The good press of the word democracy did not become widespread until after World War II. Since then, all the regimes have been given that surname, be they authoritarian systems (the popular democracies) or a western liberal court. The democratic became the desirable, so it became difficult to measure their support in the polls. Everyone claims to be a Democrat just as they claim to be against corruption or for world peace.
One way to overcome this pitfall is to ask as an alternative whether, under certain circumstances, it might be tolerable for a strong man to take over the country. Something that does not mean that levels of 85% of Spaniards in favor of democracy are reached. The political scientists Montero and Torcal have already shown many times how, despite our traditional political disaffection, in Spain support for the democratic system is equivalent to that of the rest of European countries.
However, it is precisely in the conditionality or not of democratic legitimacy where the battle is fought. Classical literature has tended to distinguish between the concepts of legitimacy: diffuse or specific. The fuzzy one refers to the extent to which a political system is considered just as its procedures and rules, per se. The specific one deals with whether support for the political system is instrumental, is conditioned to the returns it generates.
Traditionally it was said that democracy, in the face of the dictatorship, was safe from external shocks because the fairness of its procedures could be separated from its results. That is, with an economic crisis you get angry with the government, but you do not question the democratic rules. Now, the political scientist Pedro Magalhães has pointed out that this vision is too complacent; supporting our systems is much more affected by their performance than we thought.
For some time, some social sectors looked at China with undisguised envy. A country that has grown spectacularly in the last decade without going through the hassle of slow decision making and the control of public opinion. The health management of the coronavirus has been used to reinforce this argument; containment has been possible by making drastic decisions and violating rights that for our standards are fundamental.
Hence, doubts about whether democracy is not the optimal model to compete or manage global threats are increasingly heard in more forums. Something that starts from the terrible idea that democracy only has value for the returns it generates, not for the rights it guarantees. But, and although this ineffectiveness of our model is not proven (or, even if it were so), as an infection this thesis begins to spread, something that leads us to an uncomfortable question: Are we Democrats or does it depend?
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