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The End of Democracy?
This paper in The Journal of Democracy about the loss of confidence in democracy in the West is extraordinary and horrifying. (h/t First Things.) The authors examined data from the World Values Survey dating back to 1995. What they found startled them:
Three decades ago, most scholars simply assumed that the Soviet Union would remain stable. This assumption was suddenly proven false. Today, we have even greater confidence in the durability of the world’s affluent, consolidated democracies. But do we have good grounds for our democratic self-confidence? At first sight, there would seem to be some reason for concern. …
…. we look at four important types of measures that are clear indicators of regime legitimacy as opposed to government legitimacy: citizens’ express support for the system as a whole; the degree to which they support key institutions of liberal democracy, such as civil rights; their willingness to advance their political causes within the existing political system; and their openness to authoritarian alternatives such as military rule. What we find is deeply concerning. Citizens in a number of supposedly consolidated democracies in North America and Western Europe have not only grown more critical of their political leaders. Rather, they have also become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy, and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives. The crisis of democratic legitimacy extends across a much wider set of indicators than previously appreciated.
Among the findings:
Among older generations, the devotion to democracy is about as fervent and widespread as one might expect: In the United States, for example, people born during the interwar period consider democratic governance an almost sacred value. When asked to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how “essential” it is for them “to live in a democracy,” 72 percent of those born before World War II check “10,” the highest value. So do 55 percent of the same cohort in the Netherlands. But, as Figure 1 shows, the millennial generation has grown much more indifferent. Only one in three Dutch millennials accords maximal importance to living in a democracy; in the United States, that number is slightly lower, around 30 percent.
One of the most surprising findings is that young, upper-income Americans are the cohort least committed to democracy: 35 percent of upper-income young Americans now think it would be a “good” thing for the army to take over. (In 1995, only one in sixteen respondents agreed.)
Only 32 percent of millennials agree that it’s “absolutely essential” that “civil rights protect people’s liberty.” Some 26 percent of them think it’s “unimportant” in a democracy for people to “choose their leaders in free elections.” And 24 percent consider democracy to be a “bad” or “very bad” way of running the country.
“Strikingly,” the authors note, “such undemocratic sentiments have risen especially quickly among the wealthy.”
In 1995, the “rich” (defined as deciles 8 to 10 on a ten-point income scale) were the most opposed to undemocratic viewpoints, such as the suggestion that their country would be better off if the “army” ruled. Lower-income respondents (defined as deciles 1 to 5) were most in favor of such a proposition. Since then, relative support for undemocratic institutions has reversed. In almost every region, the rich are now more likely than the poor to express approval for “having the army rule.” In the United States, for example, only 5 percent of upper-income citizens thought that army rule was a “good” or “very good” idea in the mid-1990s. That figure has since risen to 16 percent. By way of comparison, in Latin America in the mid-1990s, a decade after the return to civilian rule, 21 percent of upper-income respondents still supported military rule. That figure now stands at 33 percent.
The idea that support for military rule has markedly increased among wealthy citizens of long-established liberal democracies is so counterintuitive that it naturally invites skepticism. Yet it is consistent with similar survey items that measure citizens’ openness to other authoritarian alternatives. In the United States, among all age cohorts, the share of citizens who believe that it would be better to have a “strong leader” who does not have to “bother with parliament and elections” has also risen over time: In 1995, 24 percent of respondents held this view; by 2011, that figure had increased to 32 percent. Meanwhile, the proportion of citizens who approve of “having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country” has grown from 36 to 49 percent.
Antidemocratic sentiment has also risen dramatically in Europe, although not as sharply as in the United States:
Nor is the United States an outlier among mature democracies. In Europe in 1995, 6 percent of high-income earners born since 1970 favored the possibility of “army rule”; today, 17 percent of young upper-income Europeans favor it. This is a striking finding: Rising support for illiberal politics is driven not only by the disempowered, middle-aged, and underemployed. Its vocal supporters can also be found among the young, wealthy, and privileged.
Having begun by alluding to the world’s astonishment at the sudden collapse of communism, the authors conclude with a warning:
In a world where most citizens fervently support democracy, where antisystem parties are marginal or nonexistent, and where major political forces respect the rules of the political game, democratic breakdown is extremely unlikely. It is no longer certain, however, that this is the world we live in. …
If political scientists are to avoid being blindsided by the demise of established democracies in the coming decades, as they were by the fall of communism a few decades ago, they need to find out whether democratic deconsolidation is happening; to explain the possible causes of this development; to delineate its likely consequences (present and future); and to ponder the potential remedies.
