Young Australians now rank among the groups most dissatisfied with democracy in the world –better than among others like Venezuela and the US but worse than Ghana and Peru.
The finding comes from an October 2020 report, Youth and Satisfaction with Democracy, by the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge which forms part of the work of the Centre for the Future of Democracy.
It uses the largest-yet global dataset on democratic legitimacy – combining data from more than 4.8 million respondents, 43 sources, and 160 countries between 1973 and 2020.
The Institute found that globally younger generations “have become steadily more dissatisfied with democracy – not only in absolute terms, but also relative to older cohorts at comparable stages of life.”
The Australian picture is not pretty. Countries ranking below us in terms of levels of dissatisfaction are, in order, Columbia, Venezuela, the US, Brazil, Greece, and Spain. Ranking above us in ascending order (ie is progressively less dissatisfied) are Mozambique, Kenya, Coast Rica, Botswana, Georgia, South Africa, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, Senegal, El Salvador, Honduras, Malawi, Uganda, Ghana, Peru, and Bolivia.
The report argues that a major contributor to youth discontent is economic exclusion which is driving a growing gap between attitudes of younger and older generations.
“In developed democracies, rising wealth inequality and youth unemployment have left younger generations with lower incomes, higher costs of living, and less financial wealth than prior generations. This has especially affected the lives of millennials in developed democracies, and in particular the United States, Australia, Great Britain, and countries in southern Europe that were hit by the eurozone crisis,” the report says.
In Australia, it’s easy to see other reasons. High student debt, workplace casualisation, wage theft, punitive policies for the unemployed, and the problems of finding affordable housing are all contributors.
In defence, the Morrison Government argues there are plenty of jobs – but only if you are happy to earn $3 an hour picking berries while living in sub-standard accommodations and being ripped off for food and services and accept that the current Job Seeker rate is a disincentive to work.
Meanwhile, the marginally less dissatisfied – the older generation – enjoy the benefits of negative gearing, indexed pensions, and dividend imputation credits.
Not that this has been enough to satisfy the older. An earlier report, Global Satisfaction with Democracy (January 2020), found that there “has been an especially acute crisis of democratic faith” in the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ democracies of the US, UK, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The proportion of citizens dissatisfied with democracy in this group has doubled since the 1990s, from a quarter to half of all individuals. Much of the increase is accounted for by the United States with the proportion of Americans who are dissatisfied with democracy increasing by more than over one-third of the population since the mid-1990s; while it’s risen by 19% in Australia; 18% in Britain, and almost a tenth of Canadians. New Zealand is better than the other Anglo-Saxons perhaps because they have a significant proportion of the population who fought the Anglo-Saxons to a draw when they first invaded.
It was not always thus. In the mid-1990s the majority of citizens in North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Australasia – were satisfied with the performance of their democracies. Since then dissatisfaction with democracy levels among this cohort has risen, from 47.9 to 57.5% – the highest level since the data series began.
“The rise in democratic dissatisfaction has been especially sharp since 2005. The year that marks the beginning of the so-called ‘global democratic recession’ is also the high point for global satisfaction with democracy, with just 38.7% of citizens dissatisfied in that year. Since then, the proportion of ‘dissatisfied’ citizens has risen by almost one-fifth (18.8%) of the population,” the report says.
As a result, many large democracies are at their highest-ever recorded level for democratic dissatisfaction. These include the United States, Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Colombia, and Australia. Other countries that remain close to their all-time highs include Japan, Spain, and Greece.
In contrast, in Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg, for example, democratic satisfaction is at all-time highs. In these nations, representing 2% of the world’s democratic citizenry, less than a quarter of the public express discontent with their political system.
Needless to say, they are all characterised by effective social policies which reduce inequality, provide high-quality education, and make services almost universally available and in Switzerland’s case feature a lot of direct democracy.
Amazing as it may seem to proponents of the Anglosphere concept the report “shows a number of other bright spots, above all in Asia. In democracies in South Asia, Northeast Asia, and above all in Southeast Asia, levels of civic contentment are significantly higher than in other regions. For now, much of Asia has avoided the crisis of democratic faith affecting other parts of the world.”
The report ponders what might have caused it all. “What can explain this synchronised downturn in public sentiment across high-income, English-speaking democracies? First, given the concurrence of the shift with the timing of the global financial crisis, economic factors may play an important role. Yet this explanation, while a part of the story, would struggle to explain why Australia, which largely avoided an economic downturn after 2008, appears as negatively affected as Britain and the United States.
