Global Satisfaction with Democracy 2020 report cover

A new report from the University of Cambridge highlights a global dissatisfaction with democracy, lending weight to the Total Green Future theme of looking beyond democracy for sustainability solutions.

The report found that “2019 had the highest level of democratic discontent since detailed global recording began in 1995” and that “many large democracies [are] now at their highest-ever recorded level for democratic dissatisfaction, including the UK, US, Brazil, Mexico and Australia.”

Specifically, climate change was called out in the report:

The more visibly democratic governments appear to be failing to address problems of public accountability, economic governance, and transnational dilemmas such as migration or climate change, the greater the degree to which citizens perceive — with some justification– that their institutions are not delivering results.

Similar findings about failing confidence in democracy were recently published in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Democracy Index, which provides a snapshot of the state of democracy worldwide, that now shows “the worst score since the index was first produced in 2006.”