1 December 2016

Quartz: Harvard research suggests that an entire global generation has lost faith in democracy

People everywhere are down on democracy. Especially young people. In fact, so rampant is democratic indifference and disengagement among millennials that a shocking share of them are open to trying something new—like, say, government by military coup.

That’s according to research by Yascha Mounk, a Harvard University researcher, and Roberto Stefan Foa, a political scientist at the University of Melbourne. The remit of their study, which the Journal of Democracy will publish in January, analyzes historical data on attitudes toward government that spans various generations in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. They find that, across the board, citizens of stable liberal democracies have grown jaded about their government, say Mounk and Foa—and worse. [...]

Not really. For instance, in 1995, only 16% of American youngsters—those in their late teens and early 20s—thought democracy was a “bad” political system for their nation. In 2011, nearly a quarter of millennials did. Though the increase among European youth was less marked, it was still significant, say the researchers.

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