Our conversations about how to address the crisis in democracy often ignore our own assumptions and those of others, and that’s a big blind spot. The purpose of this collective intelligence exercise was to unpack those assumptions while considering novel perspectives from working group members. The purpose of this report is to map out the findings from the conversations and identify trends and relationships that were unexpected or striking. This is intended to open up how we think about our democratic institutions and the novel challenges facing our institutions today, so we might better seek novel, inclusive solutions.

The answers were mapped out visually, allowing participants and W2050 staff to infer relationships, trends, and different understandings of these challenges. 

Diversity was key to achieving meaningful outcomes, as diverse perspectives on common problems produce synthesized, unique ideas that spark innovation. To this end, participants worked in groups curated to ensure maximum diversity of professional experience, age, and background. Not only did this approach expose participants to perspectives they may not otherwise engage with, it also ensured that voices not often heard—from students to representatives of nascent democracies—to influence outcomes. This makes our outcomes unique, not coming from a particular kind of expert or from an organization with a particular remit. Our outcomes reflect this report’s purpose of opening up how we think about democracy and the challenges facing it, without advocating specific solutions.

How the report was made

Each group worked together to map their list of threats to democracy on a 2×2 chart. These charts were later collected and the results mapped together. W2050 analysts examined the synthesized map for thematic trends and clustering on different parts of the chart. Given the unique nature of how data was gathered this analysis was semi–structured and qualitative, with an aim of examining unexpected relationships and trends to generate high–level takeaways.

How to use this report

The chart is embedded on an online platform which allows dynamic zooming and navigation of a ‘virtual white board.’ The combined, fully mapped out chart is represented so that readers can examine our data points for themselves and infer groupings, patterns, and trends. Challenges are colored green for ‘internal’ challenges, and pink for ‘external’ challenges. The chart has a vertical and  horizontal axis. The horizontal axis represented how likely each group considered a given challenge to democratic institutions to be fully realized. The vertical axis represented how severe an impact that challenge could have, if fully realized. Challenges were coded by color—green for challenges arising from internal pressures and pink for challenges arising from external pressures. Each challenge was ‘headlined,’ meaning a short one–line description.

W2050 analysts identified four major thematic groupings, termed here ‘thematic clusters.’ These are indicated on the chart with colored circles, which have in turn been color coded to match analysis embedded on the main page, to the sides of the chart. There is also a legend for reader reference.  

Read about our methodology below.

Each chart had a vertical and  horizontal axis. The horizontal axis represented how likely each group considered a given challenge to democratic institutions to be fully realized. The vertical axis represented how severe an impact that challenge could have, if fully realized. Challenges were coded by color—green for challenges arising from internal pressures and pink for challenges arising from external pressures. Each challenge was ‘headlined,’ meaning a short one–line description.

Each of these eight charts were then mapped on top of each other. 

W2050 analysts examined the synthesized map for thematic trends and clustering on different parts of the chart. Given the unique nature of how data was gathered this analysis was semi–structured and qualitative, with an aim of examining unexpected relationships and trends to generate high–level takeaways. The full combined chart of challenges is also provided, so that readers can examine it themselves.  

Each participant was invited to write a short commentary reflecting on their conversations at FOD or developing ideas on the future of democracy that were informed by those conversations. These are all provided to help the reader contextualize the chart.

Why a visual representation?

The format of this report is unique, relying largely on interactive visual tools to relay information. This format was chosen for two reasons. First, as reader taste changes more traditional reports have become less engaged with. Finding effective ways to distribute information of this type amid changing audience tastes and expectations is critical for the health of our democracies—given that a well–informed citizenry is a pillar of democracy.

Second, this report uses information which was gathered in a novel way—via a collective intelligence project in which participants discussed issues and came to a consensus on each data point later analyzed. This data is highly perspective, so data analysis accordingly required a qualitative approach. This report’s visual representation gives the reader access to the main data points used in this report in a way that allows for intuitive processing.

How information was gathered

Participants were divided into eight working groups of approximately eight individuals. Each group was curated to ensure maximum diversity of professional experience, age, and background.

Greater diversity in collective intelligence exercises ensures outputs have been considered from multiple, often novel, perspectives—leading to more holistic and sophisticated outputs. 

Participants were asked to individually prepare a list of what they consider to be challenges to our democratic institutions today. 

As a group, participants discussed the attributes of each challenge individually identified on three parameters:

• Does this challenge arise from dynamics internal to our democratic institutions and societies, or does it arise from external forces?
• What is the potential severity of the impact these challenges could have on our institutions?
• What is the likelihood that these challenges will be fully realized as things stand today?

Each group then mapped out these challenges on a 2×2 chart. After all challenges were mapped, groups discussed any patterns, groupings, or trends they saw emerging. Notes on these conversations were shared with W2050 staff.

Analytical process

Given the novel nature of how the data for this report was gathered—and the collaborative nature of perspectives given—analysis of the chart and participant notes was qualitative, similar in style to documentary or narrative analysis. 

Following the completion of FOD, the fully filled out chart from all groups were mapped one on top the other.

Mapped out challenges were examined for patterns, groupings, or trends—W2050 analyst findings were then measured against those of each group.

Trends and patterns are discussed as ‘high–level takeaways’, with observations from the chart being considered alongside group notes, where applicable.

Groupings of thematically similar challenges were also identified and marked on the chart by colored graphics. These colors are matched to analysis, which is embedded on the main webpage on the sides of the chart.

One of the most commonly cited threats to our democratic institutions is related to the fear that democracies are failing (or perceived to be failing) to meet the needs of the populace could erode institutions. There were differing views among participants about the legitimate responsibilities of democratic institutions. This suggests it may be inevitable that significant portions of our populations at least perceive that democratic institutions are failing them. 

Nearly a third of external threats were clustered in the highest ranking threat category. More than double the number of internal threats were identified, but fewer than a quarter of them were mapped to the highest ranking threat category.

There were wide–ranging conversations about failures in education and the need for alternative literacies like civic literacy, societal literacy, and digital literacy to remedy our internal societal ills. This tracks with trends World in 2050 has observed in recent conversations around polycrisis challenges – with experts  across a variety of sectors emphasizing the importance of these more contemporary-facing ways of thinking about literacy.

When mapped out, groups largely placed these challenges in the low–to–moderate end of the spectrum in both likelihood and potential impact. This seems to indicate at least guarded optimism that we’re on the right path to solving these challenges.

While concerns over democracy’s ability to deliver was an oft-cited concern, economic wellbeing was not specifically raised as a challenge all that often. Challenges related to inequality and poverty figured in group conversations. Yet groups tended to cluster these challenges as either being not critically likely to erode our democratic institutions, or as likely to have low–to–moderate impacts.

While the citizenry’s faith in elections and democratic institutions more generally were an oft-cited concern, there was far less anxiety over the actual technical integrity of elections. This suggests that the perception of democratic weakness is a more pressing danger than an actual technical weakness – at least in the core democratic institution of electoral processes.

Today’s polycrisis threatens democracies worldwide. Bad actors exploit cultural and educational systems to suppress dissent. To safeguard democracy, we must promote critical thinking and protect educational and cultural institutions, writes Gregory Houston. read more.

With the majority of the world being avid consumers of the news, one crucial theme has emerged: Democracies are under attack. However, democracies vary in resiliency based on where they fall on the spectrum of mature or nascent development of democratic institutions, writes Eileen Ackley. read more.

As threats to our democratic institutions increase even as faith in those institutions decline, we are entering a difficult to break cycle of compounding negative effects. In mature democracies, the answer lies in reforming the electoral system, writes CPSC’s Rep. Glenn Nye. read more.

At the Future of Democracy Forum, a diverse group of leaders reached a key point of consensus—social breakdown is a far bigger threat to our democracies than we’re acknowledging. We must meet this division with understanding and connection to reinvigorate democratic society, writes John Gable. read more.

Advancing information and communication technologies offer economic opportunities and new civic platforms but face censorship and exploitation. To preserve democracy, we must invest in education—equipping us with cyber skills, critical thinking, and civic education, writes Camille Stewart Gloster. read more.

While external threats to democratic institutions are serious, it is internal social discohesion that is the greater threat. To do better, individuals must take ownership of their role as members of a free and open society, writes Ethan Brown. read more. 

Around a billion people around the world have been forcibly displaced. The mismatch between their mental health needs and the capacities of their hosts to meet those needs pose long–term problems for democracy, writes Amy Kaslow. read more.

The greatest threats to our democracies are internal, says Amb. M. Ashraf Haidari, as Western leaders lack the will to truly support fragile, nascent democracies like Afghanistan. read more. 

