Resisting Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference: A Stress Test for Democracies

International IDEA's 2025 report applies a 'stress test' methodology to democratic resilience against FIMI — examining how four democracies with very different institutional profiles (the United States, South Africa, South Korea, and Georgia) have fared when subjected to foreign information manipulation campaigns. The stress test framing is analytically useful: rather than assessing resilience in the abstract, it asks what happens when specific democratic institutions and processes are actually subjected to FIMI pressure, and what determines whether they hold.

The four case studies are well-chosen for their diversity. The United States provides the most extensively documented case of advanced democracy under FIMI pressure with significant institutional resources but deep political polarisation. South Africa and South Korea represent democracies with different media ecosystems and different threat actor profiles. Georgia — a small democracy on NATO's eastern flank under sustained Russian pressure — provides the most acute case of existential FIMI exposure. The comparative analysis across these four contexts produces insights about which resilience factors are universal and which are contingent on specific institutional or geopolitical conditions. For practitioners designing resilience programmes and for policymakers thinking about comparative democratic vulnerability, this is among the most methodologically distinctive reports in the current grey literature.

Supported by Global Affairs Canada and published by International IDEA — the intergovernmental organisation dedicated to democracy support — the report carries institutional authority alongside its analytical substance.