Support is lowest in France, Spain and Poland, while 21% back authoritarian rule under certain circumstances
Only half of young people in France and Spain believe that democracy is the best form of government, with support even lower among their Polish counterparts, a study has found.
A majority from Europe’s generation Z – 57% – prefer democracy to any other form of government. Rates of support varied significantly, however, reaching just 48% in Poland and only about 51-52% in Spain and France, with Germany highest at 71%.
More than one in five – 21% – would favour authoritarian rule under certain, unspecified circumstances. This was highest in Italy at 24% and lowest in Germany with 15%. In France, Spain and Poland the figure was 23%.
Nearly one in 10 across the nations said they did not care whether their government was democratic or not, while another 14% did not know or did not answer.
Democracy doesnt have to, and usually doesn’t, involve giving everyone a say in literally everything. For example, in the US people did not have the ability to vote for their senators until we had an established public education system in the early 20th century. So our original senate was much closer to something like the house of lords in the UK.
While allowing people to directly elect all their congressional representatives didnt go bad right away, 100 years later its pretty clear that the average person is far too incompetent to be voting for their senate representation. Public education, good as it might be compared to having none at all, is compromised as hell and does not inspire quality civic engagement.
Honestly our country would be far better off if only people who’ve earned some degree of higher education could vote for their state’s senators, but of course that would be billed as undemocratic and elitist quite easily by anyone who opposed it. There are plenty of morons with a college education, but it would be better simply by virtue of not having both houses of congress able to be captured by the exact same stupidity