Democracy, a popular ideal, but an increasingly fragile reality

2023-09-12 14:49:49

Faced with the multiple crises the world is going through (economic, energy, climatic, geopolitical, etc.), are democratic systems still best equipped to respond to them? On this question, the results of the survey carried out by the Open Society foundation among 30 countries around the world (democratic and authoritarian) and published Tuesday September 12, reveal ambivalence. Attachment to democracy as a model that carries humanist values ​​and freedom remains strong: 86% of some 36,300 people surveyed say they want to live in a democratic country. On average, 62% also judge that this model is preferable to all others – Russia and Saudi Arabia come last in these aspirations.

But, overall, faith in democracy seems to be weakening among younger people. While in 2022, half of the world’s population still lived in a non-democratic country, according to the annual ranking conducted by The Economist, a significant proportion of those questioned (30%) would not be opposed to the installation in their country of a strong leader, inclined to neglect free elections and parliamentary representation. More worrying, this proportion of citizens ready to put up with an authoritarian or illiberal regime is higher among those aged 18-35 (35% share this opinion) than among those over 56 (26%). This result illustrates, according to the authors of the survey, a form of distrust among generations who grew up in a world marked by a succession of crises.

A strong minority of young people surveyed (42%) also believes that a military regime is a good way to run a country (compared to 20% of older people). The proportion naturally varies depending on the country and, on this last question, Germany, Japan and Italy appear the most reluctant, while Egypt, Bangladesh and India appear the most enthusiastic.

Fear of political violence

This worrying slope, correlated with the emergence of authoritarian regimes across the world, led Mark Malloch-Brown, president of the Open Society Foundation, to say: “ Our findings are both disappointing and alarming (…) From generation to generation, this faith [dans la démocratie] fades as doubts grow about the capacity of democracy to concretely improve people’s lives. » The populations surveyed actually expect more from democratic regimes to respond to the global problems that they place at the top of their concerns, namely, poverty and inequalities (20%), climate change (20%) and corruption ( 18%). Overall, a third of respondents do not believe that democratic governments are adequately addressing these problems; 68% want rich countries to contribute more to helping poor countries (this proportion falls to less than 50% in the richest countries) and to the fight against climate change.

You have 45.59% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.