Global risks abound these days, from climate change to the next pandemic, as well as acute supply chain disruptions, energy shortfalls, and cybersecurity threats. These challenges play out in a landscape of immense political instability fomented by the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, Iran and others, as well as dangers looming in the potential state collapse of countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, and Sudan. Taken together, the risk tally of our moment is mounting quickly.

While these headline-grabbing perils are a clear and present danger, let’s not take our eyes off the more subtle, but equally insidious, risk to democracy posed by global youth disillusionment. Look no further than to the recent results of the two-stage French Presidential elections. Young voters under age 35 abstained from voting by an estimated 30 percent in round one, and that number leapt upwards to an historic 40 percent drop off in the final stage of voting.

It would be an immense mistake to think that because young people abstain from voting means they are not aware of today’s social problems, the inequalities their generation faces, nor their willingness to act. Why is this disengagement happening?  Growing evidence suggests that it is lack of faith in democratic institutions to solve today’s pressing challenges, rather than ignorance of the stakes involved.

Disconnected and Dubious

The latest Economist Intelligence Unit democracy index shows that global freedoms are in a free-fall. Some of that swoon may be blamed on recent pandemic curbs, as nations rallied to address public health emergencies with lockdowns and other mandates that restricted personal freedoms. But the democracy decline started way before COVID-19. Less than half the world’s population today lives under some form of democracy, the lowest proportion since 1997 according to Freedom House’s Annual Report.

If Russia succeeds in swallowing up Ukraine by brute force, the number of people living under authoritarianism will only edge upward. But while the recent steady decline in citizens living under democracy tells an alarming story, it is accompanied by other reports which suggest that democracies are now facing their biggest challenges since the 1930s and increasingly disappointing many global citizens.

More disconcerting still is the growing disillusionment of today’s youth, even in democratic countries. What we see across the globe is youth increasingly turning their backs on engaging with their governments, civil society, and institutions. According to the UN, there are 1.2 billion youth, aged 15 to 24, and by 2030 that number will increase to 1.3 billion.  These numbers mean that unless we can do a better job to engage these youth, the stakes are high for democracy.

A number of recent forecasts point out the risks associated with geopolitical, technological, economic, and environmental trends. Still other global reports focus on out-year marketing, human capital, and digitalization trends, threats to national security, and global cooperation, along with risks to the post COVID-19 economic recovery, and global trade. But these analyses often don’t go deeper into societal risks such as youth disengagement.

Failing to examine youth engagement trends may be a serious blind spot— and thus a threat to democracy. It is a question that merits closer examination. When youth disengage, they are often saying they don’t have a high level of confidence or trust in existing economic, political, or social entities. They may also want to “opt out” because they perceive that their generation is not being heard or treated fairly. Whatever their reasons, youth disengagement will ultimately have negative impacts beyond democratic engagement with potential shockwaves on social stability, the well-being and mental health of individuals (youth and their families), and individual and country-level economic productivity and quality of life.

The World Economic Forum’s recent Global Risk Report identifies “youth disillusionment” as a threat based on over 800 interviews with international organizations, governments, non-government organizations, business leaders and academics. Yet, it ranks this risk at near the bottom, at eighth out of ten global threats, over the next two years. When arrayed against more well-acknowledged threats like the spread of infectious disease and climate change inaction, this survey did not see youth disillusionment as a top risk in likelihood or in severity of its impact. The only good news, perhaps, is that for the first time ever, the risk of youth disillusionment made it into the risk findings at all.

Rising Youth Discontent with Democracy

Discontent with democracy among young people aligns with broader trends. Using a combined dataset of more than 25 sources and over four million respondent surveys from 1973 to 2020, researchers at Cambridge University probed the degree of citizen satisfaction with democracy in their own countries. They concluded that democratic dissatisfaction is on the rise particularly in developed democracies.

A subsequent study using an expanded dataset focused on youth, revealed a steady climb in dissatisfaction with democracy with notable increases across Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and southern and central Europe. Neither the United Kingdom nor the United States were spared.

The authors conclude that across the world, younger generations are more dissatisfied with democratic performance than the older ones—and are also more discontent than previous generations at similar life stages. Those chilling findings about the youth democracy disconnect are for Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) as well as for Generation X youth (born between 1965 and 1980). All the news is not bad, however. In eastern Europe, Germany, and parts of Asia, youth expressed a degree of “contentment compared to their elders” on their satisfaction with democracy.

Against this background of declining overall youth satisfaction with democracy, the Global Youth Development Report offers more evidence from pre-COVID-19 data obtained from individuals in over 180 countries (from 2010 to 2018). This study’s methodology uses a composite index to measure multiple domains (e.g., health, education, employment, and opportunity) including youth political and civic engagement. While most showed slight improvements, political and civic youth participation recorded a decline over the past decade.

The pandemic makes the conclusions we can draw from this data even more discomfiting. There is no reason to believe that youth participation would have increased in a global public health crisis.  More likely it declined, or, at best, stayed in the negative territory indicated in the survey. What do these data tell us? In short, when youth do not engage in their community, they are less likely to engage in the wider political process, and less likely to integrate into the larger society. All three outcomes undercut engagement in the democratic process.

Another recent look at youth disillusionment in the political process comes from the Global Shapers Annual  Survey, which explores how young people see the world and what they want to do about its shortcomings. The survey is based on 31,000 individual responses across 180 countries. When asked if their views are “considered when important decisions are made,” nearly 60 percent said no. And this sentiment, according to the authors, was consistent across all gender and youth age groups across all regions. When youth were asked about their level of trust in national governments, 52 percent of those surveyed had serious concerns—with particularly high levels of mistrust across all of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Shaping an Institutional Response

The inherent risk to democracy posed by youth disillusionment in today’s governments and institutions has not gone unnoticed by major global institutions. The UN, for example, recently issued a “Declaration on Future Generations” that  points out troubling trends that will disproportionately impact current and next generations, and acknowledges that “too many young people have a lack of trust in the ability of existing institutions and leadership to meet their concerns.”  The Declaration proposes a re-invigorated UN 2.0 that must strengthen the solidarity between generations, and include a new commitment to tackle concerns about intergenerational fairness and equity.  It also calls for a spelling out of specific ways to empower today’s youth, and generations which follow, to have a greater say in designing their destinies.

In addition, the UN has also proposed a Special Envoy on Future Generations to nudge governments, like Wales, to examine the consequences of today’s policies on youth and future generations, so that their interests will be heard and acted upon. (Many New Security Beat readers will already be acquainted about what the “new UN” is up to for 2023 from a previous blog post.)

Major bilateral donors, like the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), are also stepping forward to acknowledge the importance of incorporating more youth voices in policy and decision making, to tap into their creative ideas, fresh solutions, and unbounded energy to tackle some of the toughest global development challenges.

For example, USAID’s new Global LEAD initiative seeks to support one million young global changemakers over the next four years through increased investments in education, civic, and political engagement, and leadership development. Its YouthLead.org platform now has 14,000 young changemakers sharing resources and conducting peer-to-peer learning. With a long-term focus on Africa, USAID and the U.S. Department of State support young leaders through the Young African Leadership Initiative. USAID also recently launched a partnership with the School of International Future’s Next Generation Foresight Practitioner (NGFP) to connect their youth network directly with USAID’s over 100 field missions.

The problem of youth disillusionment with democracy is immense and in some quarters not given sufficient gravity. Some institutions are leading the way. Others have not yet caught up with this reality. With a challenge this large, and with so much at stake, more leaders and their institutions must place youth disillusionment at the top of their agenda and seek ways to turn the tide.