This long-read article was written by Joshua Inglesfield for the Northeastern University London essay competition, and received a finalist position.
Estimated read time of essay: 12 minutes
What would have to change about ‘democracy’ in order to restore faith in democracy among young people?
Young people – who I shall class as anyone aged 16-24 (taking the 18-24 grouping used by Parliament and extending it to include those who may be enfranchised in the future) – are the future of democracy, and thus it is critical that they have faith in its operation; lest we fall into the enclave of authoritarianism. An increasing number of protests worldwide and a surge in populism signals that youth are tired of democracy’s inefficiency. Populist success can be seen worldwide – from the historic city of Rome where you can find the newly elected far-right Fratelli d’Italia, to Orban in Budapest, across the Mediterranean to Syriza in Greece – the list goes on. Correlations drawn with figures showing that 55% of Italian youth no longer believe that democracy ‘is the best form of government’ – 7% higher than the average for European youth [1] – demonstrates that the rise of ‘Fratelli d’Italia’ is alongside a growing lack of faith in democracy. This is no coincidence and is happening across the globe. Thus, it is clear a solution is needed.
Direct democracy would appear to be the perfect solution to loss of faith in democracy among youth – the turnout for the 2016 Brexit referendum being 10% higher than that for the 2017 election among 18-24 year olds [2] is evidence enough that youth prefer a form of direct democracy. Not only would this give young people the impression that they could make a tangible difference, but it would also reduce this notion of ‘democratic disconnect’ [3] – the alienation of young people from democratic processes. Youth also have a lack of trust in governments – with such a process young people will be confident that governments will no longer be able to ‘sell’ policy decisions to the highest bidder through party donations to as great an extent. Further to this, Colin Crouch argues that; ‘democracy requires the formal mechanisms of citizen participation but also proof of genuine political agency’- which in the eyes of young people is not being fulfilled, seeing little ‘political agency’ (actual actions) taking place with regards to their concerns. Consequently, we can conclude that young people would, by Crouch’s argument, be seeing a failure and consequently be having a lack of faith in democracy, due to this perceived absence of ‘political agency’– a situation Crouch labels a ‘post-democracy’ [4]. Such an implementation would deal with the perceived lack of action alongside strengthening ‘citizen participation’ and so increase faith in democracy. But there is a significant drawback to this suggestion. Imagine you wake up to a notification on your phone – notice of the 2nd referendum this month. Before you can even consider the proposition you must go to work, cook dinner, and go to the supermarket. 349 minutes [5] – the average amount of ‘leisure time’ per day for Britons – is all you have left. 349 minutes dwarfed by the amount of time Public Bill Committees spend inspecting a bill, and certainly too little time to properly understand the subject of the referendum. This is the constraint of time. The average person simply does not have enough of it to consider the wider implications of their vote, nor how the policy enacted by the referendum might fit in with existing policy. Consequently, their voting behaviour will become a lottery, an impulse on the day rather than a considered vote. So, while direct democracy may seem inviting, once realised the population would find themselves confused, overwhelmed, and not able to make a decision to benefit even themselves. Thus, if this were to take place the number of referendums would have to be strictly limited, and be on larger, more straightforward questions such as capital punishment.
The voting age is a hotly disputed topic in British politics. For years groups such as the Electoral Reform Society [6] have campaigned for the voting age to be lowered to 16 – mentioning arguments such as increasing political participation for generations to come [7] – but few cite increasing faith in democracy as the primary argument. The Electoral Reform Society’s argument is a valid one – they argue that if you “don’t vote, you are less likely to vote in future” [8] – and that by enfranchising these new groups we could encourage greater lifelong participation. This would have the additional benefit of increasing faith in democracy, increasing involvement and again reducing a democratic disconnect to youth– with Dr Foa and Dr Mounk writing that in the UK young people are less likely to vote for the often-anti-democratic populists when ‘mobilised to vote’ [9] – which here would be enfranchising 16- and 17-year-olds. An additional argument for lowering the voting age being the solution to declining faith in democracy among young people is the idea that when youth are not directly involved in democracy, they lose faith in it [10]. This action would therefore seem to fulfil all criteria to increase faith in democracy among youth – but there is an obvious drawback – nothing has changed for the currently enfranchised youth. Such a change would therefore do nothing to deal with the current decline in faith in democracy among the ages 18-24, a dangerous risk given that these are the ages which are already propelling extreme populists to power in nations such as Greece. Far from ameliorating the situation, this would risk escalating it. The youth ignored by such a reform may feel further alienated and see another failure of democracy to criticise, one that risks pushing the democratic disconnect to an irretrievable state of separation between democracy and young people.
