They tracked views on democracy since 1995. The figures for 2019 showed the proportion dissatisfied rising from 48 per cent to 58 per cent, the highest recorded level.
“We find that dissatisfaction with democracy has risen over time, and is reaching an all-time global high, in particular in developed countries,” stated the report’s lead author Roberto Foa.
Many American political scientists have reached the same conclusion. At a conference held at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, last November, Steven Levitsky, a Harvard University professor, argued that American democracy is facing challenges similar to those that brought down Latin American democracies in coups during the last century.
A key turning point for many democracies was
the moment when political rivals began to see themselves as
enemies rather than competitors, losing a key norm Levitsky
calls “mutual toleration.” This often plays directly into the
hands of authoritarians.
Yascha Mounk, who teaches at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Advanced Studies in Washington
D.C., locates the current democratic crisis in the rise of
social media, the growth of identity politics, and economic
stagnation in general-- social inequality in particular.
Much of this has been fuelled by economic
uncertainty since the Great Recession of 2008, along with the
migration crisis in Europe a few years later.
After a brief period of decline after the
Second World War, inequality measured as concentration of wealth
and income is rising. Less than 100 billionaires now own as much
as does 50 per cent of world’s population, down from around 400
billionaires a little more than five years ago. The ultrarich
represent an emergent global aristocracy.
A working aristocracy of politicians,
business leaders, professional and bureaucrats dominate public
affairs. These include graduates of elite educational
establishments such as America’s ivy league schools or Britain’s
Oxbridge. Class, privilege and wealth still determine life
chances.
On the other hand, in many countries today,
there are entire regions of desolation, and large sections of
the population are impoverished. This world is far removed from
the democratic capitalism that dominated the era after 1945.
Political polarization, based on economic
and political problems, has led to, among other outcomes, the
Brexit vote in Britain and Donald Trump’s election in the U.S.
They were an outcry and protest by those who feel alienated in
their own country.
The fracturing of the United Kingdom into
regional political constituencies, each with their own leaders
and policies, has gained momentum and the union may break apart
within the foreseeable future.
The last decade was an economic disaster in
the United States. It experienced the worst economic collapse
since the Great Depression. Unemployment spiked to 10 per cent,
and it took most of the last ten years for it to come back down.
Employment may be widely available again,
but a lot of that employment is fundamentally worse than it was
in decades past. Americans’ wages still aren’t growing as fast
as they were before the crash.
The American project rested on the hope that
deep divides can be bridged by a culture of compromise, and that
emotion can be defeated by reason. But this seems increasingly a
forlorn hope.
Over the past couple of decades in America,
the divides of ideology, geography, party, class, religion, and
race have mutated into something deeper and more ominous.
All these differences have created two
tribes, balanced in political power, fighting not just to
advance their own side but to defeat the other.
The intellectual elites are now little
better. The intellectual right and the academic left have
dispensed with the idea of a mutual exchange of ideas.
Even though liberal democracy remains the
official ideology, intellectuals on both the right and left are
dissociating themselves from its legacy. This year’s coming
election will only make things worse.
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