Democracies today find themselves in a perilous situation, 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall signaled their moment of triumph. Externally, the current tensions between the democratic world and authoritarian regimes hark back to the Cold War. Internally, not since the 1930s have identity conflicts, populism, authoritarianism, racism and anti-Semitism undermined democratic societies to such an extent. For the democratic world, the combination of external and internal threats marks the obvious danger of the moment.
In the face of these major challenges, democratic societies still have one priceless asset that is illustrated in the results of our study: the citizens surveyed have confirmed their allegiance to freedoms and to democracy. Our data show that when they voice disapproval, more often than not, the object of their criticism is not the idea of democracy itself but rather the way in which democracy functions in their country.
This is the troubled context within which we have created the global survey Freedoms at risk: the challenge of the century, conducted in 55 countries. This survey was born out of close cooperation between the Fondation pour l’innovation politique (France), the International Republican Institute (the U.S.), the Community of Democracies (intergovernmental organization), the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (Germany), the Genron NPO (Japan), the Fundación Nuevas Generaciones (Argentina) and República do Amanhã (Brazil).
The questionnaire was administered to 47,408 people, in each of the national languages, i.e. 45 languages for 55 countries on 5 continents: Albania, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Moldova, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States.