First Past The Post (FPTP) – a voting system which suppresses the votes of millions. That is, from a critic’s perspective – but the fact is that FPTP’s nature ensures that only two large parties can ever realistically hold government, a feature which while does produce strong majoritarian governments (usually – 2010 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition is a notable exception), results in smaller parties receiving almost no seats. But why is this a problem regarding faith in democracy? If we take the argument that the principal reason for loss of faith is not seeing action, would not FPTP be the obvious choice, empowering a strong government to take decisive action without being hindered by Parliamentary squabbles or half-baked coalitions? Those arguments certainly hold some water; however, the issue of representation must be raised. One of the issues young people are most concerned with is climate; so many may support the Green Party; but despite getting 2.7% of the vote share across the UK in the 2019 general election, they only received approximately 0.15% of seats available [11]. Thus, many young people who voted for a party that would pioneer their beliefs have been left unrepresented. This feeling of being unrepresented will likely lead to dissatisfaction and a lack of faith in democracy, as the problem lies in the very essence of democracy, the voting system. The clearest solution would be proportional representation – as used by 40 European nations [12]. Such a system would ensure that smaller parties pioneering the views of minorities or smaller groups such as young people are heard and would allow for greater political pressure to be applied for tangible action. Critics, however, would argue that it gives opportunity to potentially dangerous populist parties such as Syriza, or even extremist ones as seen with the rise of the Nazi party under proportional representation, portraying it as a vile breeding ground for hate. However, it is necessary to note that in modern democracy this is rarely the case to such an extent, with parties such as ‘Alternative for Germany’ [13] being kept out of government – in fact, it almost seems as if FPTP is the envy of populists at present, leading to Trumpism and pro-Brexit populist groups rising to power and succeeding [14]
To conclude, young people will need to see a change to the very structure of democracy to prevent further decline in faith in democracy – with it being imperative that these changes are not superficial PR stunts but tangible changes. What is needed is a two-fold implementation – With this in mind, I would suggest that what is necessary for the UK is the simpler change of increasing the number of referendums to involve youth to a greater extent in democracy, and the more structural change of shifting to proportional representation as a system to give the silenced minority parties a voice. These two implementations would allow for an increase in participation in democracy, which in turn would lead to an increase in faith in it as young people see their policy aspirations manifest into tangible change. Thus, as Aiden Correia writes; ‘democracy is about providing everyone with a voice. The youth are willing to talk; governments just need to start to listen’ [15] – through the measures outlined above we can fight the democratic apathy of young people before it spills over into antipathy.
[1] TUI Stiftung/YouGov. (2017). “Young Europe 2017: The Youth Study of the TUI Stiftung.” www.tui-stiftung.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/All-results-TUI-Stiftung_European-Youth.pdf .
[2] Stephan Mashford/89 Scotland. (2020). “Youth turnout – How does the UK compare to other European nations?” https://89initiative.com/youth-turnout-uk-europe/ .
[3] Foa, R.S., Klassen, A., Wenger, D., Rand, A. and M. Slade. (2020) “Youth and Satisfaction with Democracy: Reversing the Democratic Disconnect?” https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Youth_and_Satisfaction_with_Democracy-lite.pdf .
[4] C. Crouch. (2004). Post-Democracy. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Polity Press
[5] ONS. (2017). “Leisure time in the UK: 2015” https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/satelliteaccounts/articles/leisuretimeintheuk/2015 .
[6] Electoral Reform Society. (2017). “Background on Votes at 16” https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research/parliamentary-briefings/votes-at-16/ .
[7] Electoral Reform Society. (date not disclosed). “Votes at 16” https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/campaigns/votes-at-16/ .
[8] Electoral Reform Society. (date not disclosed). “Votes at 16” https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/campaigns/votes-at-16/ .
[9] R.S. Foa/Y. Mounk. (2019). “Youth and the populist wave” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0191453719872314 .
[10] A. Correia. (2021). “The necessity of youth support in sustaining democracy” https://diplomatmagazine.eu/2021/11/20/the-necessity-of-youth-support-in-sustaining-democracy/ .
[11] BBC News. (2019). “Election 2019 Results” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2019/results .
[12] M. Palese/Electoral Reform Society. (2018). “Which European countries use proportional representation?” https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/which-european-countries-use-proportional-representation/ .
[13] L. Drutman. (2022). “10 Ideas to Fix Democracy – Abolish Two-Party Systems” https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/07/10-ideas-fix-democracy/ .
[14] L. Drutman. (2022). “10 Ideas to Fix Democracy – Abolish Two-Party Systems” https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/07/10-ideas-fix-democracy/ .
[15] A. Correia. (2021). “The necessity of youth support in sustaining democracy” https://diplomatmagazine.eu/2021/11/20/the-necessity-of-youth-support-in-sustaining-democracy/ .
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