Sociology: Western youth are becoming disillusioned with democracy
In Western countries, dissatisfaction with the current socio-political order of things in the world is growing.
David Bach, professor of strategy and political economy at the Swiss business school IMD, writes about this in an article published by the Kyiv magazine Novoye Vremya, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“Voters in Western democracies also increasingly distrust globalization. Spurred by growing economic inequality, majorities in 28 leading countries told research firm Edelman in 2017 that “globalization is taking us in the wrong direction.”
Alarmingly, in 2019, Edelman found that only 18% of respondents in developed countries said “the system is working for me,” with 34% unsure and 48% outright saying they are unhappy with the system.” – notes the author.
In addition, he notes that in parallel “support for democracy has weakened, especially among young people.”
“Political scientists Yascha Munk and Roberto Stefan Foa of Johns Hopkins and Cambridge universities, respectively, found in 2017 that while 75% of Americans born in the 1930s agree that “living in a democracy is extremely important,” among millennials, this figure is only 28%,” the professor points out.
According to him, similar trends can be observed in many other countries.
“It has helped bring populists to power, from Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Donald Trump in the US and, most recently, Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s most right-wing leader since Mussolini. Note that Italy has the second highest level of dissatisfaction with democracy in the world in the 2021 survey, second only to Greece,” Bach concludes.
English version :: Read in English Sociology: Western youth are becoming disillusioned with democracy