In recent years, public-opinion scholars have raised concerns about declining satisfaction with democracy’s performance and, in some countries, eroding democratic support. While these trends raise questions regarding democratic stability, other scholars have suggested that measures of social liberalism offer a more optimistic picture. Global levels of social-liberal values are rising, they assert, and are correlated with past democratic transitions, signaling a bright future for democracy. But this article finds little evidence of a link between social liberalism and democratization—or of liberal values rising outside of existing democracies. While there are good reasons to envisage a future wave of democratic transitions, such global-values measures cannot inform their timing, location, or rationale.
About the Authors
Roberto Stefan Foa
Roberto Stefan Foa is university lecturer in politics at the University of Cambridge, director of the YouGov-Cambridge Centre for Public Opinion Research, and co-director of the Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy.
Yascha Mounk is associate professor of the practice of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University and the author of The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure (2022).
Three decades after sub-Saharan Africa joined the “third wave,” democracy’s ability to endure has been established in many countries, but its quality remains a grave concern.
Public-opinion data from Pew Research Center show that global support for representative democracy is widespread, but often thin. Amid rising economic anxiety, cultural unease, and political frustration, citizens are increasingly open to alternative…