These are sinister developments. Sometimes I can coax myself into denial about the gravity of the crisis in the West, telling myself that these are the normal ups and downs of liberal democracies. But confronted with data like this, I can’t, really.
In response to this paper, one of my Twitter followers sent me a link to a 1997 essay by Robert Kaplan that I’d never read, although apparently it’s quite well known, titled Was Democracy Just a Moment? You may have read it at the time. It’s strikingly prescient:
Democratic governance, at the federal, state, and local levels, goes on. But its ability to affect our lives is limited. The growing piles of our material possessions make personal life more complex and leave less time for communal matters. And as communities become liberated from geography, as well as more specialized culturally and electronically, they will increasingly fall outside the realm of traditional governance. Democracy loses meaning if both rulers and ruled cease to be part of a community tied to a specific territory. In this historical transition phase, lasting perhaps a century or more, in which globalization has begun but is not complete and loyalties are highly confused, civil society will be harder to maintain. How and when we vote during the next hundred years may be a minor detail for historians.
I’m also struck that even an essay from 1997 — not exactly ancient history — is more demanding of the reader than most contemporary writing, and makes assumptions about the general reader’s familiarity with history and current events that it would no longer be safe to make. We seem not only to be experiencing democratic but intellectual deconsolidation. It’s a worrying combination.
Thoughts?
Published in General
I think the Founding Fathers warned against something essentially called mobocracy.
That was written in 97? Amazing foresight. The trend of globalism has reduced tribalism. Last week I was in Phoenix at a MLB game with my son which is a fairly patriotic sport attended by patriotic fans. I was amazed how many teens and young adults didn’t remove their hat or place hands on hearts during the anthem.
Lack of national pride is a sad trend which inevitability causes a counter reaction in the extreme opposite: The growing racial nativism and nationalism we see now on the alt-right.
Read the whole thing. It’s rare to read an essay with so many predictions about the future — none of which now sound ridiculous. It’s given me a new respect and regard for Kaplan.
William J Bernstein outlined what helps a society succeed and advance. His points are proven repeatedly in The Birth of Plenty and the question to ask is not about the Army but whether these principles are present in a society and are the trends increasing or decreasing in each area. Everything, including democracy , can take care of itself if we have these. I see all areas currently at risk but still quite functional despite our government’s growing threats to democracy and our citizens’ complacent ignorance.
It’s the successful outcome of the transformation of education brought about by the New Left.
There has been no effective rule of law in the United States since the 1990s. The failure to remove Bill Clinton from office proved that.
It seems about right. The left has been concerted in its effort to elevate the expert. Science! and data are more convincing than the collective wisdom of an electorate. There is the outright contempt for the people they serve exhibited by people like Jonathan Gruber of ACA fame or the scientist consensus floating global warming alarmism. The regulation state of the President is cheered, not feared. Not surprised by this. It is one factor in my apprehension of a certain someone reaching and unnamed higher office. I am not sanguine in the limiting power of popular sentiment in this country. I don’t think checks and balances are as strong a safety net against a strongman being , well, a strongman. Too many are just hunky-dory as long as it is interesting.
The curse of success is complacency, it would seem. Yet I wonder about the claims to a loss of community. Technology is actually allowing people to create new communities not root geographically but still as connected. Is it possible that with advances in technology the issues of communication that would cause a decentralized society to fall apart be overcome? Much of the structures of our society exist to overcome inherit problems in communication necessary for organizing mass action. Technology may remove those barriers. Society may in a sense break down, but would that mean that freedom would decrease? Could Anarchy finally be plausible?
I’m skeptical but perhaps we might try to think outside the box on this.
What possible virtue can “democracy” profess, if a small-town Indiana pizza restaurant is allowed to decline to cater a polygamous wedding? Or a business is allowed to move a factory to another country? Or a newspaper is allowed to issue the wrong opinion? Or a nunnery decline to pay for the groundskeeper’s wife’s contraceptives?
The very idea of democracy legitimizes dissent. Why, it privileges dissent as an equal counterpart to Truth, a false equivalence that allows reactionary forces to pretend they have moral standing, and deserve a voice in the immediate remaking of this hideous, chancre-spattered, misbegotten abomination we call Western Civilization.
If Democracy does not result – IMMEDIATELY – in the Designated Good Things (DGT) happening by force of law, then the fault is in the people and the system that stands in the way of the DGT. Both must be corrected. Since half the people are infuriatingly mulish and stupid, it would be just awesome if “democracy” is replaced by a new system that makes the DGT . . . happen. Outcomes matter, not the means by which they are achieved, or the diminution of “liberty” the means require, or the additional constrictions of liberty they legitimize.
