The worst form of government?

Dear all

It’s been Politics Enrichment Week, and in Monday’s assembly, we asked whether people living in countries where democracy has been long established can still be confident the freedoms it promises are still there, and whether enough people care to ensure they are.

Here is a copy of the assembly reading:

‘Democracy is something few of us, in all honesty, spend much of our time thinking about. I wonder if everyone in this room could even define what it means, yet we live in a country that has practised it for a long time

Democracy is the idea of ‘people power’ where citizens get an equal vote in selecting their leaders and benefit from protections such as individual liberties, the rule of law, and free and fair elections. In 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and some two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall (in 1989), a political scientist named Francis Fukuyama wrote a famous article called ‘The End of History?’. In it, he argued that liberal democracy might be ‘the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the final form of human government’, not least given that the alternatives, such as communism and autocracy, seemed defeated. In other words, the global struggle over the best way to govern had essentially been won.

However, history did not end, and today the idea that liberal democracy is the certain future is seriously challenged. There are now many who believe that political freedom is not essential to prosperity, and that it might even be an obstacle to economic growth.

There are a number of reports that seek to measure how democracy is faring around the world, two of which are the Freedom and Prosperity Index and the Global State of Democracy report. The first gives a score and rank for each of the 164 countries it features based on freedom and prosperity. The second measures democratic performance across the categories of Representation, Rights, Rule of Law, and Participation.

Both reports show that democracy is diminishing in areas such as freedom of expression and checks on government power. In 2024, 94 countries saw a decline in at least one aspect of democratic performance, such as access to justice, economic equality, or free and fair elections.

Far from the prediction of Francis Fukuyama in 1989, it seems as though democracy can no longer be taken for granted as the inevitable form of government, and that is something we should all pause to consider.’

In 1947, having led Britain to victory in World War Two before being defeated in the election that immediately followed, Winston Churchill said the following in the House of Commons:

‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’

As I said to our students on Monday, there are definitely problems with democracy, but arguably, there are, and would be, many more without it, and we all have a responsibility to look after it. If we don’t use it, we can’t be sure that we won’t lose it.

For reference, the reports mentioned above can be accessed via the links below:

Have a great weekend

Best wishes

Michael Bond

The worst form of government?

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