Global Scans · Democracy · Weekly Summary

WHAT'S NEXT?: Society is expressing its discontent with current democratic processes that leave the elites struggling to convince their voters of their good intentions and competencies. Read on to see how democracy is offering both great opportunities and risks while this period of volatility shakes out.

• [New] Across the globe, liberal democracy is under threat from populism. The London School of Economics and Political Science
• [New] Democratic lawmakers criticize the SEC under Atkins and Trump for dropping enforcement actions against firms like Binance and Coinbase, alleging an enforcement vacuum that could leave investors unprotected. TU News
• [New] A renewed wave of mass kidnappings has hit Nigeria in recent months, and insecurity remains a major issue ahead of 2027's general election. BBC News
• [New] Dismantling an entire nation's judicial branch to elect all judges at all levels is unprecedented worldwide and will place Mexico in a unique position in terms of its method for judicial selection. Jones Day
• [New] A report into social cohesion and the state of British democracy suggests a widespread view that the social contract between citizen and state has broken down, threatening democracy and posing a first order national security threat. Religion Media Centre
• [New] President Donald Trump's administration is threatening to withhold some federal funding from states that do not make changes to voting practices and is warning state election officials that they face arrest if they do not remove noncitizens from voter rolls. ABC News
• [New] The Brennan Center for Justice is pushing the Federal Election Commission to act decisively on deliberately deceptive AI-produced content for fear that deepfakes impersonating candidates are likely to become an increasingly effective tool for defrauding donors. The Guardian
• [New] Indonesia's next presidential election is in 2029; the current administration needs to demonstrate tangible economic improvements - in employment, wages, and household purchasing power - well before the election cycle begins in earnest. KBA13 INSIGHT
• [New] Robust regulation and enforcement of political finance rules is fundamental to maintaining public confidence in the UK's democratic system and safeguarding it against risks, including the threat of foreign interference and undue influence. GOV.UK
• [New] Trump will claim fraud wherever his partisan allies lose, and that the pro-Trump ecosystem will back that claim up with manufactured content built on the lies already circulating about noncitizen voting and mail balloting. If you can keep it
• [New] The deadly Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is moving faster than efforts to contain it, raising fears about what might happen if it explodes in highly populated areas held by M23, the powerful rebel group that seized vast swaths of territory last year. FDD
• [New] The AfD could win an absolute majority in a state election in September in Saxony-Anhalt, meaning that it would form a state government for the first time. NAMPA
• [New] The CLARITY Act reached the Senate floor calendar with a July vote target according to CoinDesk, and five US regulators proposed stablecoin rules under the GENIUS Act that could reshape crypto for the rest of the decade. TechBullion
• [New] Algerians will vote under an open-list proportional representation system, allowing voters to choose party lists and express preferences for individual candidates. Al Jazeera
• [New] The Australian government has announced that it will provide $5 million to support the response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Devpolicy Blog from the Development Policy Centre

Last updated: 19 July 2026