“An alternative though related view is that the financialisation of the US, British, Canadian, and Australian economies has led to this outcome by exacerbating spatial inequality between a handful of successful, globally-integrated cosmopolitan cities – New York, London, Toronto, or Sydney – and the rest of their societies.
“Evidence suggests that rising income inequality also decreases satisfaction with democracy and the effect may be especially strong where entire regions of a country feel left behind.”
One other Institute hypothesis suggests a possible interaction between the confrontational, two-party model of Anglo-Saxon politics, and the effect of social media in siloing society into opposing ‘tribes’. But it doesn’t mention another possible factor – the presence of media such as those owned by Murdoch and others of similar ilk.
Noel Turnbull has had a 50-year-plus career in public relations, politics, journalism and academia. He blogs at http://noelturnbull.com/blog/
Comments
24 responses to “Disillusioned Aussie youth diss democracy”
If a school doesn’t have teachers that know more than the kids, it might as well close its doors. If the kids elected the teachers, you’d get a bunch of clowns. If a government doesn’t have more administrative expertise than the average citizen, its country is finished. The concept of rule by the demos (pardon my Greek) is silly.
There are certainly varieties of democracy, yet when I went to Fisher Library a couple of years ago to take out some books on the subject, I found that the books I took down from the shelves only acknowledged western style democracies as a legitimate form of democracy. And all the books that I took home from the library had highly idealised ‘maps’ of democracy, and all ignored the ‘territory’ these systems functioned in.
The more I hear the word ‘democracy’ in conversations, the more it sounds like a slogan or a piece of dogma. Like many people these days I dont see a whole lot of functioning democracy in western political systems. This is not to say that western political systems dont work, simply that they are not actually democratic in the way that books I have read on the subject say they are, or should be.
Again, these systems have some merits as systems of governance, but they cannot be usefully used as templates or models to judge other forms of governance against.
Well change the definition of a word and you have 100% compliance. What’s interesting is the definition of democracy is different depending on the language (if you look up their respective native dictionaries).
The Chinese definition defines democracy by outcome through interaction between government and the people, the English definition defines democracy by process conformity (i.e. voting). The Japanese dictionary simply defines democracy as power to the people.
It’s actually extremely difficult to even be exposed to these different perspective if you only speak one language. This is a real issue in particular with the 5 eyes countries. The bias is baked in.
I’m not a young person but I will say I understand perfectly why people question what we call democracy today as being legitimate. It is not just a word indicating a governance system that you have or do not have, but is an ideal based on the view that the government is truly representative of the views of the people. That is hardly true in today’s world, democracy has been completely polluted by many who seek to get the edge on others to exploit them, frequently for financial gain or the grabbing power. It’s degenerate. The problem is not democracy per se, but what has been done to it.
The only chance people really get to have a say these days is when they vote, but even then they are informed on who to vote for by parties and politicians that lie their teeth off before the election and are supported by biased media interests who manipulate the outcome by spreading fake news, or news that omits the full truth.
We only have to look at Australia’s last election where myths were used such as Labor implementing a death tax or that taking dividend imputations away from wealthy retirees was whipped up into a fake storm promulgating fear throughout the elderly members of the population to attract votes. Abbott’s 2013 election was based on an even more brazen plethora of lies. Credlin even admitted it.
Then there is the matter of political donations which clearly drive the motivations of politicians to work for big business rather than their constituents, or pay more more attention to right wing religious groups for example who seek to force their views onto everyone else. We have observed 7 years of government where the fossil fuel industry overrides the interests of Australians concerning climate change. Many stake holders in these industries have paid for professional liars to come to Australia to argue against the very existence of climate change itself. How can people be informed on how to vote for fully when these sort of manipulations take place?
News services like News Corp and Nine Entertainment are largely their to support corporations and corrupt governments, they are corporations themselves and drive agendas that are mainly about supporting the richest individuals in the community. Cronyism is rife, as well and cover-ups to hide the abuse of public funds like we see with systematic pork-barrelling and money falling into the hands of Liberal Party donors. Bullying is common as a way to deter people from having more input into governance, and lies are told to the people on a daily basis. One could say don’t get into politics today if you are not prepared to lie frequently. Others that are more honest are abrasively removed by attrition, or condemned by much of the media. Dirt files are also frequently used to get decent people removed from politics.
