Democracy’s crisis of confidence.
Autocracies are winning the trust of their people. Democracies are losing it.
When Anthony Albanese came to power in 2022, he had two
overarching goals: to make Labor the natural party of government in Australia,
and to restore trust in politics.
The first may already have been achieved, not because of
Labor’s virtues but because of the Liberals’ suicidal mission to render
themselves terminally unelectable. The second – the restoration of trust – will
take a little longer.
The bonds of trust between the peoples of liberal
democracies and those they elect to govern are at worrying levels. The most
comprehensive long-term data is from the United States, and show this is not a
new phenomenon. Until the late 1960s, about three-quarters of Americans
believed their government would do what is right. Two events smashed that trust:
the Vietnam war, and the Watergate scandal which drove Richard Nixon out of
office. Between 1968 and 1980, surveys of trust in government collapsed, going
from 77% to 30%. That loss of confidence has never been repaired and now
languishes at around 22%.
This chart reveals the difficulty of restoring long-term
confidence in democratic government. Trust rebounded twice: with the elections
of Reagan in 1980 and Clinton in 1992 but, in each case, the rebound was
fragile and temporary. In the 1980s, trust was lost by the failure to avoid
boom-and-bust economic conditions and the attendant failure to fairly
distribute the gains of growth. The massive support George W Bush enjoyed after
the 9/11 attacks was dissipated in the fiascos of yet another pair of wars in
the Middle East. Obama did nothing to change this dismal trajectory.
A bounce back?
Or not?
The lesson is apt for Australia. The government has made
much of the results of an OECD study showing an apparent rebound in trust in
public institutions – including government – between 2021 and 2023. For two
reasons, we should be sceptical of any attempt to read much into this. One is
that the rebound extends more or less equally across a variety of public
institutions, not just government. The second is that in 2021, Australia was
demoralised by the pandemic, bushfires, a plainly incompetent government and a
prime minister out of touch with the mood of the nation (“I don’t hold a hose,
mate”). Two years later, with the Morrison government out of the way, the
pandemic more-or-less over and the fires extinguished, it was time for a change
of mood.
There is nothing here to indicate any long-term change in
the nation’s preparedness to trust its elected leaders.
Over half of respondents to a survey by the Centre for
Policy Development thought politicians were not acting in their interests, and
only 15% disagreed. Australians under 35 were most likely to feel let down by
the government. Answers were predictably affected by political affiliation, but
even Labor voters felt let down by the government by a majority of 41% to 25%.
Supporters of independents and micro-parties were the most disaffected.
An even less flattering picture of the federal government is
seen in the data for which of the three levels of government does the best job.
Support for the national government is around half that of the states and local
councils.
Autocracy is
popular. Democracy isn’t
Citizens of liberal democracies have a discouraging scepticism
about the probity and effectiveness of their governments. In most, including
Australia, a minority believe their elected representatives will act in the
nation’s best interests most of the time. In less democratic nations, most
notably China, there is no such scepticism. Rather, there is strong support for
leaders whose relationship with liberal democracy is, at best, unenthusiastic.
The only possible conclusion is that most of the world’s
people prefer autocracy to democracy.
Other measures of trust in public institutions follow
similar patterns: the willingness of people to trust those in charge is
generally in inverse proportion to the levels of political freedom and
electoral choice.
In the democracies, business people are more trusted than
political leaders. In less democratic nations, again led by China, there is
little difference: they trust business and political leaders more or less
equally.
One clue to the disparity between liberal democracies and
the others is the level of trust in information media. These judgements have
little to do with the actual quality of information, which – despite the
depredations of Rupert Murdoch and his kind – is far more likely to be honest
and revealing in countries like Australia and Britain than in China, Indonesia
or Thailand. One of the first priorities for any autocrat is to control the
flow of information to the public. This puts democrats at a fundamental
disadvantage. The most critical elements of liberal democracy – a free press,
political discussion, generally trustworthy electoral systems, regular free and
fair elections – are as much a weakness as a strength.
Globalisation
helps autocrats but penalises democrats
In the aggregate, globalisation has produced massive
economic efficiencies and lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty. Its
benefits, though, have not been evenly distributed. Jobs and wealth have moved
from developed, industrialised countries (mostly, the western liberal democracies)
to developing, poorer nations (mostly autocracies or highly compromised
democracies).
China has benefited the most spectacularly: the World Bank estimates
that 800 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty. In 1990, 83%
lived below the international poverty line, the usual measure of extreme
poverty. Today, there are too few to measure.
Other countries have done almost as well. Between 1990 and
2021, extreme poverty in Indonesia fell by 89.1%, in Malaysia by 99.7%, in
Thailand by 99.7% and in Vietnam by 97.7%.
There are good reasons for the populations of these
countries – particularly China and Indonesia – to be confident that their
children will be even better off than they are. But there is no such optimism
in the western democracies. In Australia, only 17% were found by the Edelman
Trust Barometer, a key tracker of these trends, to believe their children will
be better off.
South Korea provides an example of what can go wrong when societies
are critically polarised and too many people believe they are not getting their
fair share of economic benefits. South Korea now has the world’s eleventh
biggest economy, measured by nominal GDP, behind Brazil and ahead of Australia.
According to the World Bank, its
economy grew by an average of 5.7% annually between 1980 and 2023 and gross
nation income per capita increased from $US67 in the 1950s to $US33,745 in
2023.
