For many people, democracy has become a slow luxury in a rapidly changing world – an ideal that is difficult to realize in a world plagued by anxiety, division and violence. The question is no longer whether democracy is fair, but whether it remains useful.
Not since the late Cold War have so many people lived under authoritarian or illiberal regimes. The erosion of democracy has largely been gradual, through the weakening of checks and balances, the hijacking of the media and judiciary, and the manipulation of elections. This legalistic backlash is presented as an adjustment rather than a complete rejection. But it does reflect a sharp decline in confidence in democracy’s ability to deliver security and prosperity.
In a world of instant comparisons, every slow or clumsy decision by a democratic government is juxtaposed against the speed and effectiveness of authoritarian measures. Every compromise is contrasted with a vertical decision-making process. The debate and uncertainty inherent in democracies can begin to look like weaknesses when compared to the order and stability promised by authoritarian regimes.
China, where President Xi Jinping has steadily consolidated his power, has done the most to promote this authoritarian illusion. The government’s long-term planning, investment in infrastructure, and supply chain dominance in strategic sectors such as rare earth metals, batteries, and renewable energy give the impression of an omniscient strategic state that looks far into the future and places the common good above private interests.
But this impression is based on the assumption that information is never distorted, that mistakes are openly acknowledged without political sanction, and that truth always prevails over loyalty. This couldn’t be further from reality. One-party systems that stifle debate and accountability invariably end up confusing discipline and obedience with intelligence and discernment. Authoritarian leaders know how to get things done, which creates efficiencies in the short term, but their unwillingness to tolerate dissent has long-term costs.
Dictatorships give the impression that they produce less inequality than democracies, when in fact they hide it. What is presented as greater social justice is often nothing more than opacity. Democracies expose the fissures in society, while authoritarian regimes silence them. The former suffer by telling the truth, the latter survive by making the truth unspeakable.
Similarly, authoritarian regimes may produce technically competent leaders, but these leaders are never fully accountable to society. As a result, their competence eventually turns into arrogance and then blindness. The lack of popular sanction prevents systemic adjustment.
Some people attribute these differences to cultural factors, arguing that certain societies are not ready for democracy. But democracy is a social consequence, not a cultural tradition. It emerges when people become more mobile, educated and autonomous. It is created, not imported.
The structural links between free markets and democracy are more obvious. The market shapes individuals who weigh their options, make their choices, and often change their minds. What is true for purchases applies to political views as well. In the long run, no government can sustainably control a free consumer accustomed to choice.
Wherever the market advances, closed structures – from the patriarchal family to clan and caste – retreat. Even in Confucian societies, individual autonomy is beginning to trump filial deference. This shift may be slow, but it is irreversible, changing attitudes toward power, overturning entrenched social roles, and expanding existential aspirations.
The real enemy of dictators is the pursuit of freedom, so they emphasize democracy’s flaws, exacerbate its divisions, and present its failure as inevitable. That is why the United States, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, will do everything it can to weaken European leaders, who cause the American dictator more fear than the Russian and Chinese autocrats he often praises.
Democracies are likely to experience further setbacks in the next five years, and by mid-century, some societies will shift to hybrid regimes that combine market mechanisms and prosperity with control and surveillance. New and existing technologies will enable these regimes to limit freedom through digital monitoring, algorithms, and predictive analytics.
But these failures will not necessarily be final. An educated, connected, mobile, aging, complex society cannot be sustainably controlled through fear. It can submit for a while. It may acquiesce out of exhaustion. But in the end it always demands choice and responsibility.
Democracy never triumphs once and for all. It returns in different forms, with different institutions, whenever individual freedom becomes an economic and existential necessity. Even if the path is not linear, and even if violence erupts along the way, it will eventually prevail because no other system can sustainably govern free people. Democracy is always both outdated and ahead of its time.
Jacques Attali,
founding president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,
former special advisor to French President François Mitterrand and author of 86 books.
© Project Syndicate, 2026.
www.project-syndicate.org
