Democracy in peril and time running out

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Democracy in peril and time running out

Published: 14 Mar. 2025, 00:01

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Cho Yoon-je

The author is a special appointment professor at Yonsei University School of Economics.

Democracy is faltering across the world. The economic trends that have accumulated since the 1980s have ultimately reshaped the political landscape. The rapid acceleration of globalization, liberalization and the information revolution has erased national borders for capital, goods, factories and information. Meanwhile, China’s onslaught of low-cost goods has swiftly eroded manufacturing employment in the United States and Europe. Between 1985 and 2020, the labor force participation rate among American men aged 22 to 55 declined from 94 percent to 88 percent. In Britain, manufacturing’s share of private-sector employment plummeted from 45 percent in 1970 to just 17 percent by 2020. Germany, Italy, and other European nations have followed a similar trajectory. The ones who lost their jobs were primarily blue-collar, middle-class workers — often less educated, frequently male and overwhelmingly the primary breadwinners of their households.

Students protest for democracy in Gwangju, South Jeolla, on May 18, 1980. The protest lasted until May 27, and martial law took the lives of many young Koreans. [JOONGANG PHOTO]

Income inequality has soared. In the United States, the share of national income held by the top 10 percent rose from 35 percent in 1981 to 48 percent in 2020, while their share of net wealth reached 70 percent. In Britain, the average chief executive officer’s salary was 48 times that of the average worker in 1998; by 2016, it had ballooned to 129 times. In the United States, the ratio surged from 42 times in 1980 to a staggering 347 times in 2016. The gains of economic growth have been monopolized by the affluent, while the majority have seen their earnings stagnate or decline. Manufacturing workers and the middle class now live in constant fear of downward mobility. This sense of "status anxiety" provides fertile ground for populism and demagoguery. Studies suggest that people who fear slipping into the lower rungs of society — rather than those already at the bottom — are often the most politically active, gravitating toward extreme-left or extreme-right movements. The fall of the Roman Republic was driven by a similar phenomenon: the collapse of the independent farming class and the rise of generals and capitalists enriched by territorial conquests.

Democracy is not a given

Democracy is not an inevitability. It is a system that emerged in the West over two centuries of struggle, sacrifice and often bloody revolution, alongside the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Universal suffrage, representative government and liberal democracy as we know them today are relatively recent developments in the grand sweep of human civilization. Britain only granted universal suffrage in 1928. France and Italy followed in 1945. In the United States, racial barriers to voting were only fully dismantled in 1965. Switzerland, often seen as a beacon of democracy, did not implement full universal suffrage until 1990.

In Korea, we inherited a democratic system in 1948 — virtually overnight — without the prolonged conflicts and upheavals that defined the West’s democratic evolution. We have backslid into authoritarianism at times, and in many ways, our democracy has been more procedural than substantive. Yet without democracy, we would not have come this far as a nation. And now, rather than working to safeguard it, we seem intent on tearing it down at breakneck speed. The most fundamental principles of democracy are majority rule and the rule of law. It is deeply troubling that some politicians and citizens alike are willing to challenge even the rulings of the nation’s highest court. Are we moving toward a world governed by brute force?

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on March 7. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

America’s role and the global democratic retreat

The post–World War II expansion of democracy was largely made possible by the United States. As the first modern democratic republic, the country pursued an unprecedented policy after its victories — eschewing punitive reparations and instead funding the reconstruction of former adversaries. With that moral authority, it led the postwar global order and championed democracy worldwide.

But today, democracy is faltering at its very core. In the United States, populism and money-driven politics are corroding democratic institutions. The birthplace of modern democracy, Britain, is experiencing similar turmoil. These trends point to an impending global crisis for democracy.

The same fault lines exist in Korea

The economic transformations that have destabilized democracies in the West have played out over the past 30 years in Korea as well. Manufacturing jobs have dwindled, income inequality has worsened, and economic growth is on the verge of slipping to zero. If this trend continues, any rise in one person’s income will come at the direct expense of another’s — a recipe for deepening division and conflict. Meanwhile, China’s relentless pursuit of technological parity threatens to engulf Korea’s manufacturing base. Key industrial hubs in the country’s southern regions, home to steel, petrochemicals, machinery and shipbuilding, face the same fate as America’s Rust Belt.

If democracy collapses, we will be left with arbitrary dictatorship, corruption, cronyism, censorship and state-manufactured falsehoods. That is not the world we want to leave to our children. Now, more than ever, we must not let democracy slip from our grasp. Our leaders must reestablish a stable power structure, reform political culture, overhaul economic policies, and revamp governance systems to restore trust in the state and usher in a new civic ethos. Time is running out.

Translated using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.