Switzerland refines its global democracy aims in a tough context

Amid a global democratic decline, the Swiss foreign ministry has issued new guidelines to clarify how it wants to help shore up freedoms around the world. Readers will have heard by now that global democracy is not doing well. Autocrats are on the rise, freedoms are not, and according to the V-Dem Institute, the world is about as democratic as it was in the mid-1980s. Meanwhile, Donald Trump hasn’t helped: his cuts at bodies like the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department have left a hole of $3 billion (CHF2.47 billion) in global democracy promotion. What can Switzerland do about all this? On Wednesday, the foreign ministry tried to give some sort of an answer by publishing its first ever “Guidelines on Democracy” – a strategic framework to guide its democracy promotion efforts in the coming years. Reflecting the global situation, the tone is sober: for the period 2025-2028, the goal is to “safeguard the democratic world”, the guidelines state.