Autocracy, Inc.: How Corruption Can Weaken Institutions Across Borders

A court can remain open while losing the independence that makes its decisions credible. A procurement system can continue awarding contracts while serving political patrons. Institutions may keep their names and procedures even as their public purpose weakens.

That is the concern I take from Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc. Her argument focuses on relationships among autocratic governments, financial networks, security services, and other enablers whose interests can align without a shared ideology.¹ For hybrid-threat analysis, the question is how those relationships turn private gain into political influence and resistance to accountability.

What the evidence supports

The sources used in this April 2026 assessment describe deterioration in political freedom, institutional constraints, and corruption control. Freedom House reports a twentieth consecutive year of global decline in 2025, with 54 countries worsening and 35 improving.² V-Dem reports 87 democracies and 92 autocracies in 2025, compared with 95 democracies in 2016.³ Transparency International reports a global Corruption Perceptions Index average of 42 out of 100 for 2025.⁴

These datasets measure different things. Their trends justify examining institutional deterioration, but they do not establish that one coordinated network caused it. The corruption index measures perceptions of public-sector corruption, while democracy measures apply their own definitions and methods. A country-specific assessment needs the underlying evidence and uncertainty.

My assessment is that cross-border corruption can create security vulnerabilities as well as governance failures. Confidence in that general mechanism is moderate. Ranking it as the single most dangerous threat of 2026 would require a comparison this article does not provide.

Keep the metaphor useful

In The NeverEnding Story, The Nothing consumes the world around it. The image offers a way to think about an institution that retains its appearance while losing substance. A court still exists, but access to justice depends on political connections. An election still occurs, but meaningful competition is restricted.

This is an analogy, not a measure. The analytical work begins when we identify what changed: an appointment process, a prosecutor’s independence, access to public records, or the ability of journalists to investigate. V-Dem’s treatment of civil liberties, checks and balances, and the rule of law provides dimensions for that inquiry.³

Repeating the metaphor cannot establish the mechanism. The useful question is which institutional function has been lost and who benefits.

Follow the financial relationship

Opaque ownership and shell companies can conceal who controls assets and receives payments. That can frustrate efforts to identify conflicts of interest, trace stolen funds, or enforce sanctions. FATF’s recommendations on beneficial ownership address this problem of identifying the people behind legal entities.⁵

The possible security consequence follows from what the money enables. Funds can support patronage, acquire access, sustain an aligned media outlet, or pay intermediaries. Each relationship requires evidence. A company operating across borders is not, by that fact alone, an illicit financial channel.

Transparency International’s reporting connects corruption control with civic space and the ability to investigate hidden wealth.⁶ That suggests an operational question: can the relevant institutions identify ownership and examine transactions independently?

Examine how institutions are repurposed

Institutional capture can occur through appointments, selective enforcement, procurement decisions, and restrictions on scrutiny. The procedure may remain formally intact while access or outcomes become dependent on loyalty.

The Council of the European Union’s analysis of organized crime describes risks to democratic governance through corruption, intimidation, and institutional infiltration.⁷ Those mechanisms provide a reason to connect organized-crime analysis with national security. They do not imply that every weak institution is directed by a foreign actor.

Look for documented changes in decision authority, oversight, and enforcement. Compare how similar cases are handled. A specific pattern of preferential treatment is more informative than a general assertion that the system is corrupt.

Connect information and coercion

Applebaum describes cooperation among actors with an interest in protecting their power and wealth.¹ Information operations can support that interest by discrediting investigators, distracting attention, or portraying scrutiny as illegitimate.

The effect depends on the audience and institutional setting. Evidence that a message was distributed does not establish that it disabled accountability. Investigators should trace who produced it, how it spread, and whether an observable decision followed.

