The slow asphyxiation of Western democracy in 4 charts

A study by two academics for the Journal of Democracy this summer found that those born in the 1980s are less than half as likely to consider living under democracy as essential as those born before World War II.

Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk found that US and European citizens have become "more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy, and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives."

"Over the last three decades, trust in political institutions such as parliaments or the courts has precipitously declined across the established democracies of North America and Western Europe. So has voter turnout," Foa and Mounk said.

They looked at data from the World Values Survey from 1995 to 2014 along four themes - citizens' support for the democratic system; their support for civil rights; their engagement with the political process and their "openness to authoritarian alternatives such as military rule."

"What we find is deeply concerning," they wrote.

Here are the charts: