Wolfgang Linden, University of British Columbia
April 8, 2025
The media make an urgent case that democracy is threatened and autocrats are gaining ground. Democracy fatigue is in large part attributable to an inherently slow process, requiring many compromises and engagement by citizens. I argue that we are not helpless and offer action strategies to make the effort required to maintain democracy more palatable.
As a researcher in psychology, I discovered (as have others) that the basic principles driving human behaviour are remarkably similar across a wide range of domains. They include child development, social psychology, psychotherapy and also politics. Now, as an emeritus professor, I am applying this knowledge to the wider-reaching application of ways to strengthen democracy.
Using research-based and realistic views of the degree of control we have over politics, I propose four actions for individuals in support of strengthening democracy.
1. Make voting social and celebratory
A yardstick of a healthy democracy is election participation, which has dropped over time and hovers around two-thirds of eligible voters, with slightly higher rates in Canada than in the United States. Human beings are by nature social and seek company, and that alone is a perfect reason to go voting together with family and friends; make it an event.
We know that couples go voting together and thus have greater participation rates than singles. Also, efforts to mobilize reluctant voters have possible spillover effects to other hesitant voters in their nearby environment. Lastly, it makes especially good sense to engage any first-time eligible voter because starting a voting habit early builds habitual voting. You could even encourage this first-time voter to get a (paid) job in the polling station!
2. Reframe voting probabilities
Sentiments like “my vote counts for little” are common. Nevertheless, we often see cliff-hanger results where tiny pools of votes count a lot.
In 2024 in British Columbia, for example, three out of 93 races showed the two leading parties apart by fewer than 225 votes. One of these battles was ultimately won with a 22-vote difference, which really mattered because it was the one seat needed to swing the entire election towards winning a majority in the legislature.
3. Use the word ‘us,’ challenge use of ‘they’
Some politicians use fearmongering as a deliberate strategy and label non-supporters or people who differ from them as dangerous. “They” get blamed for the world’s ills, and can be excluded, or worse.
When people around you overdo the divisiveness, ask them who are “they” and in what ways are they really different? Ultimately, when studied worldwide, all of “us” seek physical safety, supportive social networks, and stable, decent-paying jobs. We hope for fairness and want to support our families.
Also, when dealing with issues like pollution, for example, remember that dirty air and water or radioactive waste don’t care about politically defined borders. They are all “our” garbage and “our” problem.
4. How to shift from ‘they’ to ‘we’
One proposition to help shift from “they” to “we” is to engage in new hobbies that excite you but involve people who are predictably unlike you. If you are a desk jockey by day, you might meet people with very different backgrounds when you join a hiking group or a woodworking co-op.
Once you build this bridge and better understand others’ worlds, it becomes easier to work on solutions for joint social problems. At the workplace, hiring people with very diverse expertise has been shown to lead to more creative and satisfactory solutions than by drawing experts from a narrow pool.
Also, by seeking consensus with others, you strengthen your own conflict-resolution skills. They can then be used in other places like marriage, condominium self-government, workplace politics or in holding groups of friends together.
Yet another way of actively adopting the idea of “us” is to join advocacy groups that work on topics important to you and your community. Participedia is a global platform for anyone interested in public participation and democratic innovation. They have explored hundreds of organizations in 159 countries.
Bottom line, neither heroic behaviour nor exceptional courage is required to engage in these readily available building blocks of a sustainable democracy.
Wolfgang Linden, Professor Emeritus in Clinical and Health Psychology, University of British Columbia
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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.