{"id":51067,"date":"2020-02-10T07:04:53","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T12:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51067"},"modified":"2020-02-10T07:04:57","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T12:04:57","slug":"dissatisfaction-with-democracy-reaches-all-time-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=51067","title":{"rendered":"Dissatisfaction with democracy reaches all-time high"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dissatisfaction with democracy reaches all-time high<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Dissatisfaction<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A new report<\/a>\u00a0by the recently established\u00a0Centre for the Future of Democracy<\/a>\u00a0at the University of Cambridge has found that dissatisfaction with democracy has reached an all-time global high. Westminster-style democracies (the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US) typically fare particularly badly in terms of democratic faith, with the proportion of citizens dissatisfied with the performance of their democracy doubling since the 1990s. In the UK, this proportion increased by around a fifth since then.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The global financial and economic crisis and growing within-country regional inequality are of course important factors behind decreasing satisfaction with democracy. But the Centre\u2019s report also suggests that \u2018satisfaction with democracy is lower in majoritarian \u201cwinner-takes-all\u201d systems than in consensus-based, proportionally representative democracies<\/em>\u2019. The antagonistic and adversarial mentality inherent in the outdated First Past the Post voting system found in majoritarian, Westminster-style democracies contributes to polarisation and tribalism, making citizens less willing to compromise and to accept the mandate of rival political parties or viewpoints. By contrast, New Zealand is the only Westminster-style democracy to have avoided the trend of ever-increasing public discontent, likely as a result of having introduced a fairer voting system<\/a> in the 1990s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These findings highlight the perilous state of our democracy, with ever-deepening citizen dissatisfaction and disengagement<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These findings highlight the perilous state of our democracy, with ever-deepening citizen dissatisfaction and disengagement, but sadly they do not come as a surprise.\u00a0Edelman\u2019s annual trust barometer<\/a>\u00a0found that trust in institutions is the lowest it\u2019s ever been in the UK \u2013 we\u2019re penultimate in their league table of trust, just one spot ahead of Russia. Similarly, a\u00a0BMG poll<\/a>\u00a0for the ERS in December 2019 found that 85 per cent of people thought democracy could be improved \u2018quite a lot\u2019 or \u2018a great deal\u2019, with 80 per cent of people feeling they have \u2018not very much\u2019 or \u2018no influence\u2019 over decision-making. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dissatisfaction with democracy reaches all-time high A new report\u00a0by the recently established\u00a0Centre for the Future of Democracy\u00a0at the University of Cambridge has found that dissatisfaction with democracy has reached an all-time global high. Westminster-style democracies (the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US) typically fare particularly badly in terms of democratic faith, with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[204,28996,425,28995,28997,20389],"class_list":["post-51067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-democracy","tag-dissatisfaction","tag-inequality","tag-michela-palese","tag-polarisation","tag-true-publica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51067"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51068,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51067\/revisions\/51068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}