this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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18
Australians who think inequality is high have less faith in democratic institutions, study finds (theconversation.com)
submitted 6 days ago by tardigrada@beehaw.org to c/australia@aussie.zone
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Central to Australia’s cultural and political identity is the notion of a “fair go”. But recent elections, including in the United States, have highlighted the challenge of maintaining shared norms and support for institutions when many voters don’t believe they’re getting a “fair go”.

Australia has maintained a reasonably high satisfaction with democracy. However, this satisfaction is slipping.

A recent study, published by the Australian National University in partnership with the Department of Home Affairs Strengthening Democracy Taskforce, explored this issue further. It analysed how perceptions of income inequality relate to satisfaction with democracy.

It found concerns about income inequality in Australia are strongly related to dissatisfaction with democracy. This suggests Australia’s satisfaction with democracy is at risk. It may erode further if voters think the major parties aren’t sufficiently responsive to the economic pressures they are under.

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[–] NaevaTheRat@vegantheoryclub.org 2 points 6 days ago

I would also add the subtly that this question:

On the whole, are you very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied, or not at all satisfied with the way democracy works in Australia?

Is not "do you want more or less democracy?". We only nominally have a democracy, we can't for example fire a government (non violently) that broke all it's promises. We can't force certain bills to be presented or not, we can't directly vote on any issue, our workplaces are almost exclusively dictatorial. Even within the system we have defects like the popular vote to seat count being completely whack because of single member seats in the lower house (very unusual among democracies).

Saying you are dissatisfied could mean you're an authoritarian dickwad, but so could saying you're satisfied. People who want more democracy, lots of citizen involvement, and more accurate representation of the people are not against democracy but would also say they're very unsatisfied. I mean society is getting measureably worse while we careen into a global crisis of apocalyptic proportions, who the fuck things this is working?