Democracy is in Trouble Due to Technological Advances

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

 

In a lecture delivered on March 6, George Weigel, who holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, provided a pessimistic reading of the state of politics in western countries.

“All over the world, young people -- meaning millennials born since 1980 -- seem suspicious of democracy and willing to flirt with efficient authoritarianism. 

“The World Values Survey reports that only 30 per cent of American millennials and 43 per cent of European millennials think it ‘essential’ to ‘live in a country that is governed democratically,’ while about 35 per cent of millennials globally think it would be ‘good’ or ‘very good’ to have in their countries a ‘strong leader’ who doesn’t have to ‘bother with parliament and elections.’” 

Similar figures are reported in Germany, and some surveys suggest that half the populations of both Great Britain and France would welcome some version of “strongman” rule.

Why has this happened? Among the factors Weigel lists are the economic dislocations caused by globalization and the failure of a globalized economy to lift all boats.

After growing rapidly in the postwar era, the living standards of ordinary people have, in many North American and western European countries, been stagnating for decades. And the growing frustration about a lack of material progress has, in turn, helped to fuel a massive cultural backlash.

The information technology (IT) revolution has improved living standards and its great technical achievements enjoy a high level of consumer and political support, Mordecai Kurz, an economist at Stanford University, wrote in his June 2017 paper “On the Formation of Capital and Wealth: IT, Monopoly Power and Rising Inequality.”

“However these sources of social benefits are also the cause of social losses and rising inequality that threaten the foundation of democratic society.”  According to Kurz, the concentration of economic power, and with it political power, in the major technology companies has dangerous consequences.

By enabling and supporting the rise of corporate monopoly power, “IT innovations have caused the rise in inequality and contributed to the slowdown in wage growth.”

Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum in Geneva, in “The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What it Means, How to Respond,” January 2016, has come to the same conclusion. 

“As automation substitutes for labor across the entire economy, the net displacement of workers by machines might exacerbate the gap between returns to capital and returns to labor.”

The upshot? “Major crises like a severe economic recession can provide the tinder for citizen disaffection to crystallize into rage and inciting voters to throw out traditional political parties en masse,” according to political scientists Michael Albertus of the University of Chicago and Victor Menaldo of the University of Washington. 

“This discontent can ultimately lead to democratic demise, as inexperienced new political actors appeal to demagogy and dismantle longstanding institutions without building a more solidly democratic foundation,” they warn in their article “Why Are So Many Democracies Breaking Down?” in the New York Times of May 8.

Harvard University political scientist Yascha Mounk warns in his book The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom is in Danger and How to Save It, that the mixture of oligarchy and technocracy provides fertile ground for populism.

Frustration and dissatisfaction have been the driving force behind the rise of Donald Trump in the Republican Party. 

As Thomas Edsall indicated in “Industrial Revolutions are Political Wrecking Balls,” the title of his article in the May 3 New York Times, “The determination of the Trump wing of the Republican Party to profiteer on technologically driven economic and cultural upheaval -- and the success of this strategy to date -- suggests that the party will continue on its path.”

Observed Weigel, “Nothing in history is permanent, including democracy.”