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DemocracyDemocracy
About the author
Natasha Kassam was Director of the Lowy Institute's Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program from 2019 to 2022, directing the annual Lowy Institute Poll and researching China’s politics, Taiwan, and Australia-China relations.
The Lowy Institute’s polling on attitudes towards democracy has provoked considerable debate since we first asked Australians for their views in 2012. In 2019, support for democracy is stable, with 65% of Australians saying that ‘democracy is preferable to any other kind of government’. One in five (22%) say that ‘in some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable’, while 12% say that ‘for someone like me, it doesn’t matter what kind of government we have’.
In 2019, the Lowy Institute asked for the first time how satisfied Australians were with democracy, a question that has been asked by the Australian Election Study (AES) since 1969. The AES has reported falling levels of satisfaction with democracy since 2007. Despite having had five prime ministers in six years, the Lowy Institute Poll this year finds that 70% of Australians are satisfied with the way democracy works in Australia.
The gap between older and younger Australians on the importance of democracy — which has been striking in previous Lowy Institute Polls — appears to be narrowing. A majority of Australians aged 18–29 years (55%) in 2019 express a preference for democracy, compared with 68% of Australians aged over 30. In previous years this gap has been as large as 28 points. However, there is still a significant proportion (30%) of 18–29 year olds who say that ‘in some circumstances, a non-democratic government can be preferable’.
