The importance of democracy is a truth many hold to be self-evident. Growing mistrust in the process raises questions over its legitimacy and affects the public’s willingness to engage. Yet without this engagement and belief, there is effectively no system.
These are a flavour of the thoughts from our recent Collective Wellbeing and Democracy Webinar with Sarah Davidson (CUK), Jo Swinson (P4NE) and Martha Mackenzie (CPF). This event discussed the findings and implications of our 2022 Spotlight on Democratic Wellbeing report, one year on from this research and polling .
Last year’s research revealed that 2 in 5 people in the UK (41%) believe that democracy is not working and people see the biggest current threat to our democracy as a loss of trust (32%), followed by corruption (16%). These trends and concerns are shared by the OECD’s work in this area: “Trust is the foundation upon which the legitimacy of democratic institutions rest”.
Reflecting on democratic wellbeing in 2023, our panellists said that controversies involving political leaders had done little to boost confidence in UK democracy. Being denied agency and an opportunity to engage in the process to elect democratic leadership of late was also cited as a possible reason for the erosion of our democratic wellbeing.
On the other hand, panellists took hope from expansion of the franchise in Wales, with 16 year olds being able to vote last year in Welsh elections for the first time.
Local engagement and the development of grassroot movements was seen as key to continued democratic accountability. The recent civic engagement brought about through vast and varied industrial action was said to be an example of this in action, with the hope that this could translate into increased democratic engagement.
Speaking as the newest member of Carnegie UK’s policy team, I have seen first-hand in my previous life working as a civil servant the importance of democratic engagement and the negative impact on policy when a lack of effort is made to engage the public and how this can perpetuate a feeling of ‘what’s the point?’ amongst the wider public. I have also seen the power of local engagement through community organising, seeing what trained support and enabling people to campaign on the issues as they see them can achieve, creating ripples of inspiration across groups and communities.
To improve from its current low base, democratic wellbeing will need significant activity resourced at a grassroots level, alongside the restoration of standards in public life and engaging with younger generations. Our ability to measure trust in our democratic institutions is key to this end. Our own work on Gross Domestic Wellbeing shows how limited current official measures of democratic wellbeing are. As with other areas of public life, what you measure is what gets done, and so we will continue to work over 2023 to bring more attention to both the measurement of democratic wellbeing and the ways to bring it back from the brink.