Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
It’s been said democracy is the first form of Government, except for all the other forms. But lots of people across the world don’t seem to agree. Especially the younger generations.
Chanu Peiris
Project Lead
Open Society Barometer
Young respondents suggested that military rule might be a good way to govern their countries.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
This dissatisfaction with the democracies people live in isn’t just youthful rebellion.
Mr President watch out!
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
Attitudes are not softening with age.
Robert Foa
Director, Cambridge Centre
For the Future of Democracy
The general assumption has been that as people grow up, people learn democratic values, that’s now not true.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
So if those with decades still to live are down on democracy, what does this mean for its future?
NOW & NEXT
Will young people let democracy die?
I’m going to spend half an hour on my good time to go to the polls to vote for a bunch of crooked politicians?
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
In 2023 a survey from Open Society Foundations, a charity asked respondents from thirty countries a series of questions about democracy. First the good news, a big majority, 86%, said they wanted to live in a democratic state. But break things down by age and a different picture emerges. Among 18-35 year olds, 57% thought democracy was preferable to any other form of government, compared with 71% of respondents over 55 and there’s more.
Chanu Peiris
Project Lead
Open Society Barometer
A sizeable minority of 18-35 years olds suggested that military rule or leaders who do without elections might be a good way to govern their countries.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
In America, often hailed as the leader of the free world, this figure was 43%.
Chanu Peiris
Project Lead
Open Society Barometer
Faith in democracy is running on fumes.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
Millennials, the generation now aged between 28-43 have long loved The Simpson. The cartoon picked up on cynicism about democracy years ago.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, democracy simply doesn’t work.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
The divide in attitudes to democracy between millennials and older generations can be especially pronounced in countries where democracy is relatively young. Not least here in Spain where the current democracy is only 50 years old.
Political parties change, my working conditions have always gotten worse.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
Take Iñaki, 36 years old and working in tourism.
I am not at all satisfied with democracy in Spain. The original ideals are getting lost.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
Like many of his peers, he doesn’t think Spain’s democracy is addressing his needs.
I think a lot of people in my generation think the same way I do. Of course I am not against democracy, but I think that something different can be done and of course it could work.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
Iñaki is too young to remember when Spain was ruled by the military dictator, Francisco Franco, who died in 1975. By contrast, Bigoña, Iñaki’s mother, remembers this time well and appreciates the freedom Spaniards enjoy today.
‘Listen Iñaki, democracy is something that has cost so much to achieve. Look at those street fights against Franco many years ago. We need to take care of it and improve it.’
‘You told me go and vote, go and vote. But then I had something else to do.’
‘Come on.’
‘But I have other things to do, other things.’
‘Other things! This is more important!’
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
Iñaki and Begoña reflect differing generational views on democracy and there’s a broad and worrying trend at play here. University of Cambridge research suggests younger generations are less satisfied with democracy than generations before them were at the same age. Take my generation. My kids call me a Boomer but technically they’re wrong. I’m a member of Generation X, those born between 1965 and 1980. I remember the grim threat that communistic dictatorships once posed to the free world. I remember the euphoria when Easter Europeans and Black South Africans first won the vote. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been grateful to live in a democracy. But Millennials, the generation after mine say they were less satisfied with democracy than my generation was in our 20s and 30s.
Robert Foa
Director, Cambridge Centre
For the Future of Democracy
This is the first generation where a majority of individuals have been dissatisfied with democracy at this stage in their life.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
This satisfaction gap is wider in some regions than others. And there are varying reasons for this depending on the part of the world.
Robert Foa
Director, Cambridge Centre
For the Future of Democracy
When you look at mature democracies in Europe, the United States, the United Kingdom, the big divide that we see is the intergenerational life opportunity divide, and that is a divide that comes down to incomes, availability of jobs. In countries that returned to democracy or transitioned to democracy for the first time in the 1980s and 1990s, in Latin America, in sub-Saharan Africa, in parts of Asia, what we see is what we call ‘transition fatigue’. There is a younger generation that has been disillusioned fundamentally with the way that democratic parties and democratic elites that lead during the transition era, delivered, or failed to deliver, on many of those promises.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
If this all sounds like bad news for democracy, there’s more. Disenchanted electorates are more likely to vote in populist leaders, who tend to undermine democracy. Yet populist leaders are often better than moderate ones at getting young people excited about elections.
Robert Foa
Director, Cambridge Centre
For the Future of Democracy
It’s very clear that in recent years we can see example after example where political outsiders on both the left and the right have been able to mobilise younger voters into politics, who were previously disconnected and disillusioned with mainstream political parties.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
In the Cambridge research, young people even seemed more satisfied with democracy under populists than centrist governments. But, and there’s a big but here, this rise in satisfaction doesn’t tend to last, perhaps because populists tend to govern badly.
Robert Foa
Director, Cambridge Centre
For the Future of Democracy
One of the defining features of populism is short-termism. Populists, once they get elected, engage in polities that produce an immediate sugar-rush in terms of tax cuts and spending or monetory stimulus that ultimately leads to consequences that one term or two terms or perhaps three terms down the line produce crisis of various kinds. There is a pattern that we see, where eventually support for populist leaders, and indeed satisfaction with how democratic institutions are functioning under populism, begin to decline and in some cases decline really quite rapidly.
My constituents, as your elected representative.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
So what does all this mean for the future of democracy? Well, democracy is far from dead. The biggest danger from all this is not that young people will willingly give up their rights to vote, very few people do that, but they might be too apathetic to notice or resist much when a would-be autocrat gradually chips away at checks and balances.
It’s your birthright to vote as you please – BUT VOTE!
Robert Foa
Director, Cambridge Centre
For the Future of Democracy
If we look at natural youth political behaviour, we are seeing in a number of countries a transition from democratic apathy to what might be termed democratic antipathy, where younger generations are available to be mobilised by anti-system actors.
Chanu Peiris
Project Lead
Open Society Barometer
What’s at stake here is the weakening of the fabric of democratic societies.
Robert Guest
Deputy Editor, The Economist
I’m Robert Guest, Deputy Editor of The Economist. If you’d like to read more of our coverage of democracy please click on the link opposite and if you’d like to watch more of our Now&Next series, please click on the other link. Thanks for watching and don’t forget to subscribe.
The Economist