. Between 2007 and 2009, Pakistan’s Lawyers’ Movement emerged as a powerful example of civic resistance when tens of thousands of lawyers and allied civil society actors mobilized nationwide to defend judicial independence. When President Pervez Musharraf suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in retaliation for the Supreme Court’s increasing assertiveness, lawyers began mass protests organized under the banner of Adliya Bachao Tehreek (“Save the Judiciary Movement”). At its height, roughly 80,000 lawyers and supporters participated in rallies, sit‑ins, long marches, and court boycotts, with black‑coated lawyers becoming a globally recognized symbol of constitutional resistance. These actions drew widespread media attention and condemnation of the regime’s use of violence and detentions against lawyers and activists. After months of pressure, Musharraf was forced to temporarily reinstate Chaudhry in July 2007, and later, under civilian political pressure and another sustained mobilization culminating in a long march on Islamabad in March 2009, Chaudhry and dozens of judges were fully restored to the judiciary.

Yet the broader political system remained unstable. Even after the restoration of judicial independence in 2009 under a civilian government, the underlying tensions between the judiciary, the executive, and the military establishment were unresolved. The movement succeeded in restoring a particular set of judges but did not produce deeper institutional reforms that could stabilize Pakistan’s fragile civilian rule. Civil-military tensions persisted, and democratic institutions continued to lack deep social anchoring as political parties, the military, and judicial actors jockeyed for influence in subsequent years. This fragility is reflected in Pakistan’s recurrent political crises in the decade that followed—from contested elections to ongoing debates over the balance of civilian and military power—demonstrating that victories that do not fully integrate institutional reform, civic embedding, and a broadly shared democratic culture can prove fragile and subject to reversal.

Taken together, these cases suggest that successful resistance to authoritarian drift is rarely the product of a single mechanism. Elections matter, but they are not self-executing safeguards. Courts matter, but they cannot stand alone. Protest matters, but it must be sustained and institutionalized. Marginalized communities matter, not simply as moral symbols, but as integral political actors whose lived experience and deep community connections stabilize democratic commitments.

Duda’s trajectory—from presiding over executive power grabs in Poland to affiliating with a prominent American conservative institution—illustrates how the global right treats ideas and institutions as part of a shared ecosystem. Recent investigative reporting on Donald Trump’s surprising pardon of former Honduran president Orlando Hernández revealed this ecosystem even more clearly. Honduran journalists have released several clips of Hernández discussing a network of right-wing governments in the United States, Argentina, and Israel coordinating with Honduras to undermine left-leaning governments in Mexico and Colombia through propaganda in exchange for assisting Hernández’s return to power. Contemporary right-wing movements do not operate as isolated national projects.

The global left needs to cultivate similar networks and understandings to counter democratic backsliding. It must be equally serious about institutional strategy, equally committed to long-term civic renewal, and equally attentive to the communities whose democratic inclusion remains unfinished. The lesson from Poland is that resistance requires organized actors inside and outside formal institutions. The lesson from South Korea is that sustained civic infrastructure turns outrage into constitutional action. The lesson from Brazil is that democracy rooted in marginalized communities has deeper foundations. The lesson from Pakistan is that partial victories without systemic consolidation invite backsliding.

As the global right studies success and collaborates across borders, those committed to liberal democracy should do no less. Pro-democracy organizing needs a thriving ecosystem to continue to grow, and every part of society has a part to play if we continue to learn from each other.

Featured image is President Trump Meets with President Duda of Poland, by Shealah Craighead