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Democracy In Crisis?

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In recent months, there has been a chorus of concern about the health of democracy in the United States and around the globe. Yascha Mounk’s book The People vs. Democracy and Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die are recent entries in a substantial literature on the “crisis.” Pollsters’ findings have been an important part of the discussion of democracy’s health. Recently, Democratic pollsters Jeremy Rosner and Brian Paler wrote about findings from a new bipartisan poll, arguing that our democracy “may be heading toward a cliff.”

Harvard professor Mounk’s book includes troubling public opinion findings about declining support for democracy in the US, particularly among millennials. Others, using the same World Values Survey data that Mounk uses, reach different conclusions. Erik Voeten of Georgetown University, responding to a 2016 article by Mounk, argues, that “trends in overall support for democracy and non-democratic alternatives have been flat for the past two decades,” and that “there is no threat to consolidated democracies” such as the United States.

Recent polls underscore the public’s broad concerns. An October 2017 survey by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland found “an erosion of pride in the way democracy works.” In the poll, 63 percent were proud of the way democracy works in America. When the identical question was first asked in 1996 in NORC’s General Social Survey, 79 percent were proud. In April this year, the Pew Research Center found that Americans generally agree on democratic ideals and values, but that the country is “falling well short in living up to these ideals.” In Pew’s report, 58 percent said that democracy was working well, although only 18 percent said it was working very well. The 2018 survey about which Rosner and Paler wrote was a bipartisan effort, conducted jointly by their Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner with Whit Ayres’ Republican polling firm North Star Opinion Research for the Democracy Project, a join initiative of Freedom House, the George W. Bush Institute, and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. In the Democracy Project poll, a clear majority felt that US democracy was getting weaker.

It is important to be clear about what the public is saying. Rosner and Paler put it well when they wrote “[a]lthough there has been no fall-off in recent years in the public’s overwhelming support for the idea of democracy, the level of dissatisfaction with our democracy’s performance is alarming.” In the Democracy Project survey, 84 percent put themselves at points 6–10 on a 10-point scale where 10 indicated that it is “absolutely important” to them to live in a country that is governed democratically. In the poll, however, less than half, 48 percent, were satisfied with the way democracy was working in this country.

In a 2017 poll, Pew found that a substantial 86 percent agreed that “a democratic system where representatives elected by citizens decide what becomes law” is a good way of governing a country. But in the same survey, far fewer, 46 percent, were satisfied with the way democracy was working in the United States.

Rosner and Paler note that the democratic ills people talked about in their focus groups “almost entirely pre-date President Trump,” and other polls confirm that observation. Many pollsters’ questions show that Americans are deeply concerned about intense partisan polarization, a lack of bipartisan cooperation, a civility deficit, the role of money in our politics, outside interference in our elections, media bias, and low citizen participation. Many people believe Trump’s rhetoric and actions have exacerbated divisions and weakened our democracy’s health.

The concerns identified by the public and the pollsters are real, but Americans aren’t turning away from democracy as a system of government. Instead, they have growing concerns with the way our democratic government is working in practice and with the ways individuals, groups, and institutions are performing. The “crisis” rhetoric many are using is designed to get headlines. It does little to address the actual anxieties people have.