
#Researchforimpact: Is democracy backsliding?
Democracy is supposed to give political voice to marginalised people and advocate for socio-economic rights as well as equitable use of state resources to address inequality.
But in recent years the near-universal conviction of the early post- Cold War period that democracy was best at assuring economic growth and human development has lost much of its persuasive power. In fact, in many countries around the globe democracy is now believed to be in retreat under the combined pressure of a variety of factors.
Having studied the state of global democracy for the past 20 years, the latest project of the Transformation Research Unit (TRU), based in the Centre for International and Comparative Politics at SU asked if democracy was indeed backsliding.
Examining the South African democracy comparatively in the global context, their most recent research focused attention on five younger democracies (South Africa, South Korea, Chile, Poland and Turkey) and two well-established democracies (Germany and Sweden). The research revealed that of the five younger democracies, three have suffered setbacks to their democracy. Democratic backsliding has been occurring in Poland, which has a populist government; in Turkey, which was downgraded from an electoral democracy to an electoral autocracy; and in South Africa, which has witnessed a rise in radicalism and a sharp decline in mass preference for democracy over autocracy.
The publics of Sweden and Germany, by contrast, showed consistently high support for democracy among its citizens, though satisfaction with democracy remained lower in the former East Germany than in the rest of the country.
Generally, the findings confirmed that democracy is underthreat from a number of factors, among them globalisation that restricts nation-states in various ways. In the labour market, this translates into reducing the scope and generosity of social protection systems. At the same time, global technological advances call for highly skilled individuals who form part of an elite that is generally financially better off than their less skilled fellow citizens. This growing disparity evokes resentment that can lead to populism.
The rise in populism is also a response to the growing inflow of migrants and refugees, which the open borders of democratic nation-states facilitate. Populist tendencies have spread even
to the most established democracies; the election of Donald Trump as US President is a prime example of a country where people who feel marginalised support a populist candidate who promises them a better life. However, populists are not necessarily anti-democrats. In most democracies, populist political parties continue to function within the structure of a democratic system. Populists, however, erode the liberal values of democracy through their rhetoric and, once in power, inevitably attempt to undermine liberal institutions to better serve their own ends.
*The article appears in the latest edition of the Stellenbosch University Research Publication. Click here to read more.
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