The results of this yearly survey by the Alliance of Democracies are always fascinating because it directly challenges what we think democracy is: allianceofdemocracies.org/democracy-perc… The countries whose citizens most perceive themselves as living in democracy are: - China - Switzerland - Singapore - Israel - Norway - Vietnam - The ROC For those 7 countries, more than 75% of people reply 7-10 to the question "Think about your country today. How democratic do you think it is?" where 0 is "not at all democratic" and 10 is "very democratic". Now let's look at the list of countries where less than half the people believe they live in democracy: - Japan - Pakistan - France - Nigeria - Iran - Peru - Morocco - Turkey - Ukraine - Hungary - Venezuela - Greece Notice something? People's perception of whether they live in a democracy or not is not at all aligned with procedural democracy: whether people vote for their country's leaders or not, and whether a country has the procedural attributes of liberal democracy. In fact the majority of countries where people don't believe they're in democracy have these procedural attributes (including France, my country)! And half the countries where an immense majority of people - three fourth - believe they're in a democracy don't have them. So what gives? Other results of the survey give a clue. And the biggest one is that the perception of democracy is extremely correlated with the percentage of people who believe the government serves the majority as opposed to a minority. For instance China scores highest in the world on this, with almost everyone agreeing with the sentence "my government usually acts in the interests of most people in my country". This is after all quite important for democracy: the whole point is that it's supposed to be "for the people", isn't it? I've always had a hard time with the notion that "democracy equals voting", especially coming from France were we keep voting but nothing meaningful changes and the government clearly doesn't care much about the population when it enacts policies, instead chasing elusive ideologies or the support of a small group of elites. I think democracy is emptied of its substance when it is reduced to its procedural vision. It's much more important that a democracy - to qualify as such - lives up to its spirit, rather than its law. Meaning that rulers need to grasp their society in its interests and in its realities, and be able to act thereupon in a way a) that delivers, b) serves the true interests of the people (as opposed to other interests) and c) where there's an emphasis put on truth and accountability. And I think that, as we can see with this survey's results, the people aren't fooled: they understand when the spirit of democracy is broken, even when the procedure is there, and vice versa. And countries where that's the case need to reflect long and hard on this.
