Losing Faith

In my last post, I discussed Americans’ decreasing faith in democracy, not just “our government,” not just “our democracy,” but also democracy in general.  While these three kinds of loss of faith are obviously related, they are different from one another. 

• If I lack faith in this government, I work within the democratic system to change the government from, say, liberal to conservative.
• If I lack faith in our democracy, I look for ways, perhaps outside of government but still within democratic norms, to change it—eg. the civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter, or the students against gun violence.  I’m fundamentally trying to change how our democracy works—by overturning the power of money in government or making democracy more inclusive—but I’m still trying to create within democracy a more democratic government.
• But if I lack faith in democracy in general, I have to find something to replace it with.  Until recently, most Americans might have agreed with Churchill’s reflection that “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried….”  But that agreement is changing. While I haven’t heard anyone propose serious alternatives, we may slide into them unnoticed if we lose faith in democracy.    

The first two kinds of distrust can strengthen democracy, as people seek to correct problems.  At some point, however, if the attempts at correction are unsuccessful, people can turn toward distrust for democracy in general.  And that is dangerous, for what is there to replace it with?  I don’t know and don’t believe there is there is a better system than some form of democracy.  All other forms of government devolve toward either authoritarianism or chaos.

With over three quarters of young people reporting that living in a democracy is “not essential,” we’re at a major crossroads as a country.

What has led us to this point?

Perhaps the most significant change from, say, sixty years ago is that most citizens don’t believe that government is receptive to their needs.  According to several studies, they’re absolutely right.  Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, for instance, studied the American government’s policy on 1779 political issues and compared the influence of the strongly-held positions of four groups:

     1. “average Americans,”

     2. the “wealthy elite,”     
     3. interest groups generally representing the views of elites (such as or the the Business Roundtable or Chambers of Commerce), and 
     4. interest groups generally representing the views of broad swaths of people such as AARP or unions.

They then performed a sophisticated statistical evaluation, comparing the influence of the four groups.

When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

In other words, average Americans have their views represented in policy only if their opinions correspond to the opinions of either wealthy elites or interest groups.  And since interest groups for large, broad-based groups of people have only minimal impact on policy, it’s the elites and their interest groups that determine policy.  (This is a disturbing conclusion, causing a great deal of controversy both in affirmation and in rebuttal ).

A second reason for Americans’ loss of faith in democracy is that the average American is no longer doing very well economically.  In the post-war period until 1979, the increasing productivity of the US economy was widely shared among all economic groups.  Since 1979, however, almost all of the gains in productivity have gone to the wealthy.  So there are almost two generations since then who have seen no economic progress for themselves or hope for their children.  Historically, this is a major cause of revolution of deep change (such as, to take an extreme example, the acceptance of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany).

A third reason is the decreasing homogeneity of the population.  A great deal of research has investigated democracy in a multi-ethnic countries.  At the very least, you can conclude that truly multi-ethic nations, ie without a single dominant majority, have a very difficult time navigating ethnic tensions.  In 1950, 90% of Americans were white.  Today the figure is about 60%. By 2044, whites will be less than 50% of the population.  Although new immigrants are not the primary reason for this change (even President Trump’s most drastic scale-back of immigration would postpone that date by only 1-5 years).  As we saw during the 2016 election, however, fear of other ethnic groups can be a powerful motivator.  If one perceives that one is losing power to a minority group, faith in democracy can nosedive.

Finally, the extreme partisanship of today’s politics tends to demonize the “other side.”  If the other side is demonic, then communication, discussion and compromise are betrayals of “our side.”  And since communication, discussion and compromise are the rock upon which democracy stands, how is one to have faith in it?  People may not consciously acknowledge their own drift toward partisanship but if the “other side’s” partisan influence seems too scary, then we retreat into our own  tribes, too.

None of these conditions is likely to change, at least not in the medium future.  We are left with a society with dangerously low faith in democracy whose remaining faith is under profound attack.