The Economist - USA (2020-08-22)

Sources:WorldValuesSurvey;EuropeanValuesSurvey;V-DemInstitute,UniversityofGothenburg;TheEconomist

*Selectionofcountriesvariesbetweenyears †Basedona statisticalmodel,holdingothervariablesconstant

Strengthofcountry’sdemocracyv shareagreeingwithstatement,%

Frompollsin1995-98and2017-20*

Probabilitythatsomeone†supportsa strongman

In1995-98and2017-20,bydemography,%

→Enthusiasmfordespotshassurgedinpartialdemocracies,butnotinfullones

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

Strengthofdemocracy ←Weaker Strengthofdemocracy Stronger→ Strengthofdemocracy

80 %

60

40

20

0

Thailand

UnitedStates

Iraq China

Russia

Bangladesh

Philippines

Belarus

Mexico

Hungary New

Zealand

SouthKorea

“Havinga democraticpoliticalsystemisbad” “Havingthearmyruleisgood”

“Havinga strongleaderwhodoesnothaveto

botherwithparliamentandelectionsisgood”

1998 2020

↓Fewpeopleclaimed

thatdemocracyisbad,

in1995-98or2017-20

Primary

Secondary

Postgrad

Education 20 40 60

Farleft

Moderate

Farright

Politics 20 40 60%

Strongdemocracies Weakdemocracies

20

40

60

Age 20 40 60

Theincreaseinsupporthasbeen

muchgreaterinweakdemocracies

1998 2020

TheEconomistAugust 22nd 2020 73

I

s democracy onthe rise or in decline?

Proponents of either claim could find

supporting evidence in this week’s head-

lines. In Belarus and Thailand protesters

are trying to topple draconian regimes.

Meanwhile, the leader of the free world

wants to restrict postal voting and China is

rounding up dissidents in Hong Kong.

Looking across the globe, however, aca-

demics generally agree that democracy is

in a slump. One much-watched barometer

is the World Values Survey (wvs), a poll

published twice a decade. We combined its

data with those from the European Values

Survey to study trends in 98 countries from

1995 to 2020. Our analysis found that sup-

port for autocrats has indeed grown in

most parts of the world, but this effect is

weakest in healthy democracies, despite

their recent flirtations with populism.

Since 1995 the wvshas asked people to

rate several types of government as good or

bad for their country. Among the options

are “having a democratic political system”,

“having the army rule” and “having a

strong leader who does not have to bother

with parliament and elections”. In the lat-

est wave, only about a tenth of respondents

were willing to describe democracy as a

bad thing. However, nearly a quarter of

them said that having the military in

charge is a good thing, and more than two-

fifths were in favour of strongmen who

would ignore the outcomes of elections.

When analysing changes in these senti-

ments, we compared them with countries’

actual levels of political freedom, as mea-

sured by the University of Gothenburg. On

average, we found a big increase in support

for despots in flawed democracies, but lit-

tle change in places with lots of political

freedom. For example, Mexico’s approval

for a strongman leader has surged from

39% to 70% over the past two decades,

whereas New Zealand’s ebbed from 17% to

15%. Contrary to widespread fears about

the death of democracy in the West, the

share of people who think it is a bad system

has fallen in the past decade in ten of the 15

most wealthy and free countries.

Using the wvs’s individual-level data,

we built statistical models which predict

the attitudes of a hypothetical person in a

given country and year. We estimated the

opinions of a 40-year-old person with mid-

dling education, ideology and income, to

test the impact of a change in a single char-

acteristic on their overall beliefs.

In highly democratic countries, our

model thinks the probability that such a

middling person would favour a strong-

man rose from 29% to 33% between 1998

and 2020. And in countries with unhealthy

democracies, the increase for such a mid-

dling person has been far greater, rising

from 44% to 62%. The growth has been par-

ticularly high in Latin America, South-East

Asia and former Soviet states.

Like previous analysts of the wvs, we

found that young people tend to be the

most susceptible to autocratic preferences.

Right-wing and less-educated people also

lean that way. But in countries where en-

thusiasm for despots is rising strongly, the

growth seems to be similar across demo-

graphic groups. Whatever is driving people

towards strongmen is affecting entire

countries, not just cohorts within them. 7

Free countries and fettered ones have

diverged in their attitudes to autocracy

Drifting apart

Graphic detailAuthoritarianism