2024 is the year of elections. Over 60 countries, accounting for half of the worlds’ population, are heading to the polls. Democracy is clearly thriving in many of these countries. Democracy is a system of government where the whole population or all the eligible members of a state elect representatives. In democracies, officials are answerable to the public. This idea is essential to maintaining the integrity of governance because it guarantees (theoretically) that choices are made in the public’s interest. At the other end of the spectrum are autocracies, a system of government where one person or party has absolute power. To understand if there is such a thing as too much democracy, we need to assess the advantages and drawbacks of the various systems of government.Whether a democracy or autocracy, political instability is a significant obstacle to achieving economic progress and social justice by creating an unpredictable environment. There are stable autocracies like China and unstable democracies like Pakistan. In this essay we do not address this aspect specifically and focus more on the general aspects of democracies vs autocracies.Democracy as a system of governance, has been shown to deliver substantial benefits, though research to this end is not conclusive. The Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 1974, ended nearly five decades of authoritarian rule under the Estado Novo regime. The new democratic Portugal saw significant improvements in its GDP, educational attainment and public health provision leading to greater life expectancy and lower infant mortality. Daron Acemoglu, professor of economics at MIT and James Robinson, a political scientist at the University of Chicago co-authored a study titled “Democracy Does Cause Growth”. According to their research, countries that switched to democratic governance saw a 20% increase in GDP over 25 years compared to those remaining under authoritarian rule. They attribute this to democracies investing more in healthcare, education and social protection policies which increased the overall standard of living (MIT News 2019). In addition, Sen and Pritchett in their Harvard Kennedy study showed that democracies do not suffer catastrophic growth collapses which more often afflict autocracies.However, is there a downside to having too much democracy? Many democratic countries are not happy with their governments. In Mexico, Greece, Brazil and Spain 80% of individuals were dissatisfied and in Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina, Italy, and Tunisia 60% were unhappy with the performance of their democracy (Pew Research Centre 2018)There are three main issues with democracy as a form of government. First is the uninformed or uneducated voter who is unaware of the implications behind voting for certain policies or people. In 2016 the UK decided to leave the European Union after a referendum (one may argue that referendums, which force the people to vote on political issues, are among the purest forms of democracy.) However, since then, the majority of Britons are concluding that the decision was wrong, with 62% describing Brexit as “more of a failure”, and only 9% considering it “more of a success”. Even the “Leave” voters are divided on the issue: 37% say that it has largely failed, while 35% view it as neither a success nor a failure (YouGov 2023). Bryan Caplan’s 2007 book The Myth of the Rational Voter, finds that the least educated are the most likely to endorse, among other things, higher tariffs, rent control, and stricter regulations on firing employees. Those are three policies that are not favoured by economists because of their harm to general welfare: tariffs hurt consumers and importers; rent control reduces the incentive to build; and laws against firing workers make employers less likely to hire.The second issue is short term thinking, when leaders want to satisfy short term wants despite negative long term implications due to the desire to run another term. “And when human politicians choose between the next election and the next generation, it’s clear what usually happens,” stated Warren Buffet. The Indian National Congress, the primary opposition party in India in its 48 page manifesto for the 2024 elections, pledged around 1200 USD for every impoverished family every year, one amongst many populist measures (Manifesto of Indian National Congress 2024). Populist schemes are designed to attract widespread public appeal, often by offering direct economic or social benefits to the general population. They usually lack a well-defined strategy for financing or execution, and they frequently have long-term negative fiscal consequences. Short termism can also be observed in the case of the United Kingdom’s national debt. In May 2020, the UK debt exceeded the size of its economy for the first time in 50 years (Financial Times 2020). Governments had allowed debt to increase primarily through borrowing to fund current spending on services such as the NHS, welfare benefits, and pensions since raising taxes is not popular. However this level of debt raises concerns about future generations facing higher taxes and lower spending.
