Democracy Erodes From the Top by Larry M. Bartels;

Author:Larry M. Bartels;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2022-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Summary

In the midst of the Euro-crisis, many observers expressed concern that economic disaffection and the politics of austerity would corrode public confidence not only in incumbent leaders, but also in political institutions and democracy itself. Political scientist Armin Schäfer, for example, worried, “As the financial crisis puts strains on national budgets, the dissatisfaction with the way democracy works is likely to be exacerbated.… Even worse is that income inequality will increase as austerity measures begin to work—and citizens’ faith in democratic politics is likely to erode further as a result.”43

In one sense, these concerns proved to be well-founded. Public trust in politicians and parliaments, assessments of national governments, and satisfaction with the way democracy works all declined in times and places where economic disaffection increased. However, the political frustrations stemming from Europe’s economic crisis were, for the most part, modest in magnitude and of short duration. As we have seen, Europeans overall were just as trusting of politicians and parliaments, just as satisfied with the performance of their national governments, and just as sanguine about the working of democracy after the Euro-crisis as they had been before.

Nor is there any evidence here of Foa and Mounk’s “significant generational reversal” in attitudes toward the political system. Europeans born after World War II have generally expressed somewhat lower levels of satisfaction with democracy than earlier cohorts. However, the only perceptible decline in satisfaction with democracy (and other indicators show similar patterns) in the wake of the Euro-crisis was among people born in the late 1980s and early 1990s—the youngest cohort in the pre-crisis surveys. That decline merely brought their views into line with those of people born in the preceding five decades, which rebounded virtually completely after the Euro-crisis. If anything, there has been a very slight increase in satisfaction with democracy among younger cohorts compared to their elders. Meanwhile, people too young to have been included in the pre-crisis surveys expressed even more satisfaction with democracy in 2014–2019 than their predecessors had at the same age. Whether they, too, will fall into line with previous cohorts as they become older remains to be seen; but even if they do, the result will hardly represent a crisis for European democracy.44

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