For many decades, autocrats have been considered less cooperative than democrats in international politics. While researchers endeavored to learn how international democratic practices spread through political, economic, and social networks, little attention was paid to autocratic collaboration tendencies. However, growing bodies of evidence from human rights and democracy support to international security and international development demonstrate that authoritarian regimes are collaborating through formal organizations and informal channels to stabilize or entrench their rule, disrupt democratic civil society, and even extend the reach of repressive institutions beyond state boundaries.
Autocrats face common threats, including: pro-democracy groups and dissenters at home; stigmatization and illegitimacy of their authoritarian governance tactics abroad; conditionalities on critically needed aid or loans that prioritize democratic governance structures and policies; and evolving and increased security threats. In response, authoritarian regimes are sharing information; working to legitimate (or de-stigmatize) repressive practices; supporting one another as they weather shocks and crises resulting from international integration (economic or political); and even lending resources for co-opting and managing critical constituencies. These and other tactics allow them to entrench authoritarian practices.
To enable the democracy support community to effectively bolster democratic resilience in the face of growing authoritarianism, we must better understand these practices. This paper provides an overview of modern authoritarian collaboration, analyzing its purposes and methods. It goes on to consider implications for international order and suggests that democracy defenders challenge pernicious authoritarian collaboration, for instance by leveraging their own transnational networks to disrupt authoritarian collaboration on surveillance and repression; provide compelling counter-narratives and debunk disinformation through effective civic education campaigns; and international standard setting and rule enforcement that cuts off authoritarian actors from financial and other resources.