The Decline of Democracy Part 1

In The End of History and the Last Man (1992), Francis Fukayama proposed “that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy and the dissolution of the Soviet Union – humanity had reached “not just … the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

Scholars should be careful making such broad pronouncements. Almost as soon as Fukayama’s book hit the bookshelves, democracy was in retreat almost everywhere.  In 2015 Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk provided data that showed a word-wide shift away from democracy in general (see figure 1), and a decline in support for democracy in America, specifically. Figure 1 demonstrates how the belief that “army rule” would be a good or very good way to run the country has changed between 1995 and the latest survey.  The idea that army rule would be good or very good increased in 27 countries while decreasing in nine countries.  More importantly the shift away from democracy increased in seven Western democracies (including the United States). 

In the United States the proportion of people who believe democracy is essential declines with age (figure 2).  While more than 60% of people born before the 1950s agree that its essential to live in a democracy, only 30% of Millennials hold that belief.

Since 2000, the proportion of Americans born since 1970 who say that democracy is a “bad way to run America” has grown from 17% in 2000 to 23% in 2011 (see figure 3).

These data shock me; the fact that they are happening at the same time that people are leaving their faith means that the twin supports for the American way of life are shaky at best. What is going on here?

It seems to me that there are at least six explanations for these trends:

• Failure of Western democracies to sustain the post-WWII growth rates
• Globalization and automation
• The increased income inequality in Western societies
• The sense that government is broken and corrupt
• The rise of nationalism and neo-nationalism
• The failure of the older generations to pass on their values to the younger generations.

We will examine the first two reasons in this post and look at the other four in a future post.

Economic slowdown.  U.S. economic growth has averaged a little less than 2.5% over most of the period since the end of World War II. There were, however, two periods of recession (1974-1982 and 2007-2013) which led to serious declines in income. Note that the recovery after each recession was a bit weaker in later periods (figure 4). 

Moreover, Americans’ expectations concerning their economic future are pessimistic (see figure 5). More than twice as many Americans see their standard of living falling than see their living standards rise over the next 30 years. Younger Americans are less pessimistic than older ones; men less pessimistic than women; blacks and Hispanics less pessimistic than whites.

Globalization and automation.  While I, like most economists, believe that globalization is a good thing for the U.S. economy, there is no doubt that, together with automation, increased international trade, especially with China, has cost the United States jobs, particularly in manufacturing. The decline in manufacturing jobs is occurring among all advanced countries and, in part, is due to people deciding to consume more services and less goods, as well as automation and globalization (figure 6 presents data on the share of manufacturing in GDP between the 1970’s and the early 2010’s).  Across all advanced countries the share of manufacturing in GDP has declined from around 25% in 1970-79 to about 15% in 2010-15. As Barbara Ehrenreich wrote, “I grew up in an America where a man with a strong back—and better yet, a strong union—could reasonably expect to support a family on his own without a college degree. In 2015, those jobs are long gone, leaving only the kind of work once relegated to women and people of color available in areas like retail, landscaping, and delivery-truck driving.”

As I wrote in an earlier post, “The decline in good jobs, coupled with the upsurge of immigration and the relative improvement of the social and economic status of people of color, have eroded, for many older whites, the belief that things were getting better, that their lives and those of their children were going to improve.”  This failure of “The American Dream” naturally has led to a questioning of the American system of democratic capitalism.

Conclusions. I have argued that we are in a time when democracy is in retreat. In earlier posts I discussed the fact that belief in God is also declining. Trust in our institutions is at an all-time low. People are unmoored from their values, their beliefs and, most importantly, their identities. The next post will discuss four more of the reasons for this decline in belief in democracy.