Can democracy meet our 21st century challenges?

David Runciman, Reader in Political Thought, told a debate on democracy which formed part of the Cambridge series at the 2012 Hay Festival, that the last 10 years had been bad for western democracies in terms of their involvement in war, their economic policies and their ability to confront climate change. “There in no evidence that they know how to face up to the challenges we are facing,” he said.

Nevertheless, the last decade could be seen as a blip, he said, in the last 100 years which had been good for western democracies. They had risen to major challenges in the 20th century: they had won wars, got richer, enriched their citizens and created welfare states.

“However,” he added, “the last 100 years could be seen as a blip against the last 2,500 years when democracies were seen as an attractive idea, but one which would always fall apart, be bad at long-term planning and be easily swayed by populists who shied away from making difficult decisions.”

Nevertheless, Dr Runciman said one of the strengths of democratic states was their adaptability which made them “better at failure than autocratic systems because they can correct their mistakes more easily”.

This could also be a weakness, though, because the knowledge gleaned from the last 100 years that they could adapt and overcome problems created a moral hazard. It made democracies believe they could afford to make mistakes because they would eventually muddle through.

“That complacency is dangerous if we are faced with something like climate change that needs pre-emptive action. The risk is that if we wait too long to adapt we won't adapt in time,” he said, counselling “cautious pessimism” about the future.

Professor Andrew Gamble, Head of the Department of Politics and International Studies, spoke about the rise of popular resentment and disenchantment with political elites in Europe and the current parameters of the political debate.

People perceived that all the established parties were the same and that power lay elsewhere, he said.

There was a concern about the rise of technocrats, but the tension between technocracy and democracy had always existed. There was a need for democratic energy and enthusiasm, he said, but it had to be channelled into realistic international, regional and local policies by technocrats.

He added that there was also a tension between localism and internationalism. On the one hand there was an urge towards more localism; on the other there was a need for international coordination with a greater number of players involved. This made it more difficult to gain consensus and led to deadlock in important international talks, such as on climate change.

A lack of internal social cohesion in countries such as Greece would also make it difficult to reach consensus about the kind of action needed for long-term challenges, he said.

Glen Rangwala, Lecturer in International Politics, spoke about the outlook for democracy in the Middle East following the Arab Spring. He said that initially there had been fears about the rise of Islamism through the overthrow of autocratic governments, but people were now more concerned about the extent to which democracy might become a generator of internal conflict in the Middle East.

“We think peace and democracy go together,” he said, “ but democracy can generate divisions and groups who had previously learnt to live together are now finding it useful to stress their differences.”

There were not enough examples of what he called Middle Eastern “liberal autocracies” which tolerated minorities being dismantled to know what might happen next. Could they be replaced by illiberal democracies, he asked.