Today in Singapore’s Straits Times (13 December 2024, page 21)
Unfortunately, Partyforum Southeast Asia cannot help sharing the pessimism…

Super election year masks what’s really wrong with democracy

Election officials preparing to count votes during Japan’s general election on Oct 27. For democracy to hold its ground, the gap between what it promises and what it delivers cannot keep widening, says the writer.PHOTO: AFP

Record turnouts and robust competition may feel like a festival but, in many countries, democracy is not solving people’s problems. It’s in trouble.

By Bhavan Jaipragas, Deputy Opinion Editor

Are we in a global democratic recession? The numbers don’t seem to suggest that.

In 2024, the biggest election year in human history, with 3.7 billion people eligible to vote across 72 countries, experts noted strong turnout, vibrant political competition, and only limited success for disinformation campaigns.

The Economist, drawing on data from 27 countries, even noted a drop in election-related violence and protests compared with previous contests.

So, procedurally at least, democracy appears to be thriving. But let’s not be fooled by surface-level success.

Beneath this shiny exterior lies a troubling undercurrent of disillusionment, mistrust and dysfunction. This goes beyond doubts about the system itself – trust is eroding in the very people who run it.

In many places, politics no longer feels like actual governance – problems aren’t getting fixed today, and there’s little thought for the future.

In a Pew survey of 24 countries published in February (including India, Australia, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea, but excluding Singapore), a median of 74 per cent said elected officials in their country did not care what people like them thought.

The pollster said of the results: “One factor driving people’s dissatisfaction with the way democracy is functioning is the belief that politicians are out of touch and disconnected from the lives of ordinary citizens.”

Instead, as British commentator Stephen Bush put it recently on the affairs in his country, with politicians’ fixation on staying in power rather than day-to-day governing, it’s more like “staging theatrical set pieces between near-constant electoral clashes”.

This isn’t just a handful of isolated examples; it’s a pattern playing out across a good number of the world’s democracies. We’re seeing rising polarisation, the demonisation of rivals, power grabs that push the limits of executive authority, and a collapse of public trust. Peer beneath the surface, and you’ll find democracies once thought solid that are now flailing.

Asian fault lines

Take South Korea, front and centre after last week’s drama. President Yoon Suk Yeol’s abortive martial law declaration – a self-coup in all but name – tells you everything. To outmanoeuvre an obstructionist opposition, Mr Yoon flirted with wrecking the economy and national security. The message is clear: Crushing political foes tops any notion of the national good.

Japan wasn’t as theatrical in 2024, but one can argue it was just as myopic. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, leading the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party in its current cycle of leadership churn, forced a snap election a year early. This calculated gamble, aimed at securing a fresh mandate, backfired, leaving his party without the majority it had held for 15 uninterrupted years. As The Straits Times’ Japan correspondent Walter Sim recently observed, Mr Ishiba is now on precarious footing heading into 2025. Long-term strategy? Off the table, it seems.

Consider also the Philippines. Instead of genuine policy debates, its rumbustious democracy boils down to dynastic feuds. The Marcos and Duterte clans are currently locked in ugly conflicts, even hinting at assassination. Under these conditions, one wonders why ordinary Filipinos would believe their elites care about anything other than holding on to power.

Even Western Europe – supposedly liberal democracy’s heartland – is not in a good place. France and Germany enter 2025 with governments toppled by budget feuds, proving they can’t compromise or level with voters about tough economic choices. All this as Europe braces itself for Donald Trump’s return to the White House, uncertain of American policy. Add Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, and the leadership void in Paris and Berlin feels like a ticking time bomb.

Speaking of Trump, there’s the US – an obvious reference point for glaring democratic dysfunction. Re-electing a president who openly admires autocrats and once fuelled an insurrection attempt, and who now keeps the Republican Party firmly under his heel, lays democracy’s fragility bare.

Yes, it’s grim. But that’s the point. Regular elections and popular mandates might make democracy appear strong, but true democracy is revealed in its conduct – solving public problems and addressing the concerns and interests of ordinary citizens. To be clear, this isn’t a cheap shot at the democracies in place in these societies, or a suggestion that there’s a superior system to open, electoral contests for power. If anything, high turnout and waves of anti-incumbency in 2024 – across countless ballots – show just how fiercely people still believe in it.

The Democracy Perception Index, one of several surveys tracking how people view democracy, found in its 2024 poll that some 85 per cent of 63,000 respondents from 53 nations (including Singapore) viewed democracy as important, compared with 79 per cent in 2019 when the survey started.

And yet, paradoxically, even as voters line up at the polls, their faith in politicians and the system is crumbling.