My analysis is that every way possible has been found to corrupt democracy so that it is a degenerate form of governance. It is manipulated by the most wealthy and some of the most greedy and corrupt people in our societies. As an ideal, democracy is great, but in reality it is a massive failure because the bullies have found every way possible to destroy it, purely out of their own self interest. When I hear the words “robust democracy” being used about Australia I want to puke. It’s not.
Even in the ancient Greek days where there was far better direct representation in the democratic process it was already being corrupted. Socrates died for it. But they did insist that people should be informed in all honesty about the issues, and that representatives were selected by lot so they could never be the professional politicians open to bribes or long term tenure which attracts corruption and cronyism. Athens, although representative of a small state population, had over 3,000 elected members who could all have a say on important issues. Today’s democracy is a sham and the USA is the worst example of it. Australia is not far behind and get worse every year.
Sir,
Yours is a very well balanced view of what is happening in Australia. The government and msm have done more damage to Australian democracy than any subversion by a hostile foreign force ever could. The government lies to us. The msm lie to us to promote the interest of a foreign power and its arms manufacturers. With an irresponsible government and a media that operates just to ensure it keeps being elected into government, the light at the end of the tunnels seems to be switched off for the young people of this country.
By the way, I also read recently that Switzerland is one of the top three countries in Europe where the people have trust in their governments. We could learn from them.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
Thank you Teow Loon Ti
Many pretend there is nothing wrong with democracy as we live it today, but any fair analysis will observe that it is very sick, there is a disease eating it away. It’s why sites like this one exist because we cannot trust the main stream media anymore, nor the hidden agendas of governments that need to be exposed. I’m certainly not the only one to talk about this, and it is a big question in the minds of many Australians and Americans as well. It seems to be a particularly toxic mix when neoliberalism or greed-based forms of capitalism coincide with democracy. The latter destroys the efficaciousness of former in my opinion. It is time when we need to look for better way to govern ourselves and manage our economies. Even our world environment is telling us something has to change or we may perish.
It is interesting to note that even the ancient Greeks of Athens were not certain that democracy was better than a benevolent dictator.
I’m not suggesting any governance system is the best, but we should be able to talk about it and continue to look for something that is fairer for the maximum amount of people in any country. After all democracy did not exist once either.
I also believe we can also learn from countries like China and exchange ideas, a country that is trying a different system after centuries of emperors and dynasties. While the media push the neo McCarthyism fear of China taking us over under a forced communist system, we are also pushing pretty strongly to enforce democracy on China via Hong Kong, Taiwan etc. Especially hypocritical when under British rule Hong Kong was never a democracy but a British colony.
I think China should be allowed to follow its own political course without another round of Western imperialist aggression being forced on it. They will not accept it anymore anyway, and my long study of Chinese history and Western and Japanese imperialism informs me as to why. They want to be respected as equals. Not hard to understand. There is also much good in the Confucian ideal of a leader who should lead through the highest ethical conduct and benevolence and not like some of the leaders we see in the world today. I know of no one else that has expressed it as well as he did so long ago.
Like you say other democracies like Switzerland have opted for a fairer system which is well acknowledged by those who study democratic governance. If democracy is improved through this then if we really say we are a democratic nation then we should be doing everything possible to make it a better democracy, and not pretend it is in fine shape. It isn’t.
Demos means “the people”, not just the richest and most powerful who overpower democratic governments through cronyism and corruption.
Mr Wendell,
I had discussions with friends in Malaysia who told me that democracy isn’t any better than communism. My answer to them is that democracy is an ideal and people do not get anywhere without an ideal. I believe that people adopt different styles of government according to the circumstances they found themselves. China only embraced communism because they were in a really bad situation. The Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai Shek, supported by the US, was corrupt and incompetent. They had nobody else to turn to except Russia and the promise, through communism, of better days for the desperately poor people of China. To get an idea of what it was like during WWII, I would once again recommend the book by Theodore White. I am sure that if you can talk to an educated Chinese, they would, like Australians, complain about their government. I see that the government of China in transition from pure Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist to another form of government that only the future can unfold. I have read a couple of articles that they considered the Singapore form of “guided” democracy as a possible model. Both governments, China and Singapore, find their legitimacy in delivering better futures for their people. Their citizens, in turn can see benefits of their efforts. None of them are in any way perfect governments and they know it. What I am certain they do not like is to be told how they should govern themselves by arrogant and tunnel visioned bullies.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
Did you know the word for communism in Chinese came from Japan? Both the commune and -ism part did not exist in the Chinese vocabulary until after Meiji restoration in Japan where these words got imported.
