Appendix F: International Comparisons
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These are international examples that interviewees mentioned during the listening exercise as models, precedents, or cautionary tales for Canadian democracy work.
This appendix grounds The Strategy's forward-looking section in international evidence. The comparisons matter not because Canada's situation is identical to any other country's but because coalition formation dynamics, the broad-coalition-vs.-focused-alliance question, and the timing question (build before the crisis or scramble during it) are universal. The Strategy argues that Canada is in a preparatory window. This appendix provides the evidence for why that window matters.
The Carnegie Research
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has produced the most rigorous body of research on democratic backsliding and coalition formation. 2 publications are directly relevant to this project.
Feldman and McCoy's March 2024 paper found that broad-based, preelection coalitions have had significantly better success rates against backsliding leaders than divided oppositions. The core finding is that diverse opposition groups may have even greater success if they unite before backsliding becomes severe. The small window before backsliding becomes so severe that the opposition can no longer win often closes quickly. This maps directly onto The Strategy's argument that Canada is currently in the preparatory window: the threats are visible but the democratic space is still open enough for coalition-building to succeed.
The Carnegie research on democratic recovery (April 2025) adds a sobering finding. The study examines 4 ongoing cases of attempted democratic recovery after the electoral defeat of a backsliding leader: Brazil, Poland, Senegal, and Zambia. The lesson is that winning an election is necessary but not sufficient: autocratic enclaves in government structures commonly remain and may impose enormous obstacles to democratic reformers. For Canada, this means a democracy coalition cannot be organized around a single election outcome; it must be built for sustained engagement across electoral cycles.
Scott Warren's rebuttal, published in October 2025 through Democracy Without Exception, offers a critical complement. Warren, a Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, argues that an effective American big tent must include people who agree with parts of the governing agenda but still oppose threats to democratic norms, and must articulate a positive vision for the future that goes beyond opposition to any single leader. He warns that democracy advocacy too often becomes entangled with a progressive policy agenda, and that a truly pro-democracy coalition needs participants who actually espouse a wide array of policy perspectives. This mirrors the progressive conflation concern that 26 of 58 interviewees unprompted raised. The Carnegie finding and Warren's critique together point to the same conclusion: a Canadian coalition must be pro-democratic-resilience, not anti-any-particular-leader, and must include ideological diversity that is genuine rather than performative.
The Carnegie companion research on women's mobilization (March 2024) adds a dimension relevant to The Strategy's Circle 2 proposals. The case studies affirm women's pivotal roles in democratic resistance movements, and show how democratic erosion pushed some women's rights organizations to become more involved in prodemocracy activism, giving rise to new cross-issue alliances. The lesson for Canada: issue-based coalitions (press freedom, online harms, cross-movement rights) are not separate from the democracy coalition. They are the mechanism by which the coalition becomes broad enough to succeed.
Tier 1: Closest Analogues
Pacto pela Democracia (Brazil)
Website: pactopelademocracia.org.br (English: english.pactopelademocracia.org.br). Founded: 2018, with roots stretching back to 2016. Structure: executive secretariat led by Executive Director Flavia Pellegrino, with dedicated staff. Members: 200+ civil society organizations. Key activities: network-building, scenario analysis, strategic communication, political advocacy, crisis response, election integrity monitoring, and international pro-democracy agenda engagement.
Pacto's roots stretch back to 2016, when Brazil was grappling with political turmoil following the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. Civil society leaders recognized the warning signs of democratic backsliding and began meeting to discuss political reforms and civic engagement. As the situation worsened, the group evolved into a broader, more structured coalition. This origin story parallels the trajectory The Strategy describes for Canada: a listening exercise that begins as sector coordination evolves into a multi-sector coalition because the challenge is bigger than any one sector.
One of the most important lessons learned is that defending democracy ideally must begin before it comes under full attack. Creating coalitions early, during what scholars call the "pre-autocratization" phase, allows trust to develop, procedures to be tested, and responses to be coordinated before political space narrows. This is the single most important lesson for Canada.
The 58 interviewees are telling us the window is open. Pacto's experience shows what happens when that preparatory work is done.
