DEATH OF DEMOCRACY IS
NOW A LIVE THREAT
JONATHAN SUMPTION
Democracy is going through a rough time. It is openly
challenged by autocratic states like China, Russia and Iran.
In the West’s oldest democracies, it is challenged from
within by growing numbers who have lost faith in it as a
form of government.
The Washington polling organisation Pew Research Centre
has been tracking attitudes to democracy across the world
for some 30 years. Britain has one of the highest levels of
dissatisfaction with democracy in the world, at 69 per cent.
Only Greece and Bulgaria are more disillusioned. A recent
survey of political engagement in the UK found that a narrow
majority wanted a strongman in power, someone who would
sort things out without having to worry too much about
parliament, judges, democratic debate or other impediments
to decisive action.
Britain is not unique. Authoritarian figures have come to
power with public support in many democracies: Donald
Trump in the US, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in
Hungary and Giorgia Meloni in Italy. In France and Germany,
authoritarian parties are beating at the gates. Australia does
quite well in the Pew Research surveys, with only 41 per cent
dissatisfied, but it cannot expect to be immune from the
anti-democratic tide that is engulfing the West.
Democracy is a system of collective self-government. Its
survival depends on two things. One is an effective
institutional framework for discovering the values and
desires of a majority of citizens: parliaments, elections, free
media, and so on. The other is respect for the rule of law and
a culture of tolerance and pluralism, without which
democracy cannot survive. People have to be willing to
accept democratic decisions that they do not like.
It is because these qualities are not natural to human beings
that some form of autocracy has always been the default
condition of mankind. In the West, democracy has a short
history. It emerged in very special circumstances just two
centuries ago, in very different circumstances to those that
obtain today. Respect for personal autonomy was at its
height and the capacities of the state were limited.
Towards the end of his long life, John Adams, one of the
founders of American democracy, warned that “democracy
never lasts long. It soon wastes and exhausts itself. There
never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” In
using the word suicide he was making an important point.
Democracies fail from within. They are rarely overwhelmed
by powerful external forces such as invasion or insurrection.
They fail because people spontaneously lose interest in
democracy and turn to more authoritarian forms of
government.
Why has democratic sentiment weakened in so much of the
world? The answer is complex, and not necessarily the same
everywhere. But it is possible to point to three main enemies
of democracy: economic insecurity, fear, and intolerance.
Historically, democracies have always depended on
economic optimism. Except in two short periods, the US has
enjoyed continuously rising levels of prosperity – both
absolutely and relative to other countries – until quite
recently. Other countries’ fortunes have been more
chequered but the trajectory has generally been upwards.
Australia’s good fortune since World War II seems likely to
be the main reason for its relatively high level of support for
democracy. Today, the outlook is darker. We face problems
of faltering growth, relative economic decline and capricious
patterns of inequality. People measure their wellbeing
against their expectations. Half a century of post-war
expansion raised those expectations to stratospheric levels.
The shattering of optimism is a dangerous moment in the
life of any community. Disillusionment with the promise of
progress was a major factor in the 30-year crisis of Europe
that began in 1914. That crisis was characterised by a general
resort to totalitarianism. In the 1930s, Soviet Russia and Nazi
Germany were widely regarded as models for the future, just
as China sometimes is today.
When democracy cannot guarantee a continuously rising
level of wellbeing for its citizens, people begin to reject it.
This is particularly true of the young, who see their future
clouding over while their parents’ generation are still
enjoying the fruits of the good years. Authoritarian systems
rarely do better, but that tends to be discovered too late.
Then there is the empire of fear. Historically, people who are
sufficiently frightened of some external peril, such as
invasion, violent crime or epidemic disease, have generally
been willing to submit to an authoritarian regime that offers
to protect them. Today, this is a bigger problem than it has
been in the past because of the ever wider range of perils,
physical, economic and psychological, from which people
demand protection.
Of course, democracies can confer despotic powers on the
state in emergencies without losing their democratic
character. But there comes a point at which the systematic
application of coercion is no longer consistent with collective
self-government. If we hold governments responsible for
everything that goes wrong, they will take away our
autonomy so nothing can go wrong. If we call on the state to
use its awesome power to defend us from the ordinary perils
of human existence, we will end up doing it most of the time.
Finally, there is the mounting tide of intolerance. The
campaigns of suppression conducted by pressure groups
against unfashionable or “incorrect” opinions on
controversial issues such as race, gender reassignment,
same-sex relationships or climate change are a symptom of
the narrowing of our intellectual world.
Demonstrations, such as those organised by the followers of
Trump in Washington, Extinction Rebellion in Britain, or
climate-change activists on the streets of Sydney, are all
based on the idea that the campaigners’ point of view is the
only legitimate one. No democratic outcome can therefore be
tolerated which fails to give effect to it. On this view of the
world, it is perfectly acceptable to bully people and disrupt
their lives until they submit, instead of resorting to
persuasion or ordinary democratic procedures.
This is the mentality of terrorists, but without the violence.
Once we start telling ourselves that it is more important to
get our way, democratic decision-making is done for. The
result is the abandonment of political engagement and a
general resort to direct action; that is, force.
Those who engage in direct action always believe that the
end justifies the means, but they rarely confront the
implications.
Since we are never likely to agree on controversial issues,
what holds us together as societies is not consensus. It is
precisely the methods by which we resolve our differences. It
is a common respect for constitutional procedures, whether
or not we like the outcome.
The transition from democracy to authoritarian rule is
deceptively smooth. The outward forms are unchanged, but
the substance is gone. Democracy is not formally abolished.
Instead, it is quietly redefined. It ceases to be a method of
collective self-government but becomes something
different, a set of values like communism, nationalism, or
human rights.
The question whose values are to prevail can be resolved only
by the crude exercise of power by the dominant ideology.
Will democracy resist these pressures in the next century? A
generation ago it would have seemed strange even to ask the
question. Today, it is a real issue.
Lord Sumption was a justice of the Supreme Court of the
United Kingdom between 2012 and 2018, and delivered the
BBC Reith Lectures for 2019. He is in Australia as a guest of
the Robert Menzies Institute.