(Note: “Outcomes” and “results” do not matter either; the obstacles to true justice as so great that success is unlikely, and the failure to achieve the DGT proves the need to redouble the effort.)
Note: Democracy will be an awesome thing when Hillary Clinton wins the election, but only for about three months.
How has people’s understanding of the word ‘democracy’ and ‘civil rights’ changed in those 20 years? It seems at least plausible to me that ‘democracy’ means something different to someone growing up between the wars and someone attending college in the last ten years. It seems certain ‘civil rights’ does.
I blame a lot of it on the Left’s success in hijacking the education curricula and indoctrinating the younger generations in the idea that the West, and especially the United States, are guilty of racism, sexism, colonialism, slavery, genocide, and exploiting and polluting the planet.
If the United States stands for democracy, civil rights, and capitalism, and if the United States has been a force for great evil in the world, then it stands to reason that democracy, civil rights, and capitalism must be bad things that should be opposed by good people.
Perhaps more education correlates with less commitment to liberty. Not surprising given the content of higher education and the climate of the institutions at which it is procured.
I am shocked, shocked that the wealthy globalist cloud people would support using force to prevent the possibility that they might lose power as a result of liberal democracy.
After all, there is no point in holding elections if the wrong people might win. Much better to simply cancel them, and put down any grubby protest by the loathsome racists electorates of the various former nation-states soon to be folded into globalism, inc.
For their own good, of course.
@ClaireBerlinski, Ed-“I’m also struck that even an essay from 1997 — not exactly ancient history — is more demanding of the reader than most contemporary writing, and makes assumptions about the general reader’s familiarity with history and current events that it would no longer be safe to make. We seem not only to be experiencing democratic but intellectual deconsolidation. It’s a worrying combination.
Thoughts?”
Remember Prof. Bloom’s book about the ‘The Closing of the American Mind?’ As others have noted above, our most educated citizens get a thorough indoctrination in our universities/leftist seminaries.
That said, I think there is an element of decadence at work too. In the Fifties and Sixties, as Americans became more prosperous, I think there was a felt obligation to improve oneself by reading the better books, and appreciating works of art, some high-brow and some middle-brow. It now seems we desire more to simply be entertained.
I am skeptical and question the methodology. The chart shows people choosing a rating of 10 out of 10. What about people who rated it 8 or 9. Perhaps 75% of respondents chose a rating of 8 or higher. Note the words of the question “essential to live in a country that is governed democratically.” Many people, especially younger upper-income millennials, may envision spending some time abroad, in a country that is not democratic.
Answers are often biased by the way the question is asked. If the question was “We are going to take away forever your right to vote and to choose your representative, would you be ok with that?”, I doubt that a majority would say yes.
Giant, extraordinarily complex and diverse places like the US can’t be governed centrally because of the problem of knowledge, accumulation of interests and the nature of public goods. Military takeovers were endemic in Latin America and derived their support from the elite. The elite benefit from good governance even though they are central to the problem of accumulation of interests and run away rent seeking. The violencia in Colombia is an extreme example, but most other countries experienced similar problems. The Napoleonic code means everything is prohibited unless specifically permitted, hence all are administrative states evolved from Spanish mercantilism. Access to government is vital. When Colombia adopted universal suffrage, given the 100% patronage, intense party politics moved downstream. Political struggles over party control, local government and hence one’s ability to prosper deteriorated and finally spilled into genocidal violence. The story and process is too complex for here. The elite finally brought in the Military to quash the violence and when Rojas had done his job, they got rid of him and agreed to share power and patronage. The military is perceived as politically neutral, nationalistic and able to clear away the political rot that accumulates in democratic civilian governance. The problem is the administrative state. It rots, can’t self correct and can’t govern. Either we dismantle it or we lose it all.
“Communism” didn’t collapse, the Soviet Union collapsed.
“Communism” moved west.
Did it?
This.
Unfortunately, the respondents to this survey are, by and large, clueless and ignorant, regardless of how ‘smart’ any of them is as an individual.
And what any of them does know, for the most part, is wrong and/or incomplete.
I’m not a bit surprised that “young, upper income Americans” are the cohort least committed to democracy.
First, they have no idea what part “democracy” has played in their being in the position that they are in: Well-off and free.
Second, unlike their grandparents and previous generations, they’ve not had to struggle for very much, but nevertheless have lived their entire lives under the impression that they have had the toughest and most difficult upbringing in the history of generations (The peer pressure! The competition! The temptations of drugs and sex! The need to fit in! The cost of those expensive track shoes with their favorite athlete’s name on!) And so on.
