This paper was prepared for a roundtable discussion undertaken at the Australian National University in February 2024 titled - Monitoring what matters to strengthen Australia’s democratic resilience. The paper has been updated based on discussion at the roundtable, and introduces the literature on the ‘democratic recession’ and ‘democratic resilience’ and then discusses the strengths and weaknesses of different survey approaches to make inference about associated constructs for the Australian population.

The paper then then introduces two surveys with a broadly representative sample of Australian adults, followed by the latest results from the surveys. Using this data, the authors discuss what is known about the demand for democracy in Australia, and people’s evaluation of whether the supply is sufficient to meet that demand.

Specifically, the paper provides:

• an introduction to some of the issues relevant to democratic resilience, including concerns expressed about declines internationally in democratic structures and institutions (or lack thereof).
• Some issues related to the applicability of this international discussion to the Australian context.
• A discussion of the importance of assessing the quality of survey data using the TSE approach.
• An overview of trends in the views of Australians about democracy and government and recent Australian data on democratic resilience.
• Concluding comments on the state of democratic resilience in Australia, and our ability to measure it.