Next month, I will be presenting my new book at three functions hosted by The New Zealand Initiative. Democracy in Decline is part lament and part call to arms. It is about the decline of democracy in five of the oldest democracies on earth, countries that, before just about anywhere else, worked out how to count everyone as equal and then let the numbers count as a way to resolve debatable and contested social policy line-drawing disputes. It is about inroads into letting the numbers count democratic decision-making in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Some of this democratic erosion is due to: unelected judges adopting ever more expansive approaches to interpreting bills of rights; the ever-inflating pretensions and claims of international law in both its treaty-based and so-called customary forms; supranational bodies such as the European Union; and the essentially aristocratic preferences of lawyers, self-styled human rights activists, special interest promoters, lobby group members and bureaucrats, who calculate that they will lose in the court of public opinion and so prefer to do an end-run around majoritarian politics.

The book begins by setting out the differing baselines and starting point commitments of our five longstanding democracies – countries that differed on initial commitments to democratic decision-making, and still occasionally do. From there it argues that in all five countries the trend today is downward, and that democracy is in decline.
 
The second part of the book considers the causes of that decline, and that the blame lies with some shifting combination of over-powerful judges, with the pretensions of international law, supranational organisations and undemocratic elites.

The third part shifts from the causes of decline to the ways in which that decline is kept largely from view, examining how the decline in democracy in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada and the US is masked or disguised. Here the focus is on the various ploys that are used to mask this decline in letting the numbers count decision-making.

Democracy in Decline then finishes with a short consideration of the challenges that threaten even more decline in democratic decision-making.

In the author’s view, majoritarian democracy delivers the best consequences, on average, over time. The recent decline in that sort of democracy in five of the oldest, most stable and successful democracies in the world needs to be stopped and then reversed. Starting now.

The New Zealand Initiative will host Professor James Allan in May for a lecture tour to promote his new book Democracy in Decline.