China adopted communism briefly due to the fact that at that time, the west was strong, so it’s theories had credibility and worth pursuing, but more importantly, communism have a lot in common with confucianism but we all know communism is an ideology and confucianism is a philosophy. It was a confusing time for China and mistakes were made as a result of it.
Ideology is an alien concept to Chinese culture. The system of government in China today is a more modernised version of the old Chinese Keju system combined with the modern scientific method. It is not based on an ideology, it’s outcome based on confucius philosophies. It is therefore impossible to put it in one of these nice -isms, black’n’white categorisation typical of western thinking.
China is also struggling to even put a name to its system of governance. Supposedly it’s socialism with Chinese characteristics…. I think a lot got lost in translation.
Again I must emphasis, you must get out of Western thought frameworks to even begin to understand China. Comparing one ism to another ism is not going to work. This is easier said than done but you have got to try.
Thanks for the Theodore White references, very impelling to read his works, I didn’t know about him before.
Agree with all you say
Hi George,
You’re welcome.
Sincerely,
Teow Loon Ti
In fora like this one, it behooves us to define what variety of democracy we’re talking about, since there are several. Most Western nations have adaptations of Athenian democracy, for example, but Switzerland never did and nor did Singapore and China.
Athenian democracies are working not better today than they did in Ancient Athens (i.e., poorly for the bottom 50%) while the Swiss, Singaporean and Chinese models are thriving.
https://i.imgur.com/8lUnmbf.png
The Swiss system actually is a form of direct democracy in that they exercise their power to provoke a very powerful referendum whenever a petition with the correct number of signatures is produced (50,000). The result of the referendum is binding and overrides the decision of the government.
Being married to a Swiss (and now Australian as well) woman and having lived in the country for years and often revisited, the most notable thing is that the government is far more like a public service elected to do a job, and far less prone to the kind of film star or quasi-royalty profile we find projected on politicians in the US or Australia. Direct democracy, and perpetual referendums stops the Swiss government from assuming the ‘born to rule’ mentality, superior human status, and impunity from the law like we see here or the US.
The recent petition put together in Australia by Kevin Rudd asking for a Royal Commission into News Corp would have triggered a referendum in Switzerland on numbers alone. It attracted 10 times the vote that the Swiss system requires.
The only thing that deters democracy in Switzerland is the media manipulating minds politically, like everywhere else, and the lack of separation between church and state.
The Chinese model of democracy could work here. Perhaps young disillusioned people could think about that.
I wonder how you draw that out of what I said above? Or are you just using this as an opportunity to sling off on China again? If you are the the Basil (of numerous forms) I know then I guess it is likely to be the case.
Note this discussion is not about China.
Note that we claim to be a democracy, China does not.
Also note I am enlarging the discussion to say it may not be democracy that young people have little faith in, but what has been done to it that they don’t like.
Can you please try to address what I say in my argument and not try to hijack it for your own purposes.
Sorry George old boy…my reply was meant to be in response to Godfree’s reference to the thriving Chinese model of democracy. Actually China does claim to be a democracy.
To be fair there are hierarchical democratic processes within the almost 92 million members of the CCP that feed through to the top from the village level onwards, and they certainly claim that as democratic. Many cities and provinces also have a degree of autonomy which was evidenced as part of the problem with the spread and original recognition of the threat of Coronavirus.
I have never heard China claim to be a democracy but rather ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. I would honestly like to know when and where they have claimed it is a democracy if you have a reference or can point me in that direction.
As far as I understand the form of governance China has is pretty unique in the world with its melding of capitalism into the mix with communism/socialism. It has also changed and adapted to new views. In a way I think it Mao’s vision was more acceptable to many Chinese people because it has many similarities with the previous centuries run by emperors and dynasties., and Chinese people are very good at working in collectives and extended families, and not so much as individuals as we do in the West.
Sorry if I mistook you for a number of ‘Basil’ identities that appear on readers comments on other sites. That entity seems to be a very right wing Liberal Party stooge.
George, I probably am the “other” Basil. I take it you are referring to posts on the Global Times. In view of the highly nationalistic and often offensive nature of GT articles about Australia, I often like to take the mickey out of its obsessive approach to Australia, a country it keeps telling us is of little importance. It is an entertaining publication, not to be taken too seriously despite the tendency of western media to treat it as a spokesman for official China, which it is not.
