American Democracy’s “Customer Satisfaction Problem”

Introduction

You know the old adage that it is “all in how you phrase things?” This is a bit of wisdom that holds true, whether we are talking about personal or professional relationships or yes, marketing!

One thing is very true today: Democracy in America may have many, many problems - but a major one among them, perhaps the key one, is in its marketing. In short, it doesn’t have any marketing! All democracy seems to have today, from local governments to state houses to the halls of DC, is bad publicity! We see dysfunction - or, in many cases, a lack of any function, as is the case in Washington today. Perhaps even worse, we associate politicians with money, with graft and corruption - or at least the perception of such - being a common theme from local officials all the way up to top leaders in Washington, DC. And yes, depending on whether you or on the “Red Team” (the Republicans) or the “Blue Team” (the Democrats), you likely believe that President Joe Biden or, alternatively, President Donald Trump is our most corrupt leader ever!

The Gallup Report on Democracy in America

And so it is in this context that I nearly spat out my morning coffee when I opened one of the way, way too many newsletters that I subscribe to in my email inbox (yes, time for a “Marie Kondo-level” clean out of my inbox!). This newsletter came from Gallup, perhaps the leading consumer opinion research company on the planet. It detailed the findings of one of their latest research studies, and it came with the - no doubt - provocative headline: “Record Low in U.S. Satisfied With Way Democracy Is Working.” The headline grabbed my attention, first, as an American, but second, as a strategic management professor and consultant.

Now, the dissatisfaction with the state of our democracy should be concerning to anyone who cares about our country - and yes, that should mean all of us! Both as a citizen and yes, a bit of an expert on marketing and positioning, I saw Gallup’s headline as being not just intentionally provocative (yes, it got me to click on it!), but it was, I felt, also a bit - perhaps a very big bit - misleading and even dangerous, especially given the context of the state of our politics and culture today.

The Gallup study uncovered Americans’ faith - or rather, their lack thereof - in government, and the results are, well, unsettling to say the least. In a nutshell, last month (December 2023) the Gallup pollsters asked a representative group of our fellow Americans a simple question:

Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in this country?

At the present time, only 28% of Americans said that they were satisfied with their government - meaning that 72% were dissatisfied with the way democracy is working presently.

Figure 1 - Gallup: Are Americans Satisfied or Dissatisfied with Democracy, 1984-2023

Source: Gallup, “Record Low in U.S. Satisfied With Way Democracy Is Working,” January 5, 2024 (Used with permission)

This is the ninth time since 1984 that Gallup has asked this specific question of U.S. residents. In their first survey (in December 1984), at the height of “morning in America” under President Ronald Reagan, fully 60% of Americans said that they were satisfied with the way that democracy was working in the country. As you can see in Figure 1 (Gallup: Are Americans Satisfied or Dissatisfied with Democracy, 1984-2023) above, however, after a bit of a roller coaster ride in the 1990s, due to scandals and Presidential politics, Americans’ satisfaction with their government has been on a rather steep decline. In January 2021, Gallup asked the satisfaction-dissatisfaction question again, right after the January 6th Insurrection. At that low point in our history, 35% of Americans told Gallup pollsters that they were satisfied with the way democracy was working in the U.S. Fast forward to the present, 2 years post-insurrection, and that number has now eroded to just 28% of the citizenry. And as Figure 2 (Gallup: Are Americans Satisfied or Dissatisfied with Democracy [By Political Affiliation], 1984-2023) shows, while Democrats are more than twice as satisfied with our democracy today as are their Republican counterparts, there is widespread dissatisfaction with government across the political spectrum,

Figure 2 - Gallup: Are Americans Satisfied or Dissatisfied with Democracy (By Political Affiliation), 1984-2023

Source: Gallup, “Record Low in U.S. Satisfied With Way Democracy Is Working,” January 5, 2024 (Used with permission)

Jeffrey M. Jones, the author of the Gallup report, observed that the low ratings Americans give to their democracy today may, in fact, be a response to the combination of “economic unease amid higher prices, disapproval of the jobs President Joe Biden, Congress and the Supreme Court are doing, increasing hostility between the political parties, former President Donald Trump’s persistent political strength, and concerns about election security, voting rights and the independence of the courts and the justice system.”

The bottom line, though, is stark: Americans aren’t very happy at all with the way democracy is working in our country, and this has profound implications not just for our politics but, perhaps, for our very future!

Analysis

To me, both as an American first and as a management/marketing expert second, I find the whole proposition of the Gallup single-question study more than a bit troubling. I find that the simple question of how satisfied one is with the current state of democracy is a bit too simple - well, maybe a lot - as we head into what looks to be a very tumultuous year in 2024.

Being “dissatisfied” with the current state of democracy is one thing, but what about the alternative? What if there were no democracy, replaced with autocratic or even totalitarian rule? Going into the 2024 election cycle, this seems - unbelievably - a very real alternative, something unthinkable merely a decade ago. And yet, the 2024 Presidential election seems to be boiling down to a simple question: Will American democracy survive? However, in this context, Gallup’s study - and yes, it’s just this year’s edition of a question they have asked of Americans for decades now as to how they feel about their government, seems oddly positioned and just a bit dangerous at this point in time.

The critical question today is not whether our government works well - it doesn’t, but that should surprise no one. Democracy is a slow, sometimes very messy proposition. Sometimes, it is frustrating to see how slow the gears turn to make matters “work” in a democracy. Benjamin Franklin once famously said that "democracy is the worst form of government except for all others." So, while democracy certainly has its flaws and shortcomings, self-government is - and always should be - preferable to being governed by the few - or the one. Our democracy should not be an “either/or” proposition; it should be a given.

So with that thought, seeing that only roughly a quarter of Americans are currently satisfied with the state of American democracy, American democracy needs some real public relations help. We need to talk about the virtues - and the challenges - of self-governance and speak about them not just focusing on today but in the context of what has been and what could be in terms of other forms of government where one does not have the option of being dissatisfied. Only by better “marketing” democracy - versus autocratic, totalitarian, and even theocratic alternatives - can our democracy survive. And no, it won’t survive for long unless our democracy does better (i.e. produces results), something no amount of PR can do. So, the time is now for leaders, across not just the public sector but across the private sector as well, to help lead the charge to make our democracy work better for all and, yes, improve democracy’s “customer satisfaction problem!”

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About David Wyld

David C. Wyld is a Professor of Strategic Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, publisher, executive educator, and experienced expert witness. You can view all of his work at https://authory.com/DavidWyld. You can subscribe to his Medium article feed at: https://davidwyld.medium.com/subscribe.

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