Why free societies thrive – even when they age

An individual's household register and a marriage certificate from Shanghai, China on August 15, 2024. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Anticipating and adapting to demographic shifts is a long-term strategic challenge that governments of all types will struggle to overcome in the years ahead. It’s often assumed that autocracies will hold the edge in this process; because decision-making in such states is highly centralized, they are thought to be more efficient and therefore better equipped to make sweeping reforms. But that assumption is wrong. Democratic societies hold several key advantages – flexibility, creativity, and resiliency – when it comes to dealing with such society-wide changes. And those advantages will become more apparent and important as most of the world’s countries start to age and then shrink. 

The truth about dictatorships

Autocracies are sometimes assumed to be better at managing big changes because the leadership of such states has relative freedom of action; they are able to set new policies, prioritize, and govern without having to worry about the grinding friction more typical of democracies, which must contend with clashing perspectives, priorities, and proposals. Supposedly unencumbered by day-to-day politics, autocracies appear more adept at the kind of long-term planning required for responding to big population shifts. 

One of the most dramatic examples of such top-down policymaking is China’s one-child policy, which was designed to prevent an anticipated population explosion in the country. A closer look at the policy, however, reveals that reality is much messier: The policy had huge downsides, and its results are less clear than sometimes assumed. Take the downsides first: To keep Chinese families from having more than one child between 1980 and 2016 (when the policy was abandoned), Beijing utilized punitive methods such as financial penalties, mass propaganda campaigns, and forced sterilizations and abortions. And yet for all its nastiness, it’s not even clear how well the policy worked. Yes, Chinese birth rates dropped dramatically during the period it was in force – but other factors such as increased access to education for women and internal migration to cities were also at work. What’s more, the supposed success of the one-child policy produced a set of complex dynamics and demographic challenges that have proved difficult for Beijing to reverse and for Chinese society to navigate. And the Chinese Communist Party’s obsession with control has prevented the abandonment of other policies that could incentivize an increased birth rate. For example, the “hukou” system, or “household registration,” continues to prevent migrant laborers born in rural areas from relocating their families to urban areas and accessing better social and educational services. 

Autocracies may be able to impose drastic policies that create a veneer of order, but regimes that rely on censorship and fear tend to suppress feedback loops and limit access to reliable data that is crucial to informing policymaking. Where corruption and the desire to maintain power reign, the incentives to address societal problems significantly decrease. For instance, amid chronic budget shortfalls stemming from corruption, weak economic growth, outmigration, and overall mismanagement, Cuba fails to provide anything but a bare minimum of support to its elderly population – among the most rapidly aging populations in Latin America, with more than 16% of its citizens aged 65 and older. 

Migrant workers sit next to signs advertising their work skills in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China on March 13, 2021. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Sometimes messy is better

Beyond these problems suffered by autocracies, there are three other reasons why democracies may prove better at dealing with demographic shifts. 

First, the coming changes may not require drastic policy reforms to accommodate. Big social changes often happen in a slow and nuanced fashion and in many different phases. The factors that affect and are affected by demographic change include age, nationality, language, income, education, marital status, family composition, culture, religious beliefs, and health, among others. Making changes in any of those areas is difficult and not something autocrats do better.  

Second, it’s a mistake to cast democratic institutions as constraints on policymaking; in fact, they are assets. Democracies often get things wrong, and they can be slow and sclerotic in dealing with change. But they are also designed to include diverse perspectives in their policymaking and promote debate and experimentation, and they are much better at responding to citizens’ concerns about changes. 

Third, vibrant democracies benefit from contributions and innovations from independent civil society groups and businesses that inform, address, and advance policy solutions. In the United States, for example, the AARP and the National Council on Aging have built strong reputations for educating elderly citizens and their caregivers about available resources while also conducting research and supporting policy debates. 

For more insight into how the contrast between systems plays out in the real world, let’s look again at specific cases where autocracies and democracies have responded to the twin demographic trends of aging populations and declining fertility.  

