What It Is: The Atlantic Council's annual index ranking 171 countries on political freedom, economic freedom, and rule of law (the Freedom Index) alongside income, health, education, environment, and inclusion (the Prosperity Index), using thirty years of data from 1995 to 2025. 

Why It Matters: This year's headline finding is that the rule of law itself is now eroding, not just political freedom — the global Legal Subindex has declined by over a point since 2020, with the US declining from 81.2 to 69.8 since 2014. . Notably, the data shows that rule of law correlates most sharply with prosperity. Having this concrete data can help companies weigh systemic interests more accurately in their public affairs priorities. 

How to Use It: Use the interactive country-profiles rankings to view the US-specific trend line alongside markets where your company operates. against thirty years of rule-of-law, political freedom, and economic freedom data — useful for enterprise risk assessments, issue prioritization, board-level briefings on geopolitical exposure, and crisis readiness. 

This report identifies 10 top geopolitical risks that could significantly affect companies and markets: (1) global trade protectionism, (2) Middle East regional war, (3) U.S.-China strategic competition, (4) global technology decoupling, (5) major cyber attacks, (6) major terror attacks, (7) Russia-NATO conflict, (8) emerging markets political crisis, (9) North Korea conflict, and (10) European fragmentation. For each risk, the report highlights three assets most sensitive to that scenario—such as sector-specific equities, currencies, credit spreads, or commodities—offering concrete signals businesses can monitor to assess potential impact. This framework helps firms proactively track and integrate geopolitical risk into strategic planning and risk management.

Bloomberg’s new Geopolitical Risk Scores offer a data-driven way for companies to assess how country-level political instability—such as regulatory disruption and civil unrest—could affect operations, supply chains, and compliance. Built with Seerist threat intelligence and covering 7 million companies across 245 countries, the scores quantify 29 types of political, security, and cyber risk. Companies can track, compare, and integrate these risks into strategic planning, disclosure, and portfolio management.

This third edition of the Democracy Playbook offers evidence-based best practices for reversing democratic backsliding, to help citizens and stakeholders reclaim good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, and strengthen democratic resilience.  It outlines how the business sector has historically supported these efforts by fighting corruption (Pillar 3) through actions like opposing state capture, supporting anti-corruption laws, and protecting whistleblowers, in addition to making democracy deliver (Pillar 7) through fair wages, labor rights, and investment in underserved communities. It calls on companies to continue this role, emphasizing that democratic stability is essential for reducing risk and sustaining long-term economic opportunity.

This article argues that US political risk is no longer an abstract concern for boards and investors – it is an immediate governance challenge.  Specifically, it explores how escalating polarization, regulatory volatility, and election-related instability require enhanced governance safeguards to protect enterprise value – and proposes two tools that can help.

Why this resource matters 
It outlines the rationale for embedding CPR in the governance of public affairs and recommends Third Side Strategies’ Principled Influence: A Guide to Strengthening Public Affairs Practices in Polarized Environments. (NOTE: This article is authored by Stephen M. Davis, a member of The CPR Hub’s Board of Advisors.)

Resources for the Future's new series, If/Then, focuses on providing rapid, independent economic insights on the consequences of policy choices, drawing from both new and prior research. In a highly polarized environment, it aims to fill critical information gaps by making credible evidence accessible in real time to policymakers, businesses, and stakeholders navigating fast-moving debates.

This brief provides a practical conversation guide for boards and executives to understand, assess, and act on geopolitical risk. Using a “scan–focus–act” framework, it offers structured questions on stakeholder impacts, long-term strategy, enterprise risk management, and governance changes. It reframes geopolitics as a manageable, board-level responsibility central to resilience and long-term value creation.

This empirical study examines how green energy investment, innovation capacity, and political stability jointly drive sustainable economic growth across OECD countries. It finds that institutional stability and governance quality significantly amplify the economic returns of environmental investment, reinforcing the link between political systems and green competitiveness. 

This initiative explores how clear, stable legal systems support freedom, innovation, and economic growth—laying the groundwork for healthy markets and democratic institutions.

This paper provides a deep and detailed examination of how economies and businesses fare under leaders who purport to be both pro-business and populist. With the increase in the number of populist leaders throughout the world, this question has become increasingly pressing. 

Addresses the increasing role that political turbulence is having on corporations’ ability to accomplish strategic objectives and tips for navigating external political uncertainty.  

Ex ante regulation modeled on the FDA enhances public safety by rigorously assessing AI systems before deployment to prevent harm, while providing industry with clear, consistent standards that build consumer trust, reduce costly post-release failures, and foster sustainable innovation.

Authored by the Energy Transitions Commission, representing a wide array of perspectives, this report proposes a pathway to a net-zero global economy by mid-century. Specifically, it outlines three priorities for the 2020s: scaling proven zero-carbon solutions, creating supportive policy and investment environments, and advancing next-generation technologies for hard-to-abate sectors. It emphasizes practical actions for governments, investors, and businesses and stresses global collaboration to meet climate targets.

This article outlines how businesses can manage modern political risks, which now stem from a broader range of sources, including social media, local officials, and cybercriminals. It emphasizes four core competencies—understanding, analyzing, mitigating risks, and responding to crises—and provides practical questions and case studies to help companies strengthen their ability to handle political disruptions.

