Will democracy’s bug infect Australia?

Larry Diamond, a professor at California’s Stanford University, scores the health of democracies. He does it the same way analysts score business health – with a fistful of indicators. And when enough of those indicators are moving the same way, he argues, they can tell you a lot about democracy’s health.

Democracy remains to most governance experts what Winston Churchill dubbed it in 1947: “the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried”. Democracies’ citizens choose governments through regular, free, and fair elections, and debate those governments’ actions. And liberal democracies buttress those elections not only with rules (such as free speech) and processes (such as the rule of law), but also with institutions (such as an independent judiciary).

But right now, around the world, Diamond’s scores don’t look good. “Democracy globally has been in a prolonged democratic recession since about 2007,” he says.

The developing democratic recession

On Diamond’s figures, global democracy peaked in 2006, with 54 per cent of the world’s people living under democratic government. Now, on his figures, just 24 per cent live this way. The loss of India and Indonesia from democratic ranks pushed the numbers way down in 2022, and confirmed that big, important countries can regress from democracy back to authoritarianism.

Even within more economically advanced nations, Diamond says, the strength of democracy has ebbed noticeably in places like the US, the UK and France. Lavina Lee, editor of a recent report on the issue for the US Studies Centre, notes that the Indo-Pacific has not escaped: Hong Kong, Myanmar, and Taiwan have all seen democracy come under direct assault, she says.

Causes of democratic recession

Democracy’s global decline has been fed by citizens themselves. A 2019 Cambridge University survey found dissatisfaction with democracy had risen from 48 per cent to 57 per cent in the previous 25 years. These same researchers found a global majority of those in their 20s and 30s were dissatisfied with the way democracy works – according to one of the researchers, the first time such a majority had been seen among younger voters.

Why this sharp change? Larry Diamond, Lavina Lee and others point to possible causes include the following seven:

1. The second Iraq war’s failed “democracy promotion mission” provoked a global backlash.
2. People lost confidence in market economics after the 2008 financial crisis.
3. Social media is “coarsening” civic life.
4. Global elites show less commitment to democracy.
5. Democratic institutions (including courts) are losing legitimacy.
6. China has provided an example of non-democratic economic success.
7. For many people in advanced economies, income growth in advanced nations has slowed sharply over the past decade.

The importance of this last factor – slowed income growth – has many supporters. US economist Ben Friedman, for instance, has argued that “a rising standard of living fosters openness, tolerance and democracy”. Without much of a rise, he suggests, people may “turn away from these small-l liberal, small-d democratic values”.

Australia at risk?

So far, Australia has avoided most of the steps toward autocracy that other nations have taken – everything from anti-democratic language to uprisings to free speech crackdowns.

Trust in democracy has clearly fallen: the Democracy 2025 project found that it dropped from 86 per cent in 2007 to 41 per cent in 2018, and there are few signs of any recovery.

But the evidence also suggests Australians – young people included – support democracy, and want to make it work better rather than replace it. The Lowy Institute’s 2024 poll found support for democracy at 72 per cent, well up on the 60 per cent of a decade earlier.

Similarly, in 2024 a survey by the US-based Pew Research Centre ranked Australia fifth out of 31 countries in satisfaction with democracy – at 60 per cent, behind only Sweden, Singapore, India and Thailand.

On many such figures, Australia looks more like The Netherlands than like the US, which has a far lower (31 per cent) satisfaction rate.

Dodging the democratic recession – so far

Latrobe University emeritus professor Judith Brett is a political historian whose widely admired book From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage sets out some unique strengths of Australia’s democratic institutions. She says three strengths have helped Australia to so far avoid its own “democratic recession”:

• Engagement: compulsory voting connects most citizens to Australia’s democratic system, removes political parties’ need to “get out the vote”; and draws new immigrants into the system.
• Integrity: a politically independent body, the Australian Electoral Commission, runs elections and manages electoral boundaries.
• Flexibility: preferential voting allows new players into the political system – most recently, the Teal independents – and lets people express a wide range of political views at the polls, while still electing mainstream parties to government.

In short, Australia is blessed with some particularly strong democratic institutions and processes. This unusually robust electoral system may have shielded Australia from the worst of the democratic recession so far.

Australia’s democratic future

Can democratic deficits be repaired? In Pew’s 2024 survey, people around the world were asked what it would take to make them satisfied with democracy. The number one answer: “Better or different politicians”. But voters rarely agree on what sort of politicians would be better, beyond wanting leaders who are more competent and have better ethics.

Analysts suggest fundamentals like income growth may build confidence in democracies most sustainably. But Brett points out that many Australians have “just been through a period of about a decade, where basically, nothing happened” to their income. Economists such as Saul Eslake argue Australia’s poor productivity performance implies that slow income growth for years to come. Brett worries such income stagnation may eventually corrode Australian support for democratic values.

As Larry Diamond told a Stanford audience in early 1994, “we remain in a volatile and uncertain period”.

David Walker is a former head of policy for the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.