Name: Himanshu Mahor

Roll no. : IIGLIRD207574

Final Assignment
Topic: The future of Democracy:
New Age Threats to Democratic
Systems
Introduction:
The world is changing faster than ever, and it is unclear whether modern democracy will be
able to keep up with the changes. To quote A.J.P. Taylor, ‘nothing is inevitable, until it
happens’, and predicting democracy’s future is no exception. In a world where the IT
revolution is having profound effects on the economy, society and politics, positive and
negative, where inequality in the developed world is on the rise, but where millions in the
developing world are rising out of poverty, where Islamic fundamentalism appears on the rise
in the Islamic world, but where in other regions there is also an increase in a non-ideological,
secular approach, and where over half the world’s population is urban, it is hard to say what
opportunities democracy will have, what threats there are to it, and whether its response will
be effective. Will the connection between freedom and equality hold, or will it be broken – or
will their relationship change under the pressure of new circumstance? Will democracy as we
know it – a hybrid of government by elected officials, a free market economy and the rule of
law – nevertheless survive in recognisable form?
Ours is an era of democratic gloom. For some years now, a growing array of scholars and
pundits have discerned a worldwide democratic recession. Democracy and especially its
liberal principles are said to be fast receding as various forms of authoritarianism surge. The
world’s most potent autocracies, most notably China and Russia, are proving resourceful and
resilient. These empirical claims are hard to dispute. Yet the swelling mood of pessimism
about democracy’s future is unwarranted. Particularly suspect is the recently propagated
“deconsolidation thesis,” which claims that public support for democracy is crumbling across
most of the world and especially among the young. In truth, the long-term future for
democracy in the world is much brighter than most imagine. In essence, “modernization
theory” is proving correct. Economic development brings expanding levels of education,
information, travel, and other experiences that enhance human knowledge, awareness, and
intelligence. This “cognitive mobilisation” inspires and empowers people to act with purpose
and think for themselves, rather than accept received authority and wisdom. In other words,
development brings value change that is highly conducive to the emergence and persistence
of liberal democracy.

Possible Challenges To Democracy

1) Rampant polarisation
While some partisan polarisation is healthy for democracy, one of the key drivers of
democratic decay in new and established democracies is intense polarisation, where political
opponents begin to regard each other as existential enemies, allowing incumbents to justify
abuses of democratic norms to restrain the opposition, and encouraging the opposition to use
“any means necessary” to (re)gain power. If citizens remain loyal to a political party even if it
violates key democratic norms, political polarisation represents a genuine threat to
functioning of democratic accountability. A key question for students of democratisation and
democratic erosion is how such intense partisan polarisation can be overcome. Many students
of advanced and developing democracies have highlighted institutional reforms (e.g.,
electoral reforms, reforms to systems of candidate selection), but others have highlighted the
importance of deeper social, economic, and even the need to rebuild democratic norms.

2) Immigration and the challenge of sustaining multiethnic democracies

The challenge of sustaining multiethnic democracies is one of the most significant challenges
facing democracies of all types today. The politics of redistribution has also been notoriously
complicated by ethnic diversity, but the growing ethnic diversity of both new and old
democracies, driven in part by immigration, have generated different forms of right-wing
populist backlash and has exacerbated political polarisation. This poses dilemmas for parties
of the right and left. For parties of the right, there are temptations to exploit issues of cultural
diversity to gain power, which also may lead to restrictions and unequal representation of
ethnic minorities, diminishing the quality of democracy. For parties of the left, this same
politics has stimulated much discussion in recent years of whether the welfare state is
compatible with ethnic diversity. In fact, many on the left have argued that the left needs to
reopen debates about immigration in order to diminish the appeals of the populist right. Our
central focus in this strand of our work is to use cross-national experiences to focus on
challenges and innovative ways that multiethnic democracies can be sustained in the face of a
dangerous populist-fueled polarization.

3) Globalisation, economic inequality, and democratic discontent

A third major theme is the threat economic inequality, often driven by global economic
forces, poses to the survival and viability of democracy. We explore the pernicious and
indirect ways in which unequal economic resources diminishes the quality of democracy,
through voting, institutional design, campaign spending, and media. We examine how shifts
in the global economy may have accelerated this. Additionally, we explore whether and how
slowed economic growth over the past forty years in advanced democracies have generated
new antidemocratic populist backlash at the level of mass opinion and political party
development. We track the economic roots of democratic discontent across new and old
democracies.

