Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave: A Playbook for Countering the Authoritarian Threat
By Hardy Merriman, Patrick Quirk, and Ash Jain
ICNC and The Atlantic Council
Published March 2023
Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave is a joint project between the Atlantic Council and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), aimed at catalyzing support for nonviolent pro-democracy movements fighting against authoritarian rule.
The project recognizes that civil resistance movements—using tactics such as strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience, and a range of other nonviolent tactics—are one of the most powerful forces for democracy worldwide and therefore central to reversing the last seventeen years of democratic recession.
The project produced a three-part report, titled Fostering a Fourth Democratic Wave: A Playbook for Countering the Authoritarian Threat, that:
1. Proposes new approaches and tools to support civil resistance movements
2. Advances a new international norm — the “Right to Assist” pro-democracy movements
3. Develops strategic and tactical options to constrain authoritarian regimes and drive up the cost of their repression
