Exporting Autocracy: How Foreign Influence Operations Shape Democratic Attitudes

What impact do foreign authoritarian influence operations (FIOs) have on democracy? By some measures, nearly all the hard-won democratic gains from the previous 35 years had disappeared by 2022 (Varieties of Democracy 2023). Since these declines corresponded with a steep increase in disinformation, numerous scholars argue that FIOs contributed to these democratic setbacks (Diamond 2019; Dobson, Masoud, and Walker 2023). Other research has questioned the evidence of such backsliding (Little and Meng 2024; Arriola, Rakner, and Van de Walle 2023), or claimed more generally that information campaigns have only marginal political effects (Eady, Paskhalis, Zilinsky et al. 2023). Through an examination of democratic attitudes in 15 African countries between 2009 and 2023, we present preliminary but compelling evidence that autocrats export authoritarianism.