Is the decline of democracy inevitable?

 

    From 2025 V-DEM report

In global terms autocracies are on the rise, and democracies are declining. According to the V-Dem Institute, for the first time in more than 20 years, the world has fewer democracies than autocracies. Other estimates point to the same trend. At a global level there are obviously many reasons why this is happening, but in Western countries one stands out: the rise of right wing populism.

In many of the major economies, the main political divide is increasingly between one or more right wing populist parties and more mainstream parties of the centre or left. Of course from year to year political popularity can be volatile, but the trend is also unmistakable. This is happening either because of the growing popularity of an insurgent populist party (Rassemblement National and Reconquête in France, AFD in Germany, Fratelli d'Italia in Italy and Reform in the UK) or the transition of a mainstream party of the right into a populist party (the Republican party in the US and the Conservatives in the UK).

Of course democracy can survive the election of a right wing populist party into government. There are plenty of examples of where it has (Trump’s first term as POTUS, Poland and the UK, for example). But the nature of right wing populism also means that there is a significant chance it may not. Populism is about a political party proclaiming that it alone represents ‘the people’, and that other parties or institutions represent ‘elites’ that work against the people. As a result, populist right wing governments tend to dismantle the key elements of a pluralistic democracy, such as an independent media, judiciary and civil service. They are autocratic, usually placing an unprecedented amount of power in one individual’s hands. In those circumstances, elections can easily cease to be fair, such that a democracy is effectively replaced with an autocracy.

If the key electoral contest in most major countries is between right wing populism and more mainstream parties, then right wing populists are likely to win at least some of these contests. If that sometimes leads to the end of democracy, or steadily erodes the possibility of fair elections, then unless autocracies collapse into democracies at an equal rate the number of democracies will steadily decline and the number of autocratic governments will increase. This process will be accelerated if autocracies intervene in other democracies to support right wing populism, as Russia has been doing and as Trump has started to do.

Why are right wing populist parties growing in popularity? This is an issue that I have discussed many times, most recently here. I think it is helpful to make a distinction between what some (not just economists) describe as the demand and supply sides. The supply side relates to politicians, the media and money: why for example mainstream politicians may choose to adopt populist policies, or why billionaires may fund populist politicians or parties. In the past I have talked about why right wing parties wanting to push unpopular neoliberal ideas might choose to focus on more social issues like immigration. The demand side is about why right wing populism is increasingly attractive to some voters. It is the latter I want to focus on in this post.

It is familiar territory that the politics of class, that used to be the central divide in most major economies, has and perhaps still is being gradually replaced by divisions between social liberals and social conservatives. Of course economic issues remain very important in elections, but increasingly the settled patterns in voting behaviour are not related to class but rather to age and education. Socially conservative voters tend to be older, and socially liberal voters are more likely to have been to university. A central issue that divides liberals from conservatives and which is becoming more and more important in elections is immigration.

To look at why this is happening we can focus on either the declining importance of class-based economic issues, or the growing importance of predominantly social issues like immigration. On the first, the decline in manufacturing employment in most major economies and its replacement by service sector jobs is part of the story. [1] This is one reason for the declining influence of trade unions. In the UK I think the triumph of Thatcherism and the end of incomes policies was more important. You can also add into the mix the decline in the Soviet Union as an alternative to capitalism.

Immigration has become more important as an issue in part because there is more of it. Immigration has been on the rise in all regions, and pretty well all countries within any region. However it is far too crude to suggest that higher numbers automatically generate higher concern. Worries about immigration are often greatest in areas where immigration is relatively low and vice versa: London relative to other areas in the UK is an obvious example. A much more important determinant of attitudes to immigration is where people are situated on the social liberalism/conservatism spectrum (e.g. here).

Key determinants of where people are on this spectrum are age and education. Two general trends in most societies have amplified these divisions. First, over the last fifty years more people have received a university education, and this increases the extent of socially liberal views. As graduates tend to form most of the political and broadcast media elites, this may be one reason why social attitudes have become increasingly liberal in most countries since WWII, although with the rise in right wing populism this trend may be ending or even reversing. .

Second, the number of older people has been steadily rising because of medical and other advances. A crude measure of this is the old age dependency ratio, which divides the number of people 65 or older by the number of people of roughly working age (20-64). In 1960, the dependency ratio for the OECD as a whole was 16%, but by 2020 it had doubled to 30%. By 2075 this ratio is expected to be nearly 60%. This means that a growing proportion of voters are no longer in work, so work-based economic issues will have less salience, although this effect is moderated to a minor degree by any increases in the retirement age. In addition, older people are more likely to vote. All this creates a growing pool of socially conservative voters which politicians can appeal to.

While these trends may help explain the growing importance of social and cultural issues in elections, we need an additional step to explain why political parties that aim to attract socially conservative voters are also likely to be populist and autocratic. Socially conservative views tend to go with authoritarian opinions: social scientists often refer to the social conservative/liberal axis as the authoritarian/liberal axis. Authoritarian views will generate an impatience with independent sources of power (or indeed democracy itself). It also means that socially conservative voters are more likely to be attracted by ‘strong’ (charismatic) leaders, of a type that generally lead populist parties.

All this is a very broad brush account, and please tell me of any important demand side factors I have ignored. But to the extent that it is valid, it suggests that the factors that have created a growing demand for socially conservative populism, and further down the line the trend away from democracy, are unlikely to be reversed anytime soon. 

[1] An alternative story about the rise in populism focuses on those ‘left behind’ by this and other aspects of globalisation. This economic mechanism appears very different from the social/cultural discussion that I focus on. These two alternative perspectives regularly compete when right wing populism triumphs. When Trump was first elected, for example, there was plenty of debate between those who wanted to essentially blame racist attitudes among the white majority and those who wanted to look at the left behind in once prosperous industrial states. Brexit saw similar discussions. Exactly the same tension can be seen in discussions about Poland’s recent presidential election.

I have taken a similar line to Dani Rodrick on this, which is that this tension can be at least partially resolved by distinguishing between levels and changes. Social/cultural issues provide the bedrock of support for right wing populists, but it is often economic issues that can tip the balance between these populists winning or losing electoral races. As this post is about the steady rise in right wing populism, rather than why right wing populists sometimes win, I naturally focus on social/cultural explanations.