Supply and demand factors

What’s behind this wobbling in the way democracy functions? To understand this, consider both “supply” and “demand” in electoral politics. Using the phraseology of Harvard University comparative politics professor Pippa Norris, much of the dysfunction comes from the “supply side” – how leaders and parties behave. Instead of mending disillusionment and restoring trust, many have deepened the divides.

Commentators have long noted that many leaders, buoyed by steady growth and easy credit, avoided tough economic decisions. That era is over, leaving today’s leaders to confront the problems their predecessors dodged.

Take Germany: Its fiscal shortfalls, energy security struggles, lenient emissions rules and pension woes all trace back to former chancellor Angela Merkel’s habit of deferring tough decisions – a tendency so pronounced it inspired the verb “Merkeln”. She leaned on a status quo that treated China as a reliable market and Russia as a steady energy supplier – until they weren’t. Now, Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces the fallout: a floundering electric vehicle sector, an ageing population, and an energy transition still in limbo. With elections looming, his centrist Social Democratic Party is squeezed by challengers on both the extreme left and right.

Not to single out Germany, but these supply-side political woes reflect a broader pattern plaguing many of the world’s oldest democracies. Short-termism appears everywhere: populist handouts and bloated social programmes that prove unsustainable, anti-immigration rhetoric that placates xenophobia but hobbles long-run growth, and tariffs slapped on foreign goods that might bolster short-term sentiment but sabotage long-term competitiveness. This pattern repeats across democracies. Mainstream parties – left, right or centre – keep chasing quick electoral gains while sacrificing enduring stability, leaving voters disillusioned and betrayed.

That anger clears the way for right-wing groups and other fresh faces who promise quick, easy answers. They tap into everyday worries – rising prices (blamed for 2024’s anti-incumbency wave), a shortage of homes, joblessness, and crime – invoking a simpler past when life seemed smoother. Desperate for solutions, people give them a chance. But tough problems don’t vanish just because someone claims they can fix them overnight. When these newcomers fail, disappointment runs even deeper. The cycle starts all over again, making it harder to have calm, sensible conversations about what to do next.

Still, blaming politicians alone is too easy. Democracy works both ways, and voters share responsibility.

Take France. Its recently sacked government tried to impose spending cuts and tax hikes to plug a huge deficit and mounting public debt. The far-left and far-right parties that oppose such measures ignored this economic reality but remain highly popular. This is despite an ageing population and rising security costs that will only strain public finances further. There’s little willingness to admit that budgets can’t be stretched indefinitely, or that someone eventually ends up footing the bill for generous social spending. The so-called chattering classes seldom draw attention to these uncomfortable truths.

As Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh noted in 2022, lamenting similar “demand side” issues in Britain, voters are rarely assigned any blame. In his words, “there is something messianic about the notion that, if voters err, it is because of goings-on among one’s class at the commanding heights of society”.

These financial pressures aren’t going away, and many voters remain unwilling to acknowledge the necessary trade-offs. The outcome is a vicious circle: more heated rhetoric, deeper extremes and fewer workable solutions.

No quick fixes

Is there a quick fix to this democratic malaise? Of course not. But in recent days, as commentators reflected on just how close South Korea came to losing its democracy, a number of old proposals have resurfaced.

For starters – without sounding corny – voters need to adopt a “what can I do for my country” mindset. If you don’t like what you see, do something about it.

Political scientists have warned for decades about declining participation in political parties. In Europe, for instance, party membership has fallen sharply.

Disillusionment with traditional parties is part of the problem, but that creates a self-perpetuating cycle. Parties stay dominated by the same elites who seem out of touch, while citizens stay on the sidelines, leaving a vacuum that opportunists easily fill.

Another remedy: Voters should make more informed, sensible choices, and not be swayed by comforting fantasies. Don’t get bribed by handouts your country can’t afford. Don’t join calls to throw out foreigners and imagine that this will not hurt your economy. Easy to say, yes, but it still needs saying. The antidote is to stay informed, think long term, and not fixate on single-issue politics.

As for the political elite – the “supply side” in these places where affairs are especially dysfunctional – they don’t need more lectures. They know democracy is in trouble, and they’ve said as much. But acknowledging the problem and actually doing something about it are two different things.

Whether they mean what they say about changing their ways is another question.

One thing is clear: Procedural democracy still stands strong, as evidenced by this vast “festival of democracy” in 2024.

But for democracy to hold its ground, the gap between what it promises and what it delivers can’t keep widening. Both voters and leaders, the “demand” and “supply” sides of politics, have a part to play – if they don’t step up, democracy risks becoming exactly what its fiercest critics say it is: a noble idea that never works out in real life.

bhavan@sph.com.sg