Pacto operates through network-building, scenario analysis, strategic communication, political advocacy, project management, and anticipating and responding to democratic crises. In 2022, the coalition deployed 80 or more discrete collaborative actions to protect the integrity of Brazil's presidential election, using an opt-in strategy among network partners. The coalition's 3 operational fronts (promoting democratic culture, strengthening civil society through elections, and proposing democratic commitments to political leaders) map closely onto The Strategy's 3 concentric circles. Pacto is now preparing for Brazil's 2026 presidential election, with an updated theory of change and a multi-year strategic plan developed in 2024.
Lesson for Canada: the secretariat model works. A small, dedicated coordination team can orchestrate actions across 200 or more organizations when the trust infrastructure has been built in advance. Canada's proposed coordination infrastructure (Circle 1) is the Canadian equivalent of what Pacto built in 2016 to 2018 before Brazil's crisis arrived.
Democracy 2025 / Democracy Forward (United States)
Website: democracy2025.org. Founded: 2022 (as a research and planning project); launched publicly January 2025. Structure: coalition hub housed at Democracy Forward, with a dedicated staff of 13 lawyers and researchers. Members: 700+ organizations and thousands of legal and policy advocates.
The origin story is directly relevant to Canada: the coalition began as a research-and-planning project in 2022, 2 years before the acute crisis it was designed to respond to. The preparatory work (developing legal strategies, building a "threat matrix" of 221 high-priority threats, creating coordination infrastructure) meant the coalition could activate rapidly when the crisis arrived. By its first anniversary in January 2026, Democracy 2025 had grown into what observers described as the largest legal coordination effort in modern U.S. history, with more than 700 organizations representing millions of people.
Lesson for Canada: the 2-year preparatory runway matters. Democracy 2025 did not emerge overnight. It was built through years of relationship-building, legal research, and strategic planning before it needed to act. Canada's listening exercise and this project are the equivalent of that preparatory phase. The question is whether the preparatory work will be converted into operational capacity before it is needed.
Rivonia Circle (South Africa)
Website: rivoniacircle.org. Founded: 2022 by Songezo Zibi and others. Structure: nonpartisan think tank with community mobilization arm. Key activities: research, polling, community convenings, Democracy Builder programme, political culture reform.
The Rivonia Circle was launched to fill a vacuum where South Africans had become demobilized from political activity and had significantly opted out of electoral politics. It positioned itself as a convener of political conversations in a nonpartisan space, combining research with grassroots community mobilization. Its Democracy Builder programme is a structured listening tool that mobilizes and supports communities of South Africans from all backgrounds and orientations to take action by building solutions to local problems they want to solve. The organization adopted a rural and peri-urban bias in its work, deliberately reaching communities underserved by existing political infrastructure.
The Rivonia Circle's trajectory took a significant turn in 2023 when its insights led to the formation of Rise Mzansi, a separate political movement led by Zibi. Rise Mzansi contested the May 2024 elections, winning 2 seats in the National Assembly with 0.42% of the national vote and joining the Government of National Unity. In October 2025, Rise Mzansi announced it would merge with 2 other parties (Good and Build One South Africa) to form Unite for Change ahead of the 2026 local government elections.
This evolution is instructive for Canada in several ways. First, it demonstrates how a "listening exercise" (the Rivonia Circle's Democracy Builder programme) can generate sufficient momentum to produce concrete political action. Second, it illustrates the tension between nonpartisan convening and political engagement: the Rivonia Circle maintained its think tank identity while spawning a political movement. Third, the scale of Rise Mzansi's electoral result (2 seats from a standing start) shows both the promise and the limits of translating civic mobilization into electoral outcomes. The Rivonia Circle's "South Africa 2.0" forward vision parallels the aspirational tone that interviewees consistently expressed in the 2050 vision question. Its refusal to become a political party while still enabling explicitly political action mirrors the position this project advocates: nonpartisan does not mean non-political.
Tier 2: Relevant Models
Global Democracy Coalition: a multi-stakeholder alliance of over 170 organizations originally convened by International IDEA in 2021 ahead of the first Summit for Democracy. It has evolved into a platform for dialogue, knowledge exchange, and advocacy, with programming in over 110 countries. The coalition holds annual forums and leads initiatives including the "Voice and Value of Democracy" advocacy campaign. Relevant as a potential international home for Canadian coalition participation.
