Democracy beyond voting and protests

We should build systems that make us accountable to each other, just as governments account to citizens

 Project Syndicate | Sasha Fisher | For over a decade now, we have witnessed more elections and, simultaneously, less democracy. According to Bloomberg, elections have been occurring more frequently around the world. Yet Freedom House finds that some 110 countries have experienced declines in political and civil rights over the past 13 years.

As democracy declines, so does our sense of community. In the United States, this is evidenced by a looming loneliness epidemic and the rapid disappearance of civic institutions such as churches, eight of which close every day. And though these trends are global in nature, the U.S. exemplifies them in the extreme.

This is no coincidence. As Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in the 1830s, America’s founders envisioned a country governed not by shared values, but by self-interest. That vision has since defined America’s institutions, and fostered a hyper-individualistic society.

A few years ago, when I was launching Spark MicroGrants in East Africa, I watched a group of American MIT students meet with around 50 residents of a Rwandan village. Residents were hoping to convince Rwanda’s government to contribute to a project to extend an electricity line to their community (which, to their credit, they eventually did). One of the students grilled a community member about why the government, rather than the individuals at the meeting, should pay for the project.

That student was channeling a typically American idea of privatisation and access based on individual purchasing power. But that idea can corrode collective and civic engagement, and it seems to be undermining political trust as well. According to the Pew Research Center, the share of Americans who trust the government dropped by a colossal 55 percentage points between 1958 and 2017, and now sits below 20%. Not surprisingly, engagement has also dropped in the same period, with involvement in civic associations falling by half.

Growing distrust in governing institutions has fueled a rise in authoritarian populist movements around the world. Citizens are demanding individual economic security and retreating into an isolationist mentality. In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump both appealed to an overlapping bloc of voters who are fed up with “the system,” and second- and third-generation immigrants turned against newer immigrants. In countries ranging from Germany to Brazil, voters have flocked to far-right parties not out of love for the candidates, but out of fear of losing power and status.

And yet we know that “user engagement” works, as shown by countless studies and human experiences. For example, an evaluation conducted in Uganda found that the more citizens participated in the design of health programs, the more the perception of the health-care system improved. And in Indonesia, direct citizen involvement in government decision-making has led to higher satisfaction with government services.