But this growth did not bring happiness. A Korea expert at
Columbia University, Samuel Kim, has written
extensively on the internal conflicts which accompanied the massive changes
wrought in the economy and society.
“The state-capital collusion, Korea Inc, has been replaced
by a tug-of-war between the government and the chaebol [dominant
conglomerates] and between government and labour. Given the inability of the
state to formulate labour market reform and to implement a consistent and
coherent globalisation policy at a pace commensurate with the requirements of
participatory democracy and globalisation dynamics, the possibility of a second
economic crisis cannot be prematurely dismissed.”
The failure to compensate adequately for the downsides of
globalisation has increased polarisation and been common across the
democracies. Inequality has increased – most notably in the United States but
also in most western nations – with the richest few devouring most of the
growth, with little left over for the mass of the people. The future of democracy
as an attractive form of government is likely to depend substantially on
addressing those corrosive imbalances.
You don’t
know what you’ve got till it’s gone
People in most countries, even Russia and Hungary, claim to
support democracy. But how serious are they? In too many cases, not very.
 |
| The Democratic Republic of Korea |
The name alone means nothing. You have to mean it
The Pew Research Centre digs a little deeper than most
surveys into how serious the peoples of various countries are about democracy.
People who do not support any other form of government are classified as
“committed”; those who also support another form, such as rule by the military,
by a strongman or by experts, are “less committed”.
Australia is the only country outside Europe and North
America in which four in ten people are committed democrats. Even here, they
are outnumbered by those who would consider something else. And that’s true in
most of the world, including in key democracies like Britain, France and the
United States.
This helps to explain why democratic backsliding is so
frequent. India, Indonesia, Hungary, Russia and Israel have all become less
liberal and less democratic. In each case, the separation of religion and state
has been weakened or abandoned. Committed democrats comprise majorities in only
two of these 17 countries.
The Pew survey also examined what sort of alternatives to
democracy were contemplated: rule by the military, by a strong leader or by
experts.
Military rule was the least popular of the three, but
nevertheless attracted surprising levels of support: 17% in the USA and Italy,
15% in Britain and 12% in Australia.
The idea of being led by a “strong leader” – in effect, a
dictator – attracted strong support in Japan and Italy, 19% in both Australia
and the US, 26% in Britain but only 6% in Germany. That may have changed since
2017, when this survey was in the field, but – despise the rise of the
far-right Alternative für Deutschland in the former East Germany – memories
there have lasted.
Rule by experts, rather than elected politicians, is by far
the most seductive of the three anti-democratic options. But it would still be
a dictatorship – by committee, rather than by a single person.
Again, there are disheartening levels of support for an idea
that would remove the power of ordinary people to decide who rules them.
Risk factors
A large body of evidence allows us to identify the factors
within a population that foster or endanger democracy. Inequality in wealth and
power seem to underlie a great deal of the division in western societies and
the disenchantment with what democratic politics has delivered. Democracy is
supposed to be the best way of distributing power fairly. Clearly, that promise
has not been delivered. People with high levels of grievance tend to distrust
all public institutions, but particularly their government.
A sense of economic insecurity in an unpredictable world is growing,
with a powerful effect on trust. The most recent survey of 28 countries by the
Edelman Trust Barometer found significant increases over the past year in fears
of job insecurity caused by international trade conflicts, foreign competitors,
offshoring, threat of recession, automation and lack of training.
Other studies show people with less education, as well as
those holding right-wing views, are more likely to distrust elected governments
and to support rule by the military or by strongman figures.
Trust in government and democracy increases in good economic
times but falls during downturns. And those who distrust government tend to be
attracted to populist leaders who claim to have the answers: Donald Trump,
Boris Johnson, Silvio Berlusconi, Marine Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni, Jair
Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi.
Identifying what causes the decline of trust can lead us to
how support for democratic government could be rebuilt. It comes down to
fighting inequality in all its forms.
The clear relationship between education and support for
democracy gives yet another reason for ensuring more adequate support for
schools in lower-income areas. Out-of-pocket costs for school and higher
education must be addressed: too many poorer kids are being deprived of
education because of cost.
The benefits of economic growth must be better distributed.
This can be done both though the tax and transfer system and by improving the
social wage: wider access to publicly funded healthcare at all levels, better
control of house prices and rents, and provision of affordable and social
housing.
All aspects of government, including politicians but also
government agencies, need to be more responsive and compassionate. Scandals,
like the robodebt episode in Australia, are powerfully corrosive of trust.
 |
| Gautam Adani: $62 billion wealth, no Australian tax |
The economic imbalance between the young and the old is
highly destructive of the social fabric. And welfare needs to be more
responsive, less pointlessly punitive and more generous. People on unemployment
relief should be able to live a decent, modest life.
Above all, people need to feel like citizens, not pawns in
some vast and out-of-control game. Governments need to take the population with
them, explaining changes and seeking an electoral mandate for major, systemic
changes.
Perhaps this is what Anthony Albanese is trying to do. It
would explain much of his incremental approach, the insistence on keeping
promises, and of taking major changes – tax, for instance – to an election,
rather than doing it more quickly by fiat.
In the end, though, widespread reform must happen. After half a century of tax cuts and small government, electorates throughout the world want their governments to take more responsibility. There is such a thing as too much caution.