It's been said democracy is the worst 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 Young respondents suggested that military rule might be a good way to govern their countries This dissatisfaction with the democracies people live in isn't just youthful rebellion Mr President, watch out! Attitudes are not softening with age The general assumption has been that as people grow up, people learn democratic values that's now not true So if those with decades still to live are down on democracy, what does
this mean for its future? I'm going to spend half an hour of my good time to go to the polls to vote for a bunch of crooked politicians? In 2023 a survey from Open Society Foundations, a charity asked respondents from 30 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- to 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 A sizeable minority of 18 to 35-year-olds suggested that military rule or leaders who do without elections might be a good way to govern their countries In America, often hailed as the leader of the free world, this figure was 43% Faith in democracy is running on fumes Millennials, the generation now aged between 28 and 43, have long loved The Simpsons 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 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 Take Iñaki, 36 years old and working in tourism Like many of his peers he doesn't think Spain's democracy is addressing his needs Iñaki is too young to remember when Spain was ruled by the military dictator Francisco Franco, who died in 1975 By contrast, Begoña, Iñaki’s mother, remembers this time well and appreciates the freedoms Spaniards enjoy today 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 communist dictatorships once posed to the free world I remember the euphoria when Eastern Europeans and black South Africans first won the vote So 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 This is the first generation where a majority of individuals have been dissatisfied with democracy at this stage in their life This satisfaction gap is wider in some regions than others And there are varying reasons for this depending on the part of the world 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 led during the transition era, delivered, or failed to deliver, on many of those promises If all this 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 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 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 One of the defining features of populism is short-termism
Populists, once they get elected, engage in policies that produce an immediate sugar-rush in terms of tax cuts and spending or monetary stimulus That ultimately leads to consequences that one term or two terms or perhaps three terms down the line produce crises 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 So what does this all 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 right 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 If we look at actual 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 What's at stake here is the weakening of the fabric of
democratic societies 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
