Will Human Nature Allow Democracy to Survive?

American children are taught that democracy is the best form of government. I remember teachers saying that popularly elected governments are the “natural” endpoint of all societies.

But is this true?

Research findings from Political Science and Evolutionary Psychology suggest that democracy may not be “natural,” whereas authoritarianism ... might be.

Before diving into the research data, it’s important to point out that I believe that democracy is the best form of government, and nothing I’m about to report means that I support authoritarianism.

That said, behavioral research suggests that human nature might constrain how long democracies can survive and how widely they can spread.

What research says

Let’s look at the data.

According to the Economic Intelligence Unit of the Economist media organization, the global democracy index score is at just 5.17 out of 10, its lowest point in the history of the annual index.¹

• Only 6.6 percent of the world's population lives in true democracies.
• 54.1 percent of the world population lives in flawed or hybrid/authoritarian states.
• 39.3 percent of the world population lives under authoritarian regimes.

Homo sapiens have existed for roughly 300,000 years. Until the rise of agriculture 10,000 years ago, anthropologists theorize that leadership in hunter-gatherer groups depended on the group’s need for skills such as hunting and plant medicine.² With the advent of organized agriculture, more centralized, primarily hereditary autocratic rule became the norm. True representative democracy—for more than just the privileged classes—is about 240 years old (dating to the American Revolution). Thus, what we think of as democracy has only been around for .08 percent of humans' entire existence.

Pew Research reports declining support globally for democracy in 12 advanced nations, from a high of 64 percent in 2017 to 49 percent in 2024.² Independent research confirms this trend.³

A 2024 Ipsos poll found that 41 percent of surveyed American voters agreed with the statement, Having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections is a very good or fairly good system.¹¹

Evolutionary psychology (EP) suggests reasons for these trends.

EP asserts that there is a mismatch between modern, technologically advanced civilizations and the primitive conditions that drove the evolution of our brains to their current forms. This takes the form of unconscious biases and behavioral proclivities that govern our behavior (e.g., eating sweet, fatty foods made sense 200,000 years ago, but not now).¹² Studies of hunter-gatherer groups thought to represent our ancestors indicate that different kinds of leaders in such groups emerge under different conditions: Consensus builders tend to be leaders in times of peace and plenty, whereas aggressive, war-like males tend to lead during conflicts.^4-7

The unconscious tendency of humans to prefer aggressive, large, “masculine,” combat-proficient males as leaders during conflicts explains why modern authoritarians gain power either by convincing others that they face a crisis or by creating such a crisis. Harvard Political Scientist Pippa Norris calls our inbuilt tendency to move away from democracy in times of turmoil and conflict “The authoritarian reflex.”¹⁰

According to global opinion surveys in developed countries, immigration and globalization are widely perceived as growing threats, and these perceptions correlate with a shift toward more authoritarian tendencies in governments in many of the surveyed countries.^15-17

Another reason that authoritarianism flourishes in times of crisis is that individuals with psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism (the Dark Triad) exploit such crises to advance into higher leadership positions.¹⁸ Moreover, a recent survey showed that dark-triad individuals are over-represented in top leadership positions.¹³ Dark Triad leaders typically govern through fear, intimidation, and bullying, all of which are antithetical to democracy.¹⁴

Taken together, geopolitical trends predict that a “pull” for authoritarianism will remain strong as long as populations feel threatened by immigration, globalization, and other factors, while the “push” from opportunistic, domineering individuals to move into leadership positions will ensure an ample supply of individuals to meet the demand for strong-arm leaders.

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Conclusion

Does this mean democracy will vanish in the blink of an evolutionary eye?

It depends.

The statistics on declining support for democracy show that progress toward democracy globally is not as inevitable as many of us were taught. And, the drivers of authoritarianism—turmoil and disruptive change—are unlikely to lessen. Indeed, technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics that cause job loss, along with other disruptors such as pandemics, overpopulation, and climate change, may well increase the perception that we are under siege and, thus, a preference for undemocratic leaders.

In the end, civilizations are like the young person in the parable who seeks advice from a wise elder about how to determine which “wolf” of their inner nature will win: the good wolf or the rapacious wolf.

The answer for the young person in that parable, as with homo sapiens as a whole is: “The wolf you feed.”