Chief among the accusations leveled at millennials is that of political apathy. However, the real problem could be even worse than disengagement — it seems many members of generation Y could be ready to back a despot.
A large-scale survey of political attitudes conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney found that just 42 percent of Australian 18 to 29-year-olds thought democracy was “the most preferable form of government,” compared with 65 percent of those aged 30 or above. Earlier Lowy polls have turned up the same disenchantment, all confirming that young adults are deeply skeptical about democracy.
Some say the culprit is creeping neoliberal economics, others the economic progress of authoritarian states such as China. Young Australians, knowing only democracy, are taking it for granted, another says. Inevitably, iPhones or Facebook come in for some of the blame.
Illustration: Yusha
Millennials themselves, asked why they do not back democracy, mostly say it “only serves the interests of a few” (40 percent) and that there is “no real difference between the policies of the major parties” (32 percent).
A similar malaise is expressed across Western democracies. Approval ratings for the US Congress are famously low, but among young Americans fell to just 38 percent in the decade to 2014. In the British elections, young voter turnout shrank for about two decades before an increase last year. A Canadian poll four years ago found less than 50 percent of young adults thought democracy trumped other kinds of government. It did better in India, where 70 percent of adults endorsed a democratic system, and in Indonesia, where the figure was 62 percent.
Nascent protest parties in Europe have shown millennials can still be won over. Promises to resist “the caste” who run Spanish society won the upstart Podemos party about 20 percent of the vote in the national elections in December last year.
Young people played an outsized role in SYRIZA’s win in the Greek elections in January last year, largely elevated Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership in Britain and are driving the surprise popularity of Bernie Sanders in the US Democratic primaries.
The twist is that while they disdain democratic institutions, millennials engage in the cut and thrust of democracy with vigor.
Lowy Institute polling director Alex Oliver points to research that shows young Britons are either as or more likely to volunteer, engage with social issues or “express their political opinions creatively” than earlier generations.
In the US, too, research from the Pew center shows young social media users are more likely than their elders to post their thoughts on issues, promote political material and encourage others to act. Indeed, where young people might be weary of the formal voting calendar, they are more likely than their forebears to get involved in grassroots campaigning, which they consider far more likely to change the world than a cross in a box.
Sara Irvine knows the power of what is sometimes derided as “slacktivism.” The communications director with the First Peoples Disability Network blends online campaigning with TV and newspaper lobbying, sometimes, as in the March 2014 case of Roseanne Fulton, to powerful effect.
Fulton, 26, was born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). After a spate of alleged driving offenses, she was deemed unfit for trial by a Western Australian court and a danger to herself if released. Lacking any assisted living facilities, the state instead locked Fulton in prison for a year and a half.
“Our campaign hinged completely around doing a Change.org petition,” Irvine said, on the effort to have Fulton freed. “The long-term problem we always have with these issues is that case studies are shocking and the audience understands that — but what’s the reason to keep it in the news?”
The petition worked. Fulton was returned home. It was a win. However, not for long.
FASD is still not legally recognized by Australian states and territories as a disability. Spaces in assisted living facilities in the Northern Territory are limited, particularly for women. Fulton is still in and out of prison for minor offenses.
Her case hints at the possibilities, but also the limits, of online political engagement.
“[A rush of mass support can be mobilized by] a clear ask, a personal story they can relate to and a very clear message about injustice,” Irvine said.
However, it is much harder to enlist support for grinding out change in the “broader social, systemic, legal, jurisdictional issues at play” — for which the most efficient route is still, for now, through a major party’s door.
Max Kaye and Nathan Spataro, from Sydney, are the founders of Flux, which aims to elect senators whose votes are controlled by Flux members.
Each member gets one vote per bill. They can give that vote to a party or another individual to wield, swap it for support on a pet issue or — by a mechanism to be decided — hoard votes so they accumulate in value.
Just as, in theory, a free market efficiently allocates resources, Flux aims to be a marketplace for policy, where ideas compete for popular support and power is allocated in line with demonstrated expertise.
It is a classical liberal ideal that Kaye and Spataro argue can be fully realized on the Internet, which allows for “feedback loops” that hone policymaking each time a bill is raised, instead of every election cycle.
Flux’s chutzpah is pure Silicon Valley. However, politics — a way of organizing force and dispersing power, as well as crafting policy — is not so easily eliminated. How Flux handles the problem of a precipitous fall in a budget, for example, when different portfolios are in conflict to avoid cuts, is “one that we’ve deferred for the moment,” Kaye said.
Time might be the panacea. If the average age of a US president — 55 — is any indication, the first millennial world leaders are a mere two decades away. A generation sour on democracy can have its own shot at running one — and making a hash of it themselves.
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