For decades, party international organizations have mobilized like-minded political parties from around the world to share knowledge and organize a joint agenda. However, democratically-minded party networks have historically lacked a dedicated international space to collaborate with each other in the defense of democratic institutions globally. In order to answer the rise of authoritarians around the world, party internationals can work together to leverage their powerful party networks to enact and protect new democratic norms. 

In early 1985, John Hume, the future co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the first person to receive NDI’s Democracy Award, visited Washington, D.C., to build bipartisan support for the politics of peace in Northern Ireland. Known as a civil rights leader in the 1960s from the Bogside in Derry, he had become the leader of Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic Labor Party (SDLP) and was by then an elected member of both the British and European parliaments. 

As authoritarianism solidifies, democracy is declining across the world, with political polarization as one of the most pressing challenges. Political parties are increasingly being targeted by illiberal actors with a common agenda to aggravate division between parties and to weaken functioning multi-party systems.

Making their way from southeastern Europe, 31 leaders of parties from across the political mainstream in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Slovenia traveled to Stockholm last October. 

Taiwan’s evolution over the past four decades to become one of the world’s foremost democratic success stories should be celebrated by all who cherish the preservation of human dignity and potential in Asia. Though elections were regularly held in Taiwan beginning in 1950, the 1948 “Temporary Provisions” to the constitution and the institution of martial law suppressed basic liberties, including the formation of opposition political parties to contest in elections, until martial law was lifted in 1987. 

While the unrest in the country has rightfully drawn the world’s attention, it is only one of a series of challenges facing the political system in Peru. The country’s political reality is one of deep political and cultural divisions and political parties that lack resilient and effective structures, such as an absence of strong internal policies designed to increase diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in political parties and processes, which is an issue in a country as diverse and polarized as Peru.