The Democratic Disconnect

Citation: Roberto Foa, Yascha Mounk (July 2016) The Democratic Disconnect. Journal of Democracy (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): The Democratic Disconnect
Tagged: Sociology (RSS)

Summary

In this article, Foa and Mounk offer a challenge to political scientists: do we know how to detect when a democracy is collapsing (or "deconsolidating")? They observe that trust in institutions, voter turnout, party affiliation, and establishment party support are all declining. Dissatisfaction with democracy seems to be growing. Although past analyses of this dissatisfaction have attempted to paint an optimistic picture -- perhaps citizens really do appreciate democracy itself, it's just the current regime they dislike. Foa and Mounk took up the challenge of using a range of existing survey data to try to distinguish "government legitimacy" from "regime legitimacy", and find that support for democracy is in decline: the younger a European or American is, the less likely they are to call living in a democracy "essential"; and average within-age-group support for democracy is also declining while political apathy is increasing and a political apathy gap is emerging between older and younger voters. At the same time, support for authoritarian alternatives seems to be rising, even among those with experience of authoritarian rule. They find that undemocratic sentiments, such as rule by the military, are in particular rise among the wealthy and that support for having "experts" rather than "government" determine policy is also on the rise. These trends suggest that it is possible that stable, affluent democracies may indeed break down (as they note, every other form of government has done so in the past). They close with a research agenda: political science should engage with the puzzling trends in public sentiment toward mistrust and discontent, and seek to identify the signs, causes, consequences, and remedies for this situation.

Theoretical and Practical Relevance

This piece offers a concise and readable overview of a pressing issue in political science, outlining a series of empirical puzzles and their associated data and theories.