The Demise of Democracy?

 All political systems are vulnerable to corruption. The most stable way of selecting a ruler, Gibbon [Edward Gibbon, historian] suggests, is probably hereditary monarchy.

Few modern readers share this periwigged 18th-century elitist's distaste for democratic government. But to those of us who cherish democracy, the perspective of an outsider for whom our system was merely one absurd aberration among many is a useful challenge.

Pattern for Democracy
Emma Biggs (b. 1956)
Photo Credit:  Anthony Mcintosh/Art UK

The crisis of the democratic West (for which the latest depressing evidence is an Ipsos poll suggesting nearly half of western voters believe democracy is broken) has been endlessly puzzled over. Readers will be familiar with the leading theories: distrust of elites, wealth inequality, immigration, polarisation.

Doubtless there is truth in all those ideas. Less palatable is the thought that all political systems eventually decay. Why should democracy be an exception?...

Modern democracy is not very old. Louis XV1 could look back on 900 years of French kingship by the time he went to the guillotine. In this country, the whole adult population has enjoyed the franchise for less than a century...

We too easily forget that democracy, like any other system of government, is merely the product of historical circumstance... What happens to the quality of democratic decision -making when screen-addicted voters no longer live in the real world? And what happens to faith in the system when a new age of stagnant growth means the endlessly promised better tomorrow can never arrive?...

Perhaps what we are seeing in the 21st century is not a political order that is malfunctioning but one that is merely growing old. It may be that the crucial democratic right to criticise power eventually degrades into toxic cynicism, fuelling dangerous public hatred of all leaders and discouraging talented people from entering government. And just as monarchs will always prefer to extract money from their subjects rather than cut back spending on new palaces, it may be that democratic electorates will always prefer to extract money from future generations via perilously expanding debt rather than shouldering unpleasant tax rises in the present...

The young who languish in squalid rented housing are not only politically unlucky but sceptical of the existing order. Democracy may not seem so sacred to those who have been punished by it.

This is not to preach doom. Nothing in history is fated. Rather it is to caution that democracy has not always seemed as obvious or inevitable to outsiders as it does to us. An appreciation of the long view need not inspire pessimism but it should inspire a salutary sense of the extraordinary and precious fragility of the way things are. One lesson of history is not to take anything for granted.

(James Marriott, The Times, 2025)

All political systems are vulnerable to corruption and many politicians, in all forms of government are, too.

  Less palatable is the thought that all political systems eventually decay. Why do you say that? History shows that all political systems eventually decay. We seem to be doing it rather more quickly though.

The young are sceptical of the existing order. Not only the young. Aren't large chunks of older voters totally disengaged with the political process? Does anyone believe that there will be a better tomorrow when the elites keep on increasing wealth inequality? Only when a political system offers fairness, hope and security will it be cherished.