As, all the while, they buzz around on Uber and book themselves houses on AirBnB, and live their lives around the apps on their iPad. Which they are free to do because, among other things, democracy.
What is amazing to me that the first generation in human history with the entire oevre of its parents and grandparents an open book because of the Internet, with absolutely nothing they cannot easily discover, in an almost first-hand way, about the lessons of history; the limits, or lack thereof, of human decency; and the comparative and obvious benefits of one form of rule over another; can be so obtuse.
It could not happen without their parents’ generation willing complicity in the form of educational malpractice.
But at some point, as they mature and age, their willful lack of awareness sits firmly on their own shoulders.
It will be interesting to look at this generation in twenty or thirty years, and see where they end up.
If we’re still here, that is.
“Democracy – The God That Failed” by Hans Hermann Hoppe is a very insightful look into the economic incentives of democracy. Leaders in a democracy, he says, have no incentive to restrain spending during their terms of office. They care little for what happens afterward. Witness our national debt. A monarch, on the other hand, has a much stronger incentive to leave a fiscally-stable state to descendants.
Agreed. I was born in the 80s, and probably would not have answered 10/10 if I had been surveyed because I’d be willing to work in someplace like Dubai for a few years given the right opportunity.
A superb essay! Prescient to the max.
Terrifyingly fascinating. What profound insight! Throw in the propaganda the schools are shoving down the throats of kids – Such as: My sister-in-law was required to have her students read and regurgitate essays that actually included lines like: ” There is no question that cars are destroying the planet.”
What good is a democracy if it lets that ^ happen!?
What kid wouldn’t want a powerful centralized government taking over?
Never mind the technicalities of political theory, most people sense that democracy comes down to one, general (and yet accurate) premise: that the powers exercised under the authority of the people, and with their funding, belong to the people by right. In other words, what officials do, they do on our authority … not on any “authority” that comes from being expert, educated, or even correct. It’s the people’s power, and they have the right to decide how to use it, even if the experts know better.
The chief problem in the United States, I’d argue, is that the vehicle designed to most closely represent the people’s authority is the House of Representatives. But because political parties have forcibly inserted themselves into the relationship between representative and people, the politicians are more beholden to party than they are to the people. The authority of the people, in turn, has no vehicle or forum where it can be created or expressed.
Logically, if the House was where the people came together to settle conflicts, you’d expect the conflicts would be based on geographic regions, or perhaps industries. But instead, all conflicts in the House, in the media, and throuighout culture are waged between parties.
A binary opposition (2-party system) will eventually either come to equilibrium (pure gridlock) or one party will overwhelm the other, leaving one-party. That’s how binary opposition forces work in all of nature. Expect it here.
Exactly or Shanghai or other.
Thus, living in a republic.
To me the problem really is one of centralized control and regulations, which are trying to force the elites current Designated Good Things (DGT) (I love this @jameslileks). If the elites would roll that back, and let stuff happen at the local level, we would be better off. There is no reason we cannot have a large “empire” with local control.
What is needed in an “empire” though, is something to believe in, that binds them together. That has to be something. The Idea of America. The Idea of Rome. The Idea of the King. Without that, no empire in history can last.
The Western elites have worked hard to destroy that idea in the name of stopping “nationalism”. That is what is doing the damage.
Also contributing – The House was set at 435 members in 1913, when the population of the country was less than 100 million. So we’re currently 3x less represented than we were then.
Have to get to work and will come back and read in full, but democracy is on my mind. Last week, a conversation with a waiter at a restaurant told me he was from Moldovia – I told him I was Ukrainian and Polish decent. I asked what he thought of Putin – he told me in strong terms – he then said that 6600 Ukrainians have died his year and is not being reported. Those in the south want freedom, but are fleeing the turmoil cannot find rentals or start over – they have to leave everything (reminds me of WWII) – He said his whole family is here in the US and he was happy about it.
I decided to pull the book Poland by James Michener off my shelf and read it – my sister sent it to me – she has a copy and we’ll read it together. Starts out farmers who can’t get parts, seed, etc. Government keeps controlling more and more. This is in the early 80’s. Through the forest they can see the Russian tanks sitting, permanent. They just wait for a signal – just a reminder who is in charge. Worldwide journalists come to interview – farmers stand in front of cameras with Warsaw representative, afraid to speak – finally one says we’ll resume talks…..only with the Church present….Representative freaks, Moscow freaks….
We are the world’s last hope. Today’s headlines:
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/russian-military-forces-staging-near-ukraine/
Yes. I think the House should decide to reset its members to Founding levels. That would help a lot.