Sometimes it feels like each new headline is another death knell for our democracy. But activists and academics across the political spectrum are formulating radical proposals to counter the threats facing 21st-century democracy. Cambridge is a hub for this new thinking – the University is home to many research groups working on democratic reform, including several in advisory roles to the government. So what are the threats facing our democracy, and what can we do to protect it?

Dr Roberto Foa works at the Bennett School for Public Policy, and is Cambridge’s most cited politics scholar. Dr Foa identified disenfranchisement as a key risk factor facing Western democracies. Conventional parties run out of political capital when they fail to deliver material improvements to people’s lives; people who reject the system then look to populists. “Populism speaks to emotion, not reason,” he said. “It’s a momentary expression of rage.” Foa suggests that populists direct this rage at the democratic establishment, and even at democracy itself, for their political benefit.

“To change democracy, you have to participate in it”

A related risk is that our democracies become outpaced by technology. Professor Gina Neff heads the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, a policy research team that works to ensure that our democracy is keeping up with rapidly advancing technology. There are worries about the influence of AI on elections, she explained, as seen in the use of AI-generated pro-Russian propaganda in the 2024 Romanian elections, and the use of deepfake pornography as a tool of intimidation against female politicians in the 2024 Brazilian election. Technology in the hands of foreign powers, particularly Russia, can enable cyber-sabotage, information warfare and election interference. New tech also enables populist-style politics. “Social media is great at harnessing rage and discontent,” Dr Foa told me, “but it’s not well-equipped to move beyond that, to policy.”

Councillor Elliot Tong is the Green Party national spokesperson on democracy, and a Cambridge councillor, who is very critical of our current democratic system. First-past-the-post means that dominant parties siphon in tactical votes despite being unpopular, he said, and the system leads to parties without a real popular mandate entering government. Dr Foa agrees here; he said it was “absurd” to call a system democratic if people don’t vote for who they actually want to be in power. Cllr Tong also repeatedly referred to the “corporate interests” that influence Westminster politics. A recent investigation by Democracy For Sale found that private interests could gain direct access to MPs by paying just a couple of thousand pounds to a networking service.

When I asked about Green Party populism, Cllr Tong said that he believes Zach Polanski’s leadership style is populist, but that’s not a bad thing. “Zach is doing a terrific job bringing new members to the party.” An innovative social media campaign has massively boosted the Green Party’s popularity and membership. They now have the largest youth and student wing of any political party and recently surpassed 100,000 members; they follow Labour in the polls by only two points.

“First-past-the-post means that dominant parties siphon in tactical votes despite being unpopular”

This is a testament to the power of social media in politics. But Professor Neff pointed out that, as long as we keep using this technology, this method of doing politics isn’t going to change. If governments don’t react, our democracy will become increasingly defined by the people, qualified or not, who are dominating TikTok and Instagram.

Nevertheless, there is reason to be optimistic. Democratic reform is a bigger political topic than it was, and constitutional change may yet happen. Cllr Tong explained that the Greens want to replace first-past-the-post with a ranked-alternative voting system, where citizens cast several votes in a ranked order. This would mean you can vote however you want without the risk that voting for your first choice will disadvantage your second. The Liberal Democrats are in favour of an even more radical proportional representation model. Dr Foa suggested that, if our country continues to transition into a four- or five-party system, the chance of electoral reform only increases: the Labour government may yet see it as the only way to prevent a Reform government being elected on a minority popular vote in 2029.

Professor Neff was very excited by the possibilities of revitalising democracy with technology. The Minderoo Centre is involved in pilot projects where information about local council votes, plans and elections is digitally broadcast to citizens. One case the Minderoo Centre is involved in, called Waves, is the biggest trial of digital democracy to date, and should allow thousands of people in Camden and South Staffordshire to shape local government policy straight from their phones. Dr Foa tells me that in Melbourne, the city government used an open-source Wiki site to allow locals to design city planning infrastructure, to great success.

Everyone I spoke to was insistent that to change democracy, you have to participate in it. Students can vote twice for local elections, Cllr Tong told me – once where they live and once where they study - and students can and should influence Cambridge’s government. There is a bright horizon of technology and constitutional reform helping to facilitate collaborative, direct democracy. But as funding for policy research groups like those in Cambridge tightens across the country, we must remember that if we don’t improve and reform our democracy, it won’t survive forever.