In the Campaign for Social Science’s Annual Sage Lecture 2024, Dr Hannah White, Director and CEO of the Institute for Government, explored what the future might hold for the UK against a backdrop of a changing geopolitical landscape following a year of elections.
Hannah opened the lecture by giving a summary of the elections that have taken place throughout the year and some of the key themes that they have illustrated. As Hannah pointed out, in 2024, with elections being held in more than 70 countries and among nearly half of the world’s population, it has been a significant year for both democracy and the global political landscape.
Hannah outlined a few of these, commenting on not just the UK and US elections, but also those held in Taiwan, Russia, Rwanda, India, and the European Parliament. She said, “Not all democracies are equally free and fair. 26 of the 70 elections that happened this year, so more than a third, were in countries which the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) classifies as authoritarian or where significant electoral fraud happens regularly, preventing them being classed as fully democratic.” Hannah also highlighted that even in the remaining two thirds of countries where elections were held the EIU has identified issues including media freedom infringement and minor suppression of political opposition and critics.
Focusing in a little more on the UK election which took place in July, Hannah identified that a less reported outcome of the election result was the unusual diversity of opposition parties now holding seats along with the Labour majority. She also commented on the results of the recent US election and its implications for wider international relations.
Hannah then turned her attention to a question, which she feels is one of the most interesting and important arising from this context: what is the relationship between governments delivering for their people and the trust of those people in democracy?
Hannah said, “If voters’ confidence in democracy and choices in elections are driven, at whatever level, by evidence of government delivering for the public, then there’s an electoral incentive for politicians to focus on delivery and hence to work to improve the effectiveness of the state. But if that relationship is loosening, if voters are rewarding factors other than delivery or are making decisions based on factors over which their politicians have increasingly little control in a globalised world, then that’s likely to increase political instability, giving politicians less incentive to focus on delivery. And that could, ultimately, I think, undermine democracy.”
She pointed to the example of the recent US election and how voter dissatisfaction with their own economic circumstances highlighted how even in countries which are doing well in relative terms, growing social and geographical inequalities within countries means governments can no longer rely on delivery at a national level to translate into a winning mandate for an election. But Hannah went on to discuss the nuances of the UK election result and that the context for this was quite different with much polling and focus group evidence suggesting that the Conservative Party lost the UK election because it damaged its reputation with voters through a series of ethical scandals and failures in government.
Following this, Hannah went on to discuss some of the lessons that might be learned from this year of elections. Firstly, she highlighted that in our globalised world, governments may often be rewarded or punished for the impact of events and trends beyond their control, for instance due to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. She pointed to the fact that, since 2020, incumbent governments have been voted out of office in 40 of the 54 elections in Western democracies.
For Hannah’s second lesson she commented on the idea that voters vote based on their daily experience, not just the performance of the country as a whole. She said, “The challenge for governments is not just changing the public’s experience, but also successfully communicating with them to convince them that things have changed. The risk is that the need to deliver for voters in the short term distracts politicians from implementing important reforms over the longer term.”
Related to this, Hannah also commented on the impact of geographical inequalities and argued for the importance of focusing decision making closer to the people it is intended to benefit. She said, “Genuine devolution has the potential to strengthen UK democracy and this is a fertile area, I think, where social scientists have much to contribute through their research.”
Hannah’s final lesson to take from this year of elections is that, she felt, that voters are increasingly primed for dissatisfaction with democracy due to recent crises such as the pandemic and energy crisis creating “unreasonable new expectations” about the safety net the government should provide. Hannah also attributed the reluctance of politicians to be honest with voters about difficult trade-offs and the capacity of government to respond to crises having contributed to this dissatisfaction with democracy. “If some political actors are prepared to promise voters they can have their cake and eat it, it makes it harder for the rest to be realistic.” Hannah said. She continued, “Voters’ expectations of the speed and capacity of government to deliver have been amplified, at the same time that the ability of governments to deliver has been reduced by geopolitical circumstances and economic constraints.”
Reflecting on her lecture, Hannah ended on a note of optimism for the future, highlighting that current UK party leaders seem to be making efforts to avoid some of the traps that Hannah had identified; that there appears to be genuine interest from politicians across the political spectrum in how government can be done better; and that we have a strong research community working to help understand and shape the trends being seen in UK democracy.
She concluded, “Every country is different, but the UK must continue to learn from experience around the world. There’s enormous potential for research to explore what works to increase trust in democracy, including in terms of the themes I’ve talked about today: focusing on the experience of individual voters, resetting voter expectations of what is possible for governments to achieve; and increasingly the ability of governments to deliver.”
Watch the full lecture below.
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