Asia Democracy Network: a regional civil society network connecting democratic organizations across South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, and other Asian democracies. Demonstrates how a coordination network (equivalent to Canada's proposed Circle 1) can operate regionally to share practices and provide mutual support.
Keseb: a nonpartisan, pro-democracy nonprofit founded in 2022 that supports democracy entrepreneurs and their organizations from Brazil, South Africa, and the United States. Its Democracy Fellowship provides a 2-year immersion with flexible capital, coaching, and community to a cohort of 12 democracy entrepreneurs working across 4 priority pillars: free, fair, and trusted elections; diverse, representative, and pro-democratic public leadership; healthy information ecosystems; and empowered and engaged constituents. Relevant as a model for developing leadership within the democracy sector and for connecting practitioners across countries. Pacto pela Democracia's executive director is a Keseb fellow, illustrating how fellowship networks build the relational infrastructure that coalitions depend on.
Taiwan's counter-disinformation infrastructure (Doublethink Lab, IORG): Taiwan has developed among the world's most sophisticated civil society responses to information manipulation, combining government transparency initiatives, civic tech innovation, and media literacy education. Relevant to the information ecosystem theme (15 unprompted mentions in the data) and to Circle 3 proposals around civic education and democratic culture. 1 interviewee specifically referenced Taiwan's approach as a model.
Better Politics Foundation (United Kingdom/Canada): the Better Politics Foundation's mapping of the UK's democracy sector informed the design of the Canadian Democracy Atlas. Their systematic approach to identifying, categorizing, and mapping democracy organizations provided a direct methodological precedent for this project's effort to make the Canadian landscape visible and navigable.
Tier 3: Issue-Specific Models
amandla.mobi (South Africa): an independent, community advocacy organization founded in 2014 that uses mobile technology to enable democratic participation at scale. Its mission is to turn every cell phone into a democracy-building tool, focusing on low-income Black women as the constituency most affected by poverty, violence, and corruption. The organization has grown to a movement of nearly 1 million members across South Africa and has won significant campaign victories on data costs, sanitary pad access, and public broadcasting. Relevant to Circle 3 proposals about going to where people are.
Politize! (Brazil): a civic education organization founded in 2015 that produces free, unbiased civic education content, trains civic leaders, and integrates citizenship education into public school curricula. Operating primarily in Portuguese, Politize! reaches millions through digital channels and has trained over 53,000 teachers across 10 Brazilian states. Since 2024, it has expanded to Spanish-speaking audiences in Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina with support from the National Endowment for Democracy. Demonstrates that civic education at scale (a Circle 3 priority with 10 unprompted mentions) is achievable in large, diverse countries when digital channels are used effectively.
Finland's media literacy strategy: referenced by 1 interviewee as a model for Canada. Finland has maintained a comprehensive media literacy approach since the 1950s, integrating it into the education system as a lifelong learning priority. The UK's Ofcom "Making Sense of Media" programme offers a more recent model. Both demonstrate that information ecosystem resilience (15 unprompted mentions) requires sustained, systemic investment rather than reactive interventions.
What Is Notably Absent
No Canadian equivalent to any of these structures currently exists. There is no Pacto pela Democracia in Canada: no cross-ideological coalition of 200 organizations coordinating on democratic resilience. There is no Democracy 2025: no pre-positioned legal and strategic coordination hub ready to activate when democratic norms are threatened. There is no Rivonia Circle: no nonpartisan think tank combining research with grassroots community mobilization for democratic culture. There is no equivalent of Finland's lifelong media literacy infrastructure, Taiwan's counter-disinformation ecosystem, or Brazil's Politize! civic education platform.
This gap is precisely what 58 interviewees identified. It is the gap this project is calling attention to, and it is the gap that the proposed coalition is designed to fill. The international evidence shows that filling this gap is possible, that the preparatory window matters, and that the coalition-building work must begin before the acute crisis arrives. Canada's listening exercise is the first step. What comes next depends on whether the sector, and its funders and partners, act on what they heard.