Matthew C. MacWilliams is a global public opinion strategist at Foundation International Communications Hub (Comms Hub).
In Europe, democracy is conceived of as a fundamental value that enjoys broad, unwavering public support across the Continent. As such, the far-right wave predicted to make landfall during next month’s European election is seen as no more than a transitory political phenomena. Surely, European democracy will persist and persevere over time.
But this fairy-tale ending, the story of the inevitability of democracy in Europe, is as comforting as it is dead wrong.
Data from numerous surveys show that consistent support for democracy across Europe is already quite low. And if demography is destiny, it looks like public support for democracy will continue to fall, with Europe possibly reaching an inflection point where nondemocratic forms of government not only take root but flourish.
How do we know this?
According to the Open Society Foundation’s 2023 global poll, which Comms Hub advised on and analyzed in Europe, only 38 percent of Germans aged 18 and up are consistent supporters of democracy. In France, the number stands at a paltry 27 percent, while Italy and Poland clock in at less than 45 percent.
To be tagged as an inconsistent supporter of democracy, those polled had to answer one or more of five questions in a way that challenged or opposed democratic norms. A respondent may have agreed that a strong leader who ignores election results and the legal authority of parliament is acceptable, or that a nondemocratic government is preferable to democracy. They may have answered that democracy is a bad way of governing their nation, or that military rule would be a good way to do so. Theoretically, the more questions a person answered inconsistently, the less supportive they were of democracy.
Crucially, this lack of support measured in France, Germany, Italy and Poland in 2023 isn’t a statistical anomaly. In 2022, surveys we conducted in nine countries for European Movement International also found that such support ranged from a low of 22 percent (in Romania) to a high of 48 percent (in Finland). And in seven of these nine countries — in Greece, Italy, Germany, Estonia, Poland, Romania and Hungary — consistent support for democracy came in at 45 percent or less.
Moreover, while this lack of support for what’s described as a fundamental European value is shocking, it isn’t the most concerning finding unearthed by our research. Most of our surveys — all four we conducted in 2023 and seven out of the nine polls we conducted in 2022 — found younger Europeans to be much less likely to consistently support democracy than their parents and grandparents.
For example, in Germany, just 21 percent of Gen Z and millennials said they consistently support democracy compared to 66 percent of those aged 70 and up. In Poland, meanwhile, only around one quarter of 18 to 29-year-olds showed consistent support for democracy — which is 17 percentage points below the national average. The same was true in France at only 14 percent, and even in Italy at 34 percent, with older Italians nearly twice as likely to support democracy.
This is an emergency that, if left unchecked and uncorrected, portends a dangerous future for the Continent. Because as these younger Europeans age and succeed older citizens in society — a process we call “demographic succession” — core support for democracy across Europe will inevitably fall even lower. The result? An increasingly fertile social ecosystem for democratic decline and, quite possibly, collapse.
This process of demographic succession is nothing less than a time bomb ticking away, right at the heart of European democracy.
Now, it’s of course possible that as these younger Europeans age, they’ll grow more supportive of democracy. But with political polarization at a zenith and trust in European institutions at a nadir, how likely is that possibility really? And what about Gen Alpha? How likely are these children to grow into more consistent supporters of democracy than today’s 18 to 29-year-olds?
The reality is demographic succession is just a hypothesis for now. The ticking time bomb it could produce, however, is not. It’s a simple insight concluding that the farther the consistent base of support for democracy falls in Europe, the likelier it is to be further hollowed out by demagogues and authoritarians, seeking power unconstrained by democratic rules and norms.
Demography need not be destiny, but without a greater understanding of the problem, democratic decline is a very probable outcome. The question is, what can be done to bolster support for democracy among Europe’s youth before it’s too late?
The post Demography: The ticking time bomb threatening Europe’s democracy appeared first on Politico.
