I develop a needs-based theory of democratic decline. Affluent liberal democracies excel at meeting material needs yet erode institutional pathways to esteem and purpose, producing ontological insecurity that populist movements exploit. Reconstructing Maslow through a Nietzschean lens of self-mastery and linking this to Giddens’s ontological security, I model human development as the growth of independent capabilities within institutions. I then apply Needs-Based Discourse Analysis to the United States and United Kingdom (2015–2025) to show how appeals to belonging, esteem, and purpose structure populist rhetoric.