Youth and Satisfaction with Democracy: Reversing the Democratic Disconnect?

Abstract

In January 2020, the Cambridge Centre for the Future of Democracy published its inaugural Global Satisfaction with Democracy 2020 report. The study analysed a global, novel data set combining 25 data sources, 3,500 country surveys, and 4 million respondents between 1973 and 2020, and found widespread democratic disillusionment, in particular in developed democracies. This report draws upon an expanded and updated version of this dataset with 18 additional survey sources plus another half a million respondents, and moves on to examine one of the core debates in discussions on democratic legitimacy – youth opinions and the generational divide in perceptions of democratic performance.