Freedom House’s reporting on losses of basic freedoms provides context for examining restrictions on independent scrutiny.⁸ Commentary on those findings can help identify questions, but it should remain distinguishable from the underlying dataset.⁹

Test alternative explanations

One hypothesis is that the deterioration reflects a cyclical downturn in democratic performance. Some countries improve even during a negative global period, and those cases should remain in the analysis.¹⁰

Another is that cross-border financial opacity and cooperation among authoritarian actors make institutional deterioration more durable. The persistence of adverse trends is consistent with that explanation, but consistency is not a causal test.

Country-level evidence should distinguish foreign support, domestic patronage, ordinary administrative weakness, and public dissatisfaction. Several mechanisms may operate at once. The assessment would weaken if institutions recovered independence, enforcement became more consistent, or the proposed cross-border relationships could not be substantiated.

Watch changes that affect accountability

Useful indicators include restrictions on independent media and investigators, weakened disclosure of beneficial ownership, and procurement arrangements that obscure conflicts of interest.⁶⁵ Legal changes deserve attention when they preserve an institution’s formal existence while reducing its ability to scrutinize power.³

Campaigns presenting accountability as an obstacle to national success also merit examination, with attribution and effect assessed separately.¹¹ The publisher’s account of Autocracy, Inc. explains the book’s broad argument, but it should not be used as evidence for a specific allegation against a person or institution.¹²

For national security practitioners, the practical step is to trace the relationship between money, authority, and access in a defined case. For information defenders, it is to connect a narrative with the interests and evidence around it. For public institutions, it is to preserve the independence that makes oversight possible.

The concern behind The Nothing metaphor is concrete: procedures can continue after accountability has weakened. Identify the lost function, document how it happened, and test what would restore it.

Sources and limitations

This is open-source analysis framed around material available in April 2026. It draws on Freedom House, V-Dem, Transparency International, FATF, EU analysis, and Applebaum’s argument. The sources support different parts of the discussion and should not be treated as one combined dataset.

The principal gap is causal measurement linking particular corruption networks to specific hybrid operations. The metaphor helps communicate the concern; country-level records must support the findings.

References

Footnotes

1. Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc. book page, https://www.anneapplebaum.com/book/autocracy/ ↩ ↩²

2. Freedom House, “New Report: Global Freedom Declined for 20th Consecutive Year in 2025,” 2026, https://freedomhouse.org/article/new-report-global-freedom-declined-20th-consecutive-year-2025 ↩

3. V-Dem Institute, Democracy Report 2026: Unraveling the Democratic Era?, 2026, https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy_Report_2026_lowres.pdf ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. Transparency International, “CPI 2025: Findings and insights,” 2026, https://www.transparency.org/en/news/cpi-2025-findings-insights-corruption ↩

5. Financial Action Task Force, FATF Recommendations, https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Fatfrecommendations/Fatf-recommendations.html ↩ ↩²

6. Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2025 Report, 2026, https://images.transparencycdn.org/images/CPI-2025-Report-EN.pdf ↩ ↩²

7. Council of the European Union, Organised Crime: A Growing Threat to Democracy, 2025, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/3cpejugj/2025_683_art_organisedcrime_web_july-2025.pdf ↩

8. Freedom House, “After 20 Years of Global Decline, These Basic Freedoms Have Been Hit Hardest,” 2026, https://freedomhouse.org/article/after-20-years-global-decline-these-basic-freedoms-have-been-hit-hardest ↩

9. Council on Foreign Relations, “Freedom House’s Annual Report Shows the Dire State of Democracy Worldwide,” 2026, https://www.cfr.org/articles/freedom-houses-annual-report-shows-the-dire-state-of-democracy-worldwide ↩

10. Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2026: The Growing Shadow of Autocracy, 2026, https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2026-03/FIW2026_final_digital%20%281%29.pdf ↩

11. Anne Applebaum, “Autocracy, Inc.”, https://anneapplebaum.substack.com/p/autocracy-inc ↩

12. Penguin Random House, Autocracy, Inc. publisher page, https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/725302/autocracy-inc-by-anne-applebaum/ ↩