Why Business Leaders Need to Champion Democracy

Democracy is in decline across the world. More countries are experiencing erosion of political rights and civil liberties than gains, according to Freedom House. As of 2025, 92 countries, representing 74% of the world’s population, were classified as autocracies by the V-Dem Institute.

Democratic backsliding is a primary concern for business leaders, who largely agree on the importance of strong democratic institutions. In a 2022 survey by Morning Consult and the Business and Democracy Initiative, 96% of executives said a well-functioning democracy is important to a strong economy, and 75% said it mostly helps their business. Consumer attitudes point in the same direction: In a 2024 survey by Morning Consult and the Public Private Strategies Institute, 76% of consumers said they believe that businesses should help ensure safe and fair elections, and 72% supported businesses speaking out against threats to democracy.

Despite this widely shared view of the importance of democracy, many leaders we’ve spoken with in both the U.S. and around the world have said that they’re unsure what they can do to counter the global rise of authoritarianism. Some fear backlash or would prefer to avoid what is often framed as a partisan issue. Others see democracy as the domain of politicians and doubt that the voices of business leaders can make a difference.

We believe instead that business leaders are uniquely positioned to help contain democratic backsliding. Building on our research on power, democracy, and change in organizations and society, we argue that business leaders can play an essential role in the protection and strengthening of democracy. Supporting democracy is not only a civic obligation; it is also a strategic business imperative.

The Business Case for Democracy

Democracy provides businesses with two essential ingredients for success: clear rules and freedom.

Democracy establishes clear rules through legal frameworks, transparent regulatory processes, and consistent enforcement mechanisms. It helps ensure stable property rights, reliable contract enforcement, and anti-corruption safeguards that enable long-term investment and planning. These systems provide the kind of predictability that markets need in order to function efficiently. This does not mean that rules are always followed or enforced, but they are generally known and shape behavior in predictable ways.

Democracy also protects freedom. It is essential not just for political freedoms, like free expression and assembly, but also for the economic freedoms that businesses need to innovate and compete within the rules that have been democratically determined. Independent courts, media organizations, universities, and civil society organizations create checks and balances that guard businesses from discriminatory treatment, state overreach, and cronyism.

Together, these ingredients create a system in which people have “power with” one another, rather than a single party or person holding concentrated “power over” others.

The economic dividends of democracy are numerous and well documented. Research has shown that democratization increases GDP per capita by about 20% over time and limits corruption, while democratic backsliding leads to economic stagnation, policy instability, cronyism, brain drain, and violence. Democratic countries make larger investments in capital, education, and health and adopt more economic reforms. Electoral turnovers — in which the incumbent party is defeated and a new party comes to power — are a key component of healthy democracies and also improve countries’ economic performance. Democratically elected governments are strongly incentivized to support businesses that will grow and serve the needs of their citizens.

Authoritarian regimes, in contrast, treat business as a means to achieve their own ends. State-aligned companies are seen as showcases of regime success and are forced to prioritize political loyalty over market performance. Authoritarian governments may require companies to propagate state narratives, enforce surveillance in their workplaces and on digital platforms, or channel capital to favored industries and groups of people. Instead of remaining independent, businesses are pressured to serve as extensions of the state’s power, whether by funding patronage networks, censoring inconvenient truths, or producing goods and services that reinforce regime goals.

The weakening of democracy also spills over into the workplace, threatening vitality and performance. Threats to safety and free expression breed distrust that stifles the expression of new ideas, creativity, and innovation. Talented employees may begin to look elsewhere to build their careers and lives.

Today, these threats are sharpened by the rise of artificial intelligence, which is already reshaping both business and democratic governance. Historical examples attest to the way that authoritarian regimes have consistently weaponized technologies to consolidate power: The Nazi Party pioneered propaganda films and radio broadcasts; the Soviet Union exploited television and telecommunications for propaganda and surveillance. Today’s autocrats are already deploying AI for mass surveillance, disinformation campaigns, and social control at unprecedented scale. If left unchecked, AI will contribute to the concentration of power in the hands of a few government officials and company leaders, undermining free expression, destabilizing trust in information systems, and ultimately further weakening democracy.

What Business Leaders Can — and Must — Do

Business leaders occupy a unique and powerful role in modern democracies. They command substantial resources and influence over their employees, customers, investors, and policy makers. Consequently, they have both the power and responsibility to protect the institutional conditions that have supported decades of economic vitality.

Defending democracy should not be confused with advocating for any particular political party or ideology. It is about safeguarding and enhancing the institutional conditions that protect freedom, including the freedom of businesses to operate independently.

Our research on power and change (including Julie’s book Power, for All) shows that such large-scale resistance occurs through collective action among broad coalitions, not isolated individual efforts. Rather than leaving their peers to make solo statements or take action on their own, companies and their leaders must shift to acting together. Coalition-based approaches increase the perceived legitimacy of collective action and amplify its impact while also reducing risks to individual organizations and their leaders.

