Americans Largely Dissatisfied With the State of Democracy

President Donald Trump’s promise of a $5,000 „dividend“ to every adult American in the event that Republicans win both chambers of Congress in this year’s midterms is just the latest example of the many ways in which American democracy has deteriorated in recent years. Once considered a shining example around the world, the U.S. political system has become the epitome of polarization where both sides of the political spectrum have drifted so irreconcilably far apart that compromise – a vital component of any functioning democracy – has become virtually impossible. Add to that a president who habitually makes unfounded claims about rampant voter fraud and stolen elections and the result is a gradual erosion of trust in one of the oldest democracies in the world.

It’s no surprise then that more than two thirds of Americans expressed their dissatisfaction with the state of American democracy in a recent Pew Research survey. That puts the U.S. second to last in the survey conducted across 16 high-income countries, with only Greece showing even lower levels of satisfaction with the state of democracy. Moreover, 77 percent of Americans said that the nation’s political system needs major change or complete reform. That made the U.S. the exception to a pattern recognized by the authors of the study, who found a negative correlation between GDP per capita and the perceived need for major political reform. The higher the living standard in a country is, the quieter the calls for major political change usually are. Not so in the U.S., where 49 percent of respondents saw the need for reform but expressed little confidence in it happening.