By Fareed Zakaria

It has been quite a week across the world. South Korea’s president placed the country under martial law but was rebuffed by parliament, which is now taking steps to impeach him. In France, the prime minister and his government received a vote of no confidence for the first time in more than 60 years. These seemingly disparate events do have a common underlying theme: a crisis of democratic institutions.

On the face of it, South Korea is an amazing success story. Its economy boomed by more than 5 percent for five consecutive decades, a record matched by only one other place on the planet: Taiwan. South Korea today is richer than Japan in terms of gross domestic product per person. And yet it has been roiled by deep polarization and vicious political battles. The backdrop for President Yoon Suk Yeol’s martial law announcement was 2½ years of deadlock between the liberal opposition and the conservative president. The opposition accused him of using the government’s powers to attack his opponents and the media. He accused the opposition of misusing its powers by trying to impeach members of his administration. The feud will probably end with his own impeachment.

In France, the story is different, but it rhymes. President Emmanuel Macron has been trying for years to push through reforms, many of which have triggered intense opposition. His last major round, which raised the age at which state pensions kick in, could only be enacted through a rarely used procedure that bypassed Parliament. In the last elections, his centrist political party was decimated, and Parliament is now dominated by the far right and left. They conspired to bring down the prime minister.

The common theme is that people increasingly do not trust traditional democratic institutions and the elites who run them. In a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 85 percent of U.S. adults said elected officials “don’t care what people like me think.” Eighty percent said they felt anger or frustration toward the federal government. This sense of rage about the governing elites is not limited to the United States. Mainstream political parties everywhere — from Germany to Japan — are being battered in the polls.

We are living through a period of rapid change, what I have called an “age of revolutions” — economic, technological and cultural. Old patterns are being cast aside. South Korea now faces a new era of slower growth and demographic decline, all combined with greater social aspirations. Europe faces a new era of threats from Russia, economic competition from China and an America less willing to be a generous leader.

People have often noted the decline of trust in many societies, especially in the United States. But, as the writer Derek Thompson has noted, what is really happening is not just a decline but also a shift in trust. People have lost trust in the medical establishment and are placing their trust increasingly in podcasters such as Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia (and even politicians such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.). They have lost trust in traditional media and are transferring that trust to individual journalists and commentators. Tens of millions of Republicans lost faith in their party and pinned their hopes on a single individual: Donald Trump. This shift from institutions to individuals is enabled by new technologies that allow individuals to have the kind of reach and influence that was once the preserve of large organizations.

The problem is that liberal democracy has been sustained by institutions and procedures.

Government by individual is, in the end, government by whim.

This year’s Nobel Prize in economics went to scholars who ask the simple questions: Why do most countries fail to become rich and successful? And what explains the few that succeed?

Their answer: strong institutions.

The handful of countries that have broken out of poverty and bad government have established good, fair institutions and procedures that go beyond any individual. That explains why landlocked, resource-poor Switzerland has become one of the richest countries in the world, whereas other landlocked, resource-poor countries are mired in dysfunction. It is why Singapore, a swampy sandbar in Southeast Asia, now has one of the world’s highest average incomes.

Liberal democracy has been marked by its emphasis on procedures, not outcomes. We honor the process even when we dislike the outcome.

The drive to quickly get what we want, even at the cost of bypassing procedures and undermining institutions, is deeply dangerous. That is true when it is Trump appointing slavishly loyal apparatchiks to head key departments of government. And it is true when Joe Biden pardons his son after promising the American people he would not interfere with the workings of the justice system.

If, out of frustration with our current, transitory problems, we give up on the enduring institutions that have built liberal democracy, we will be turning our backs on one of humankind’s most significant achievements in modern history.

Fareed Zakaria writes a column for the Washington Post.