Democracy is under siege. Global freedom has been steadily declining for twenty years, and while over half the world took part in a national election in 2024, we live in a time when democratically elected leaders continually, blatantly, abuse their office to grab more power and resist attempts to hold them to account.

The staggering, cross-continental retreat of liberal democracy - as witnessed in the United States, Turkey and India, among others - stems from a systematic pattern of high-level corruption known as state capture. Although global freedom seems to be eroding beneath our feet, this is not inevitable, nor is it irreversible. Drawing on extensive experience of working with governments, the private sector and NGOs, Liz Dávid-Barrett examines how state capture occurs, why it persists, and what we can - what we must - do to prevent it.