We see four critical domains in which businesses, working collectively, can strengthen democracy and safeguard the conditions for long-term business success. Importantly, all of these domains cross ideological and partisan boundaries and promote democratic practices rather than specific policy outcomes.

1. Defend democratic institutions and processes.

Business leaders should publicly support the foundational elements of democracy: free and fair elections and an independent judiciary. Around elections, this also means taking concrete action to remove barriers to employees’ civic participation. For instance, as of 2024, over 2,000 U.S. companies were part of the nonpartisan Time To Vote movement, pledging to ensure that their employees have a work schedule that allows them to vote in U.S. elections. Some companies gave employees additional time off to become poll workers or to help register voters at public events. A 2019 study found that corporate civic responsibility programs “were well received by employees, consumers, and shareholders,” and the companies that sponsored them reported higher employee and consumer satisfaction.

To reinforce the democratic infrastructure of independent courts, collective business action can also take the form of joint public statements. Resisting violations of the rule of law and government overreach against one’s organization, and speaking out when such overreach affects others, signals to employees, customers, and other partners that democracy is a shared responsibility.

Businesses involved in the development and deployment of AI technologies have a particularly important role to play. Like earlier major technological advances, AI has the potential to accelerate authoritarian consolidation. Businesses must commit to being transparent about how AI models are trained and deployed, and to collaborating with governments, universities, and civil society to ensure that AI accountability systems serve rather than undermine the public good.

The focus of all these efforts should not be on supporting particular political parties but on ensuring that healthy, independent civil society institutions in which citizens exercise real voice prevent the concentration and abuse of state power. This work benefits business by maintaining the stable, rules-based environment companies need to thrive.

2. Support independent civil society organizations without exercising undue influence.

Businesses can help support independent journalism, academia, and civil society organizations. However, this support must come with strict safeguards to protect the independence of these organizations. To avoid undue influence, businesses can collaborate to fund these institutions through mechanisms that ensure editorial and operational independence. These mechanisms include third-party intermediation and contributions to pooled funding, which have both been used to increase the impact of corporate support for humanitarian causes.

In addition, standards for transparency around funding, along with disclosures of conflicts of interest and intended uses, are necessary. By publicly affirming the autonomy of the organizations they support and committing to respect that autonomy in the future, businesses reinforce the principle that a thriving democracy depends on independent civil society organizations — even when those organizations challenge businesses’ own interests.

3. Limit forms of political influence that are not aligned with democratic principles.

While businesses have a role to play in supporting civic participation, democratic processes, and independent civil society organizations, they should not use their financial power to shape electoral outcomes, secure special treatment, or skew public decision-making to favor private interests. There is a critical difference between supporting democratic processes and using money to impose election or policy outcomes: The first helps protect democracy, while the second risks distorting it.

Lobbying and campaign spending should therefore be transparent, restrained, and aligned with democratic principles. Excessive corporate influence over election outcomes and government decision-making weakens democracy. As President Abraham Lincoln declared in 1863, the United States’ “new birth of freedom” would come from a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” When private interests exert disproportionate influence over public institutions, democratic foundations are weakened.

In contrast, if businesses and policy makers jointly commit to making the relationship between business and government more visible and constrained, businesses can help support a system that rewards value creation and organizational performance over political spending and insider connections. In this context, industrywide agreements and democratic financing reforms, including strict donation caps, can help preserve democracy while reducing incentives for companies to engage in political spending arms races.

4. Foster democratic practices within organizations themselves.

Last, businesses can also help strengthen democracy by engaging in democratic practices inside their own organizations. When organizations include employees in governance and use more participatory decision-making, they model democratic processes internally. Research has found that these internal practices can create spillover effects beyond the workplace. Promoting employee voice and participation in the workplace can enhance morale while also helping to cultivate habits and norms that reinforce employees’ civic engagement as citizens.

Adopting a participatory form of governance can also strengthen the societal foundations for innovation and long-term prosperity. This was highlighted in a February 2026 report by the International High-Level Expert Committee on Democracy at Work, a group (of which Julie is a member) that was tasked with advising the Spanish government on how to implement an article of Spain’s constitution. That article calls for public authorities to promote worker participation in their employers’ operational and strategic decisions, and to facilitate workers’ access to company ownership. Empowering workers in this way is especially important today because AI systems need to be developed and deployed in ways that benefit not just companies but their workers and society overall.

Democracy is both a moral cause and a strategic imperative. Without the democratic rule of law, checks on power, and independent institutions, the business environment becomes unpredictable and precarious. Companies cannot afford to build their futures on such an unstable foundation.

The time to act is now. The choices business leaders make today will determine not only the future of their companies but also that of democracy itself. At a time when democracy is under threat, business leaders across the political spectrum have an opportunity to act collectively to protect and strengthen the democratic guardrails that underpin both democracy and long-term prosperity. As central players in the economy, these leaders must recognize both their responsibility and their stake in stopping democratic decline, and work closely with partners across sectors to champion democracy with conviction and courage.