‘Grind culture’—a notion put forward by some social media influencers about work, status, and profit—is very attractive to young men today as a way to earn status. Its rhetoric is also hostile toward institutions, making these young men less likely to take part in civic life, writes Leo Sereni. read more.

2022
photograph
24 x 16 in

DISSENT IN DEMOCRACY

Maybe after a lifetime of documenting the worst horrors that mankind can inflict on its own species the fourteen principles of democracy are just a long forgotten somewhat infuriating naive faded dream. Like a fading dream in the early morning hours, those vaulted principles we dearly cling to slip from our perceived waking reality into a memory we just can’t seem to grasp!

When looking through my viewfinder at a mother in floods of tears at losing her whole world or a child clinging to her dead fathers scattered bloody body parts, democracy is an absentee landlord at the very best.

Maybe photojournalists, more eloquent than I, can wax lyrical about democracy in their particular genre of imagery, but for me democracy is not a concept that comes to mind in documenting the acute suffering of the most vulnerable in our society.

The following was distilled from an interview with a Syrian refugee (mother of six)

CONSTANTLY

…………………………

I have buried my children

I have buried my husband

I have cried constantly

I feel pain constantly

I fear constantly

I want to smile constantly

I want to laugh constantly

I am a refugee

I did not choose to be

I am the same as you

Why do you fear me constantly?

Maybe democracy lies dormant in her sad words.

2017
Welded iron sculpture and charcoal lines on photo
23.5 x 17.75 x 3.5 in

For anyone who was born, grew up and lived their life in a democracy, it is understandable that they live in the place they choose. German philosopher Immanuel Kant published, in 1795, the essay “Perpetual Peace.” In arguing that states must be democratic before they can attain lasting peace, Kant laid down the foundations of “Democratic Peace Theory, which remains popular in political science today.

Becoming a refugee is a result of wars and life spent in a dictatorship.

In my exhibition “Entire Life in a Package” I gave expression to the pain of the refugees who are forced to leave their homes and find their future in a new and unknown place.

Through my art, I try to touch the human soul and express the whispers of the hearts of the refugees who flee from war zones and totalitarian countries; in their packages, they manage to take from their homes all their hopes for the future.

I sculpt with iron by welding my ideas, and in some of my works I attach the sculptures to flat photographs. “Entire Life in a Package” was exhibited at the United Nations in New York and Geneva, as well as in 11 museums around the world. I chose to sculpt on photographs of refugees who fled from Syria and Africa.

It is my feeling that what people take with them from home gives them strength and hope to continue the difficult path.

In Germany I met Syrian refugees. They thanked me for expressing their feelings. I am an Israeli and when they hugged me, I felt that art can build bridges between people, and hopefully between countries too.

Orna Ben-Ami

2021
Water-based paint on gesso board
9.5 x 11.5 in (including frame)

“The Great American Cruise” addresses how the aspirations and values of American democracy are turned on their head when faced with issues such as migration and conflict. One example is the migration crisis on the U.S.–Mexico border. In this work, Lady Liberty and Lady Justice navigate a boat of migrant children, while an oarsman uses Lady Liberty’s torch to steer the ship. The boat continues its perilous journey despite being targeted from many enemies visible and invisible, with radar and targeting imagery flashing across its path. All the while, an audience of Americans watch from the shore. It is not clear if the fences on the shoreline are to prevent the migrants from entering, or if the Americans themselves are caged.

I’ve used art to explore these tensions because the practice of drawing and painting shapes intellectual thoughts with a freedom that the spoken or written word does not. Art also creates space for empathy that is unfortunately missing in much of the discourse on migrants in the United States, and without empathy, democracy will remain in the crossfire.

2023
Photograph
24 x 15 in 

Waste pickers of Pretoria and other South African major cities are individuals who collect recyclable materials from bins, streets, and landfills to earn a living. They are typically from marginalized communities and may include migrants and unemployed individuals. They work tirelessly, often starting their day in the early morning hours, scavenging through waste to find items such as plastic, glass, and metal, which they can sell to recycling centers. Their income varies greatly depending on the quantity and quality of materials collected, but it’s often meager, barely enough to make ends meet.

While some people appreciate their role in recycling and waste management, others may view them with disdain due to the perception of them as scavengers. However, waste pickers play a crucial role in reducing landfill waste and contributing to environmental sustainability. Their work also serves as a form of informal recycling, which complements formal waste management systems.

Despite facing social stigma and economic challenges, many waste pickers are resilient and resourceful individuals who make significant contributions to their communities and the environment.