A fifth of Europeans surveyed said that they would in some circumstances prefer to live under a dictatorship amid growing dissatisfaction with the current democratic order or indeed lack thereof in their countries.
According to a poll from AboutPeople of voters in France, Greece, Romania, Sweden, and the U.K. found that 22 per cent, or one in five people, would prefer a dictatorship over democracy, POLITICO reported.
The survey found that 26 per cent agreed with the statement: “If there was a capable and effective leader in my country, I wouldn’t mind if they limited democratic rights and were not accountable to the citizens for their actions.”
Additionally, the poll revealed a widespread dissatisfaction with the current democratic order in their nations, with 76 percent of Greeks expressing discontent with their democratic system, followed by 68 per cent in France, 66 per cent in Romania, 42 per cent in the United Kingdom, and 32 per cent in Sweden.
Greeks also led the way in dissatisfaction with their mainline political parties, with 55 per cent of respondents saying that they do not even identify with the party that they voted for at the last election.
The same could be said of 53 per cent of Romanians, 47 per cent of Britons, 43 per cent of French respondents, and 32 per cent of Swedish voters.
Currently most major institutions are under water in terms of trust, with just 43 per cent trusting the European Union, followed by the media at 27 per cent, and political parties at 24 per cent.
Meanwhile, one in three respondents said that they did not view the rise of the so-called “far-right” in Europe as a threat to democracy.
Indeed, the European Union and the UK have faced growing criticism, including from the Trump administration in the United States, for their increasingly anti-democratic methods in preventing the supposed far-right from taking power at the ballot box.
This was most blatantly seen in Romania at the end of 2024 when the country’s presidential election was cancelled after the first round of voting which saw a surprise victory for Călin Georgescu, who aligned himself with the MAGA movement.
Preventing him from potentially taking control in Bucharest, the Romanian intelligence services alleged that his popularity on social media platforms like TikTok was a result of Russian manipulation and therefore the Constitutional Court cancelled the second round of voting. Georgescu was then barred from running in the re-do elections and has since faced criminal prosecution.
Populists have also alleged that deep state lawfare is at the heart of the criminal prosecution of French National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, who was widely regarded as the frontrunner to replace President Emmanuel Macron until a court issued a five year ban on her running for any office over alleged mismanagement of party finances.
When lawfare is not deployed, establishment parties of supposedly left and right beliefs will frequently team up to prevent outsider parties from rising to power, as was recently seen in Germany, where the establishment left-wing Social Democrats remained in power after losing the last election. They did so after making a coalition deal with the establishment right-wing Christian Democrats, who refused to work with the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Faith in democratic outcomes has also been undermined by parties failing to deliver on their basic promises to the public, as was seen with Boris Johnson in the UK, who oversaw record levels of immigration after having campaigned on promises to lower immigration.
Commenting on the finding of the poll, assistant professor at Democritus University of Thrace in Greece, George Siakas said: “The survey does not express a general dissatisfaction or an uncritical rejection of the democratic system… It expresses citizens’ dissatisfaction with the way it works, with clear anti-elite and ‘anti-establishment’ characteristics.”
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