As other contributors to this issue observe, increasing immigration is one way to supplement a shrinking or aging labor force. Yet this is an area in which autocracies are struggling. Russia, for example, has long relied on supplementing its domestic workforce with temporary migrant laborers from neighboring states with large unemployed youth populations. But after decades of abuse at the hands of employers, xenophobic nationalists, anti-migrant state media campaigns, and corrupt public officials that seem intentionally unchecked by authorities, many workers from Central Asian countries are now refusing to return to Russia. Moscow’s attempts to recruit foreigners to work and even fight in Ukraine, the kind of war it’s hard to imagine a modern democracy launching, have further discouraged potential foreign migrants.  

A woman does her laundry in Havana, Cuba on May 4, 2023. (Photo by Enrico Dagnino/Paris Match via Getty images)

Now contrast Russia’s ability to attract immigrants with Japan’s efforts. In 2019, the administration of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe responded to severe labor shortages by changing the country’s notoriously tight immigration policy to offer five-year visas for skilled workers in a dozen specified fields. Despite widespread opposition to increased immigration in the past, Prime Minister Abe’s changes were received without significant political pushback. In fact, most critics argued that the changes didn’t go far enough to protect foreign workers’ rights or to provide pathways for more cohesive, long-term integration into Japanese society. Policymakers responded to the public debate by showing that they can implement lessons learned. In February, the government ended a technical internship program that was found to have been exploited by employers who abused foreign workers. And in June, Tokyo adopted a new law that expands foreign workers’ access to five-year visas and creates another visa category that can lead to permanent residency. These efforts are beginning to pay off; between 2018 and July 2024, Japan’s foreign resident population increased from 2.4 million to more than 3 million.  

As that and other cases show, democracies are much better at dealing with social problems, pressures, and potential unrest than are autocrats – who really only care about protecting their own power. Another example – Bangladesh – illustrates that point. Following 15 years of increasingly autocratic rule, in which corruption increased and space for civil society was progressively eroded, the country exploded into protests this summer as students frustrated by the lack of good job opportunities took to the streets. Rather than acknowledge the public’s grievances – the protesters took issue with a reinstituted government policy on hiring civil servants that benefited the ruling party and reserved almost a third of positions for the descendants of veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence – the government responded with violence. But that only led to more protests, culminating in the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the fall of her government. 

Protesters wave national flags during a protest in Dhaka, Bangladesh on August 4, 2024. (Photo by MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

A society’s ability to ride out the effects of demographic shifts ultimately relies on its resiliency and resourcefulness in the face of change. Democracies with robust institutions and open space for policy debate are better positioned to harness pluralism – social tolerance for individuals or groups who have different backgrounds, views, or beliefs – that will be required to negotiate adaptations as the internal dynamics of a society change. While there’s no guarantee democracies will always respond to the needs of changing populations in the most effective way, they are better equipped to make progress and more likely to weather such shifts without the same kinds of major disruptions that Bangladesh and other illiberal and autocratic systems have experienced. 

Never waste a crisis

Perhaps the biggest challenge democracies will face as they try to prepare for the coming demographic shifts is how to balance addressing short- and long-term challenges – especially since the former tend to dominate the spotlight. For example, Washington’s current strategy for addressing the root causes of migration from Central America to the United States is a good step toward dealing with the effect of that migration on the United States over the long term (though the Bush Institute has recommended additional steps).  

At the end of the day, the coming demographic shift will offer as many opportunities as problems. These include alleviating pressure on natural resources, stronger labor market participation, and greater incentives for innovation in workforce efficiency, among others. Because democracies are better at incorporating public debate, civil society, and the private sector, they should be better poised to take advantage of these opportunities. 

That societies and their dynamics change over time is a fact. Open political systems with room for diverse voices, free expression, and public debate stand a much better chance at successfully navigating such change than do autocracies.