This report reviews how 17 jurisdictions regulate corporate political engagement, highlighting gaps in transparency, oversight, and accountability. It calls for stronger governance and investor involvement to prevent undue influence.

This report analyzes how political risk—ranging from regulatory shifts and policy unpredictability to geopolitical tensions—affects corporate valuations, operating costs, supply chains, and long-term investment. It introduces a framework connecting political events to financial consequences, urging companies to integrate political-risk analytics into strategic planning, governance, and ESG-related disclosures to strengthen resilience. 

This report analyzes how political risk—ranging from regulatory shifts and policy unpredictability to geopolitical tensions—affects corporate valuations, operating costs, supply chains, and long-term investment. It introduces a framework connecting political events to financial consequences, urging companies to integrate political-risk analytics into strategic planning, governance, and ESG-related disclosures to strengthen resilience. 

This study examines the global trend toward populism from 1900 to 2020 and its long-term economic impact. It finds that countries under populist leadership experience a 10% lower GDP per capita after 15 years compared to a plausible non-populist counterfactual, linking populist governance to economic instability, weakened institutions, and heightened risks for businesses and investors.

This handbook chapter from Perkins Coie LLP outlines governance best practices for public company boards, covering fiduciary duties, oversight structures, committee responsibilities, compliance systems, and disclosure obligations. It emphasizes risk oversight, transparency, and evolving regulatory expectations affecting board accountability in complex operating environments. 

Why this resource matters 
It provides operational grounding for CPR governance by clarifying how boards oversee risk, disclosure, and fiduciary responsibilities in politically and socially complex systems. In particular, it provides the legal and conceptual basis for the governance of public affairs.

This report presents robust global data showing that democratic erosion—especially in advanced economies—is increasingly tied to higher costs of capital and greater economic volatility. It finds that more polarized environments tend to experience elevated equity risk premiums and reduced investment, posing long-term financial risks. The author urges businesses and investors to proactively incorporate these risks into their strategic planning, treating political instability as a material driver of market performance not just a political issue.

What It Is: A 2026 book by retail futurist Doug Stephens (founder of Retail Prophet) arguing that declining institutional trust, eroding economic fairness, and a weakening education system aren't just societal problems but an untapped source of competitive advantage, laying out a step-by-step business plan for companies to invest in strengthening democracy, fair capitalism, and public education in order to set strategy for the next era of business. 

Why It Matters: Stephens frames the stakes directly: "no company can thrive in a society that is failing." He argues that the postwar engines of trust, fair capitalism, and education that powered prosperity are now seizing up, and that companies which help restart them can build investor confidence, employee commitment, and customer loyalty in the process. In Chapter 30, he makes the business case for reinforcing democracy and the need for corporate political responsibility, where companies conduct themselves "in a manner that supports and reinforces the rules of play necessary for a free market.” 

How to Use It: Use the book's step-by-step business plan as a starting framework for connecting your company's civic and democracy-related investments directly to competitive strategy. Refer to Chapter 30 as you craft and apply a reasonable set of rules to guide political advocacy, donations, and lobbying, to ensure you are reinforcing and strengthening the foundational systems that contribute to a healthy free-market and well-functioning democracy. 

This volume explores the promise of free markets to deliver prosperity and well-being—and the social, political, and institutional conditions required to sustain that promise. It shows why businesses have a stake in helping maintain those conditions through responsible political engagement.

Based on interviews with more than 23,000 citizens across 31 countries, Ipsos finds persistent public distrust in elites, globalization, and economic systems—driving polarization across both advanced and emerging economies. These trends underscore the need for companies to account for public sentiment and political division when shaping public affairs strategies and stakeholder engagement, especially in regions where legitimacy and trust are increasingly strained.

This report is based on interviews with twenty-nine partners and associates from law firms that responded to 2025-26 Executive Orders and other federal challenges with a wide variety of strategies -- from compliance to lawsuits.  

The focus was on the strategic calculations driving decisions by individual lawyers and law firms, regardless of the strategy they took. The report concludes that fear significantly magnifies perceptions of risk, collective action is critical in responding to pressure, and business leaders have a crucial stake in upholding rule of law, for its own sake and as a cornerstone of the free market system.

Summarizes five key threats based on The Conference Board’s C-Suite Outlook 2025 report, including international rivalries, global political instability, trade disruption, rising nationalism and political polarization in the workplace. Recommends assessing risk and governance, leveraging innovation and digital transformation, and strengthening cybersecurity. 

What It Is: The World Justice Project's annual Rule of Law Index, drawing on surveys of more than 215,000 households and 4,100 legal practitioners and scholars across 143 countries, scoring each country on eight factors — including Constraints on Government Powers, Absence of Corruption, Open Government, and Fundamental Rights — further broken into 44 sub-factors. 

Why It Matters: The 2025 edition found the global rule-of-law recession accelerating, with 68% of countries declining (up from 57% the prior year). The United States ranked 27th out of 143 countries, falling in seven of eight factors for the third consecutive year and ranking among the ten countries with the largest declines worldwide. 

How to Use It: Use the interactive country rankings to benchmark rule-of-law trends — and the specific factors driving them — in every market where your company operates, useful for enterprise risk assessments and board-level briefings on legal and regulatory exposure.