At the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh in 2023, I heard a government minister from an autocratic nation explain the pitfalls of democracy in an unstable world. “Democracy is great,” he said with a wry grin, “but in America every four years you are dealing with a completely different group of people, with different values and priorities.” Two and a half years later, with the US (and the world) in an even more chaotic state than it was then, it’s not difficult to see how his anti-democratic view could seem vindicated.
Given the enfilade of apparently intractable problems arrayed against democratic leaders, you could imagine that many of them would prefer not to have to deal with a restive electorate or rancorous parliament. In the UK this week, prime minister Keir Starmer is once more facing calls to resign over his appointment of the now-disgraced Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. This is the latest in a series of crises that have plagued his premiership.
As UK voters tire of the never-ending political drama, commentators debate whether or not the country has become ungovernable. Of some comfort to the prime minister is the fact that he is not alone – the politics of many wealthy democracies seem more unstable now than they have been in living memory. On the streets of London, Paris and New York, people block out the sounds of their fellow citizens by plugging in to a favoured political podcast, whose producers profit by amping up the din. If, like me, your day is filled with such commentary, it’s easy to feel subsumed in the mire.
Inside and outside the podcast studios, there is a widespread belief that politicians seem incapable of tackling the issues that matter most to voters. Their ineptitude combined with our dissatisfaction does sound like rather a good recipe for ungovernability and might be why some polls have found a growing fondness for aspects of autocracy. So, is the problem that we are cursed with an exceptionally poor batch of leaders, that our standards are too high or simply that we have the wrong system of government? Well, a little bit of all three, compounded by the impact of technology.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that the most maddening and, therefore, dangerous thing about the internet is that it gives us the illusion of omniscience. Since all worldly information is seemingly at the tips of our fingers, then the solutions to all worldly ills must be too. And politicians, being ultimately the same as all the rest of us, believe this too. Their consequent infighting increases pressure on governments, which feeds into our sense of permacrisis. On top of this is another factor, particularly acute in the UK, that many of our present woes are rooted in economics that are inextricably tied to events happening elsewhere in the world and over which our leaders have little, if any, influence.
So does this mean that our cacophonous disquiet is the result of too much technology mixed with democracy and that Keir Starmer is actually a good prime minister? No. The truth is that there aren’t simple or even definitive answers to many of the complex challenges facing modern societies. But if any country can ultimately deal with them (by no means a certainty), then it will be one that is capable of adaptation through reform, in which simple but crude solutions are not clamoured for and debate is free and open – ie, a democracy.
Alexis Self is Monocle’s foreign editor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
