The Paradox of Democracy’s Success: Behavioral Science Helps Explain Why We Miss Autocratic Red Flags

Numerous psychological experiments have confirmed how this everyday behavior can emerge. Our experience tends to underweight and underestimate the likelihood and impact of rare events for the very reason that they are rare.

Extremely rare and catastrophic events, especially in the financial market, have been called black swan events. Neglecting their possibility has contributed to insufficient banking regulation and catastrophic financial meltdowns such as the global financial crisis in 2008.

People in Western Europe have experienced democracy and growing prosperity for more than 70 years. They have been spared, up to now, the experience of autocratic takeovers and therefore may underestimate the risk of democratic collapse.

Paradoxically, the very success of democratic systems may thus also sow the seeds of their potential undoing. This is a phenomenon akin to the paradox of disease prevention, where the success of preventive measures such as childhood vaccinations may undermine their perceived need, thus increasing complacency and vaccine hesitancy.

A further ominous connection exists between the erosion of a democratic system and the experiences of its citizens. As history has shown, democracies do not suddenly go up in flames. Democracies tend to die slowly, one stab at a time, until a tipping point is reached.

The public is unlikely to perceive a risk to democracy when a political leader breaks with a convention. But when repeated breaches of democratic norms by political elites are tolerated, when rhetorical transgressions escalate, and when a deluge of lies and manipulative claims becomes “normal”, then the public’s failure to punish the early signs of such behavior at the ballot box may have drastic consequences.

In the same way that a nuclear power plant may appear to be operating safely until the last safety valve is broken, democracies can appear stable right up until they flip into autocracy.

One way to counter these problems may be to simulate experience of the risks, even if only through proxies. For instance, disaster training centers in Japan simulate the experience of the visceral dimensions of an earthquake and its swift temporal dynamic in a way that even the most graphic warnings cannot.

We argue that we can, equally, simulate how life feels in an authoritarian regime. Europe is home to hundreds of thousands of immigrants who have lived in autocracies and who can be invited to classrooms to share their personal experiences.

Vicarious detailed experiences can be highly persuasive. Similarly, people can gain insight into what it meant to be a political prisoner by visiting places like the former Stasi prison Hohenschönhausen in Berlin, especially when the guide is a former inmate. There are numerous other ways to emulate the experience of oppression and authoritarianism, thereby informing those who have been fortunate enough never to endure it.

The seemingly persistent non-occurrences of risky events can be seductive and misleading. But we are not enslaved by what we haven’t yet experienced. We can also use the positive power of experience to protect and appreciate our democratic systems.

Ralph Hertwig is Director, Center for Adaptive Rationality, Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Stephan Lewandowsky is Chair of Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol. This article is published courtesy of The Conversation.