It was a bad year for the world's autocrats

In Syria, rebels raced to Damascus, ending Bashar al-Assad's 24-year-old dictatorship, which few in the outside world thought was in danger of collapse.

- Juan Forero & Jon Emont

Other authoritarian leaders and their governments came under new pressure in 2024, from Nicolás Maduro's iron-fisted regime in Venezuela to the mullahs of Iran to the military junta of Myanmar.

In a world President Biden has cast as split between democracies aligned against a rising tide of autocracy, authoritarians suffered unexpected setbacks in 2024 that exposed their weaknesses, geopolitical analysts and historians said.

"Some positive things happened in terms of autocracies wobbling or, in a couple of places, falling," said Larry Diamond, a Stanford University scholar who has written books on authoritarianism and the challenges facing democracies. "There are a lot of autocracies that are weak or kind of dazed."

Regime change can be exciting on the ground, but it now presents a challenge to new leaders in Bangladesh and Syria to create lasting, inclusive governments, something Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Prize-winning Bangladeshi economist who is now the country's interim leader. "Matching this is very difficult."

To be sure, most despotic governments are still firmly in place, from Miguel Díaz-Canel in Havana to Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Russia-with the help of Iranian arms, North Korean troops and oil sales to China-has made battlefield gains against Ukraine.

The alignment of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea-a group some analysts call "Crink"-has grown stronger. China is leapfrogging the West in some key technologies and has built strong ties with U.S. neighbors in Latin America.

President-elect Donald Trump's approach toward autocrats will become clearer as he tries to halt the fighting between Russia and Ukraine, stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and manage the fallout from Venezuelan strongman Maduro's disputed election win.