A Lookback at The Biden Administration’s Development Agenda, Part IV: Democracy, Human Rights, Conflict, and More

This is the fourth in a series of five blogs on the Biden administration’s global development agenda over the past four years. The blogs are based on the administration’s own account of its accomplishments as laid out in the U.S. Strategy on Global Development released by the White House in September 2024, which centers around five key objectives:

1. Reduce Poverty through Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Growth and Quality Infrastructure Development
2. Invest in Health, Food Security, and Human Capital 
3. Decarbonize the Economy and Increase Climate Resilience
4. Promote Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance and Address Fragility and Conflict 
5. Respond to Humanitarian Needs 

This blog focuses on the Biden administration’s record on pillar 4: Promote Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance and Address Fragility and Conflict, and offers an assessment of how the next Trump administration could affect Biden’s legacy. Early in his tenure during remarks at the Munich Security Conference, Biden called the moment “an inflection point in democracy,” and stressed that democracy “will and must prevail.” President Biden embraced the opportunity to lead on the issue, investing significant time and resources to encourage democratic reform—and combat authoritarianism—around the world. Unfortunately, the US toolkit was no match for the spread and intensity of anti-democratic forces, with political rights and civil liberties under threat in every corner of the globe. President-elect Trump, whose embrace of autocrats is well documented, is very unlikely to espouse democratic principles as a foreign policy priority.

U.S. Strategy on Global Development Pillar 4: Promote Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance and Address Fragility and Conflict

Democracy and Human Rights

In December 2021, President Biden launched a Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal, designed to bolster democracy by supporting free and independent media, fighting corruption, aiding democratic reformers, advancing technology for democracy, and defending free and fair elections. About $400 million was initially attached to various efforts under the initiative, buoyed by another $690 million in pledges in 2023, but the funding is hard to track. Notably, an update to the initiative issued in 2024 stressed the expansion of the initiative in the United States in the face of rising domestic threats to democracy.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power created a Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance to elevate attention to these issues and help implement the Presidential Initiative. In 2022, USAID and the State Department announced the “Democracy Delivers” program to support countries experiencing “promising windows” of democratic opportunity by partnering with philanthropies, civil society, and the business community to help reformers demonstrate a “democratic dividend” for their citizens. Its purpose is to surge support to reinforce positive democratic impulses, potentially enabling further reforms. USAID’s Commitment to Action lists financial pledges and programs in support of this initiative from the US, foundations, and private actors.

The initiative was initially active in Armenia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Malawi, Maldives, Moldova, Nepal, Tanzania, and Zambia. Guatemala and Fiji were added as members in late 2024. According to USAID’s latest fact sheet, the initiative mobilized over $250 million to support eligible countries. Many of these are small interventions (e.g., $5 million or less) to support greater transparency in public financial management, including debt and procurement. Freedom’s House 2024 index shows that democracy indicators strengthened in two of the initial cohort countries (the Maldives and Nepal), and worsened or remained unchanged for the others.

President Biden also hosted two Summits for Democracy (S4Ds) and attended a third (hosted by Korea) to elicit pledges to support democratic processes in one or more of the following areas: strengthening democracy and defending against authoritarianism, addressing and fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights. At the initial summit, more than 50 governments made nearly 900 commitments across these areas. But as with many such initiatives, there are no accountability mechanisms to track progress. Commentary by the Carnegie Endowment concluded that “the initial idea of the summits as a process in which governments would make political reform commitments and then fulfill those commitments over time has borne relatively little fruit; by the second summit, there was scant mention of the commitments that had been required in the first.”

Fragility and Conflict

The US has a long and checkered history of trying to promote stability in fragile and conflict-affected states (FCS). Unfortunately, the Biden administration will likely be remembered most for the messily executed withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in August 2021. A State Department review of the withdrawal identified a number of challenges that were compounded by the speed of the departure, including prioritizing and evacuating at-risk Afghans. The US continues to provide significant funding to countries of critical strategic importance, leading with Ukraine, but President Biden largely abandoned the resource-intensive state-building initiatives that several previous administrations—Republican and Democratic alike—pursued, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In 2022, the administration unveiled the U.S. Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability, a whole-of-government effort to help countries move from fragility to stability and from conflict to peace. The strategy is underpinned by the 2019 Global Fragility Act (GFA), which mandated the negotiation of ten-year plans with priority countries aimed at preventing the drivers of violent conflict and extremism.

The Biden administration concluded, and made public, bilateral plans for Haiti, Libya, Mozambique, and Papua New Guinea and one regional plan for West Africa (Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Togo). One distinguishing feature relative to other US partnerships is that they involved a much broader and inclusive consultative process, including with marginalized groups. The plans identify key long-term objectives in each country and rely chiefly on dialogue and other forms of engagement for success.  

The plans are expected to be in force through 2032, making it much too early to assess success. However, because the plans offer few levers for change, they are unlikely vehicles for achieving impact. Congress authorized up to $200 million per year between FY2020-FY 2024, but actual funding levels have been lower (i.e., between $125 and 135 million annually). This funding is a pittance compared to the scale of the challenges, although evidence clearly shows that large financial investments in FCS are no guarantee of success either. This is not a US failing by any means—global institutions like the IMF and World Bank have been struggling for decades over how to exact meaningful change in these environments.

Legacy Assessment

The Biden administration’s efforts to promote democracy and human rights took place in the global context of growing authoritarianism globally and a tarnished US image. Freedom House, which tracks political liberties, concluded in 2021 that the international balance was shifting in favor of tyranny and in 2022 warned that “the global order is nearing a tipping point” and that “if democracy’s defenders do not work together to help guarantee freedom for all people, the authoritarian model will prevail.”

The Biden administration deserves credit for using its convening power and bully pulpit at the highest levels to draw attention to these risks and work with other governments to manage them. An analysis of Biden’s policies on democracy by the Carnegie Endowment concluded that they represented a “serious response to democracy’s troubled global situation.”

But these soft power tools can only do so much, especially in the context of increasingly sophisticated efforts to sow discord through disinformation campaigns and other measures. Freedom House concluded in its latest report that global freedoms continued to decline for the eighteenth consecutive year, pointing to increased violence and manipulation around elections as key challenges. The Global State of Democracy Initiative which assesses four indicators of democracy (rule of law, participation, representation and rights) in 174 countries, shows a deterioration across all of them since 2015. The world badly needs global champions for democracy and unfortunately this is not a role that President-elect Trump is likely to play.

On efforts to address fragility and conflict, President Biden is likely to be remembered for the poorly executed withdrawal from Afghanistan, although the war itself lasted through successive Democratic and Republican administrations, at a cost that Brown University researchers estimate surpassed $2 trillion. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he made “no apologies for ending America’s longest war,” and called it a “signal achievement of the president’s.”

The fate of his conflict prevention strategy remains an open question. The administration’s conclusion-of-engagement plans with FCS are based on the acknowledgement that success requires long and sustained intervention (at least ten years), which is sound. And because the plans are mandated by legislation initially approved by President Trump, there is scope for continuity. But I rate prospects for success as low, as these plans rely chiefly on sporadic diplomatic engagement to deal with deep-seated, intractable challenges that have bested many experts.

In short, despite sizable effort, this pillar is not one where the Biden administration can claim any big wins.