I have lived in, worked in, and studied China over more than 40 years. I know a bit about the country. Yes, China has often referred to itself as a democracy, its own kind of democracy. Clearly, it doesn’t claim to be a western style democracy.
I must admit that I find many of the mainstream media articles on China in Australia quite offensive too, given they always come from a patronising if not superior position where the Chinese are frequently painted as not knowing what they are doing, or that everything they say is a lie. This is what China hates the most, not to be treated as an equal. Our siding with Trump’s frequent abuse of China with his sloppy accusations has not done us any favours either. As with much of Asian culture, there is much read into actions as well, so Morrison going to Japan recently and acting all chummy, says a lot more to the Chinese than what many perceive it as here.
For a long time the Global Times only wrote the occasional story about Australia and its subservience to the US, but recently the the amount of stories has increased significantly.
I think Morrison has mismanaged this entirely but he’ll be in trouble now that he has upset the coal miners in this country. The more Morrison provokes the tough guy nationalist image the worse it gets too, it is just allowing the Chinese hawks to stir up nationalist sentiment too from their side.
I don’t disagree that the Australian government has badly mishandled our relations with China and that we are now in a very bad position which we didn’t have to be in, and from which we will have great difficulty extricating ourselves. There is huge ignorance about China in Australia, and that has been at the heart of the current mess. The worst part of it is that many normally rational Australians have accepted the government’s narrative that the mess is all China’s fault and that we have been blameless. That said, as an Australian, I do find Global Times often offensive. While Australia’s approach to China, its lack of strategy and an end-game, have been incomprehensible and frankly quite stupid in terms of pursuing our national interests, China’s response, especially linking trade sanctions to political grievances has been unacceptable and actually contrary to WTO rules and the Australia China Free Trade Agreement. Neither side, it seems, has a monopoly on stupidity.
You are of course welcome to your own views but I think Jack Waterford in his article above (How Morrison repeatedly baulks at the vision thing and the moral thing) is spot on when he says:
“The disastrous year was rendered worse by a sharp deterioration in relations with China, almost all of which involved contrived and deliberate attempts to provoke it. If at first, it seemed to be anticipating a marked increase in American hostility to China, it became instead a new form of virtue signalling, mostly from folk who had never hitherto had any problem in dealing with ruthless tyrants or clear breaches of human rights. Australia was, apparently, signalling that it would not allow its privileged trading relationship to inhibit it from volunteering criticism of China’s totalitarian ways. In due course, this poking China’s leadership in the eye has provoked selective but widening trade sanctions from China, and increased hostility against Australia. This is likely to do further harm to a relationship worth about ten per cent of GDP — that is, damage greater than that caused by the Coronavirus.”
China does claim to practice ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics, but socialism is an economic descriptor not a political one. I have heard many english speaking Chinese commentators and fellow travellers refer to China as a democracy, too many to bother counting. I think the last time I remember it being so used was in a conversation between Professor Zhang Weiwei and an English person about the relative merits of the systems of governance in China and the UK.
Godfree is often extolling China’s ‘democracy’ as the best so I am not surprised to see his input here. Mainland China has never had democracy in the form we understand the term. So how can you urn for something you never lost in the first place?
George Wendell , the CCP only allows candidates who are welded on party stooges to stand for election, so there is no freedom to dissent against the system.Your future prospects could be severely impacted as your vote is not private .
Of course the youths are pissed. Ever since the late 80s, the political apparatus have been engaging in feeding off the young for financial gains through financial engineering for 30 years. A reverse robin hood robbing from the poor (young people) to feed the rich (capital owners) means that home loans now can stretch to 40 years.
When people trade houses with one another for ever higher prices, there are no new real goods produced, that’s obvious. What is being traded is future promised labour or length of debt bondage for a roof over one’s head. With financial regulation, that debt bondage can be restricted to reasonable period of time (~10 years tops). Now that financial deregulation is well established, it’s a life sentence (up to 40 years!). I mean you don’t get that in the criminal system even if you commit murder!
The value of labour have depreciated so much against asset prices, what hope is there for young people? Because they can vote? Lolz, voting is to keep the plebs stupid while abject oneself from accountability so the elite don’t end up like French royalty. It’s just a mechanism to protect the nobles after they overturned the monarchy. Don’t kid yourself.
You have nailed it, Meeple. Well said.