4) The causes of populism and its consequences for democracy

In the past several years, there has been renewed attention to the upsurge of populist parties
and movements from Latin America and North America to western and eastern Europe. The
ambiguous relationship of populism to democracy is a difficult and important topic of
research. Many populist outsiders come to power speaking on behalf of “the people” but
often doing so in ways that seem to challenge basic norms of liberal democracy. We interface
and work collaboratively with existing groups on campus but with a focus on the
consequences of populist parties and movements on democracy and de-democratization. How
can demagogues be kept out of power? What are the best institutional and organisational
responses to groups and parties that use the language of democracy to undermine democracy?

5) Debates over institutional solutions

Another set of debates regards whether institutional reforms can provide solutions to some of
the problems afflicting established democracies. Many Western democracies maintain
constitutions, electoral systems, and other democratic institutions whose origins lie in the
early twentieth, nineteenth, and even eighteenth centuries. The age of these institutions is
often a point of pride for many citizens (think of Americans’ attachment to their constitution
and even dysfunctional institutions like the Electoral College). But existing institutions may
be ill-suited for the challenges facing contemporary democracies. Thus, we bring together
constitutional scholars and students of electoral and other institutions to examine institutional
innovations aimed at improving the quality of established democracies. These include
electoral reforms (e.g., debates over ranked preference voting systems), participatory
institutions (participatory budgeting), the use of referenda and other forms of direct
democracy, and institutional reforms aimed at enhancing – or restricting – intra-party
democracy. Many of these innovations emerged out of new democracies in Latin America
and elsewhere and are only recently being debated in established democracies.
6) Democracy and the new media
New technology is already having far-reaching effects on another vital aspect of democracy:
freedom of speech and the free media. In many respects information technology and the
Internet have enabled an explosion of free speech and have been instrumental in
democratization. The liberating effect of citizens being able to participate in discussions and
co-ordinate action not only on a national but also transnational and global level is
incalculable. The Internet has been a boon for our ‘monitory democracy’, where NGOs and
almost spontaneously formed pressure groups can keep a critical eye on power. Yet there is
also a danger in this flood of information: the lack of gate-keepers means that we no longer
have an institutional adjudication of what is true or just politicized slur. Before,
‘newspapersof- record’ or broadcast news could be relied on to tell us something close to
objective truth. We could obtain well-founded opinion from the ‘op-ed’ pages of newspapers.
The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph had their respective ideological preferences, but both
were within the same, respectable political universe. In the chaotic, open world of today’s
Web, there is not the same reliability, yet the dependable organs of public opinion, the major
newspapers and broadcast stations, are being increasingly undermined by this same virtual
world, when they are not being suborned by their corporate paymasters. If we lose these
anchors of the public forum, as is quite possible given market trends, the danger is that
‘public opinion’ will be open to manipulation of rumour and hearsay because of too much
information, rather than too little.

Yet it is also possible that the Internet will become more reliable and less open to abuse,
either due to cannier consumers, self-regulation or regulation by democratically elected
governments, domestically and transnationally. The Internet is not independent of private or
public institutions – just as with the world financial system, it would not exist without
innumerable technical conventions and rules, and there are already signs of how access can
be controlled and supervised, if necessary. The trick is to make sure such control, domestic
and global, is democratic and liberal, not that of an authoritarian power such as China, or –
Edward Snowden and Julian Assange’s wish for asylum notwithstanding – enemies of the
free media such as Venezuela and Ecuador.

Conclusion
Needless to say that democracy is a philosophy that has to be put into practice with certain
degrees of variations in different parts of the world, without western democracies. It does still
suffer from many ills, which are likely to linger for some time before they are completely
removed. The greatest ill of our democracy is that a large number of people in India
(approximately 70 per cent) are illiterate. They do not properly understand the functioning of
democratic institutions. They are unaware of the great value of their votes. These ignorant
and illiterate people are easily swayed by cheap propaganda, empty slogans and attractive
promises. Shrewd and unscrupulous politicians misguide them with tall talk and exploit their
ignorance for their selfish objectives.
Another significant evil in our democracy is that the people have not been able to overcome
the feelings of caste-ism, communalism and regionalism. During elections narrow caste
considerations are aroused and exploited by unscrupulous politicians. Thus the behaviour of a
large number of electors is largely influenced by such dirty propaganda. Communal feelings
and considerations play an important role in the selection of the candidates in various
constituencies. Sometimes, its seen that the leaders themselves fan the communal feelings in
constituencies where such a step materially affects their election prospects. Regionalism in
another major factor in deciding the fate of candidates in the elections. The politicians are
fully aware of these weaknesses of the people and take maximum advantage of them as the
circumstances demand. Another bane of our democracy is the influence of big money in the
elections. Elections are very costly affairs. The political parties and
individual candidates as well, spend large sums.