Record number of countries will go to elections at a time when young populations’ trust on democracy is waning
Many elderly voters prefer to vote for 'strongmen' according to an assessment by Freedom House. Photo: iStock The year 2024 belongs to the electorates of the world. One can say, it is the chunav mahakumbh year. Some 40 countries (including India and the US) — accounting for 3.2 billion people and a combined GDP of $44.2 trillion — will hold national elections. If one includes elections to county (state in India) and local bodies, some 76 countries will be holding elections. Or, every second person in the world will experience an election. Various election-watch agencies say never before have so many people voted in a single year.
It is also the time of “polycrisis”, broadly defined as “the simultaneous occurrence of several catastrophic events”. Climate emergency threatens every country and every citizen. Environmental degradation and mass extinction have disabled nature in serving us; the world economy is limping as poverty and hunger rise after decades of progress.
Most of these countries are also crawling out of pandemic-ravaged landscapes, with reduced economic capacity. Besides this existential crisis, the world is hosting many wars, and interconnected global systems are collapsing.
Countries are also experiencing sharp polarisation in their societies — around multiple poles. This is at a time when world demography is the youngest ever. In a way, 2024 is a critical juncture when people’s power will be put to test on its democratic affiliation.
If elections are a consent-seeking first step in a democracy, how will the world react / vote amid such a time in our lives? Will crises like climate change, the pandemic and the rise of poverty and hunger dictate our electoral decisions? Or, the polarised voters would just not make these crises as their agenda, and vote according to ideological affiliation? If voters behave the latter way, what purpose do elected governments serve? As we progress, we will have a country-wise assessment of the respective election and its messages.
But there is another context that these elections have to be studied: the acceptability and utility of democracy itself. Certainly, democracy is still preferred as the 50 years of the “Freedom in the World” assessment conducted by the Freedom House indicate.
According to its latest assessment, in 1973 — when the first such survey was conducted — only 44 of 148 countries were classified as “Free”. Currently, the number stands at 84 (out of 195 countries)”.
A 2023 survey by the Open Society Foundations titled “Open Society Barometer”, found that “on average, 86 per cent of respondents want to live in a democratic state.”
The survey said “people still believe in its (democracy) potential for generating solutions to common challenges.” In the survey, the “common challenges” included “imperatives” like building schools and hospitals, protecting the environment, and reducing crime.
But, this survey found another worrying trend that indicates a waning trust on democracy, or elected governments. The survey found that over one-fourth of respondents aged 56 and above supported “strong” leaders who “does away with assemblies and elections.”
Among the young respondents, a significant percentage has a similar opinion. “In 36-55 age groups, the figure was 32 per cent and among those aged 18-35, it was 35 per cent,” found the survey.
On the question whether they prefer democracy to any other form of government, the answers were equally worrying. Nearly 71 per cent of respondents in the age groups of 56 years and above preferred democracy while only 57 per cent of respondents groups under the age of 36 preferred democracy to other forms.
The survey concluded, “Perhaps that should not surprise us. Today’s young people have grown up and been politicized as the age of polycrisis has emerged, during which forms of climate, economic, technological, and geopolitical turmoil have grown and reinforced each other to a degree never seen before. So, although most people globally still have faith in democracy that faith is running on fumes. And these findings suggest that it may be set to weaken with each generation.”
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