Democracy in Crisis: The Neoliberal Roots of Popular Unrest

Preface

Publishing an updated English-language version of this book in 2019 has a decisive advantage over the German publication that came out just a short time after the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election victory: we don’t have to spend much effort convincing readers that we are in a deep crisis. Two years on, pessimism and doomsday scenarios are ubiquitous, and crisis metaphors dominate political debates and media discourses. Prominent political figures warn of resurgent nationalism, even fascism, and societies are divided by deep cleavages that seem almost impossible to bridge. And yet, we think there is an alternative to defeatism and inner exile. It rests on taking stock of the crisis we are facing to envisage more hopeful political futures.

What exactly is this crisis about? Answering this question has become more difficult since the first edition of our book appeared. The more the crisis has metamorphosed over time, the more its causes seem disjointed and indecipherable. On the book market, national perspectives and country-by-country analyses dominate, and, as we would contend, distract our view from more common, cross-national problems. A case in point: Germans often see the crisis of democracy as a result of a decade and a half of Angela Merkel, a partially failed reunification, institutional shortcomings, and illiberal remnants from a pre-democratic past. But if that were so, if this particular crisis really were a German phenomenon, arising from distinct traditions and path dependencies alone, why is there a National Front in France that easily made it into the last round of the presidential elections, and why was there a referendum for Brexit, at very much the same time?

Also, a pan-European view wouldn’t be much more helpful. One could of course point to the refugee crisis as the common denominator of Europe’s predicament. Obviously, if you look at the programs of right-wing extremist parties across Europe, that certainly seems to be a rallying point. But if that were the sole cause of the crisis of democracy, why do we see similar developments in the United States, where such an influx of refugees never took place? Vice versa, if Hillary Clinton lost to Trump only because of Russian interference or the Electoral College, why the similarities with Europe? Are these parallel developments of polarization and anti-establishment backlash across these contexts a coincidence? To put this question differently: Why do we see Trumpism—as a new political form that by far exceeds Trump—on both sides of the Atlantic?

There seems to be something larger at stake that transcends individual national and even continental contexts. In this book, we speak of crisis in the singular for a reason: what we are arguing is that in the transatlantic context, we are experiencing variations on a theme. The language of populism, by contrast, can distort our understanding of what is going on. It is a symptom of a much deeper crisis of liberal democracy. Overcoming this predicament will require the reinvention of the political sphere, a rejuvenation of its institutions and mechanisms of responsiveness—and a new, nontechnocratic debate about the collective futures of our societies: urban, regional, national, and global. If the crisis of liberal democracy, despite all the risks that it poses, has one advantage, it binds back into the political process constituencies that had opted out before. It might animate those whom the democratic deficits of our institutions have led into political apathy. It should be the work of politicians, but just as much of civil society and academia, to harness this reinvigorated debate. We can use its momentum to discuss a range of deep transformations that our societies are facing in terms of rapidly changing labor markets, climate change, and potentially emancipatory uses of new technologies.

The crisis of liberal democracy is profound. Rebuilding trust in democratic institutions will be a long-term task. But this is also a moment to think big. Yes, incremental improvements are possible and necessary. They are also much needed, given deep cynicism in the political process. But what incites the imagination is not campaign finance reform. Moreover, simply calling out Trumpism as chauvinistic and racist is necessary but won’t do the trick. A politics of indignation will not suffice to counter a politics of resentment. There is an urgent need to develop economic and social policy visions beyond anti-Trumpism: something neither the Democrats in the United States nor the Social Democrats in Germany have been very successful at articulating since 2016, even though some more recent developments seem promising. If our analysis in this book is correct, the long-term strategy needs to grapple with questions of identification and legitimacy that are intricately linked to questions of social justice and equality.

If liberal democracies were particularly successful at times when economic and political spaces overlapped, that is, when citizens and workers were able to collectively raise their concerns and be heard by political and economic institutions, as we argue, the question is how political spaces need to be redrawn to map onto the realities of a globalized economy. Putting politics above market logics implies a revitalization of democratic debate: a weighing of possible alternatives to globalization or alternative ways of organizing it. This is precisely the debate we would like to encourage with this book.

Chapter 1

No Alternatives?

Washington, D.C., January 20, 2017: Donald Trump steps up to the podium on the west front of the U.S. Capitol. Behind him are previous presidents and the establishment, objects of the newly elected president’s scorn during preceding months. In front of him stands a crowd of curious onlookers who get to hear a highly unusual inaugural address. Unusual? New presidents normally use these speeches to put the trench warfare of the campaign behind them, heal the divisions in the country, and unite its people to take on current challenges. Every American president of the twentieth century has faithfully performed this reconciliation ritual, which is intended to put the commander in chief’s personal mandate at the service of the common good and insert it into the narrative of a glorious national history. Thanking the former incumbent and paying tribute to the peaceful transfer of democratic power are firmly anchored in the protocol of the handover of authority. Actually, the addresses are nothing special, mostly a lot of political symbolism.

That’s what people were expecting. But Trump had other plans. With the very first sentences of his speech, after a cursory thank-you to his predecessor Barack Obama, Trump emphasized the special significance of his presidency: Because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another—but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the American people. Obama’s expression, which could be observed on camera during much of the speech, clouded over, at least by the time the following sentences were uttered: For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished—but the people did not share in its wealth.¹

That Trump was no ordinary presidential candidate was already well known. But many people hoped the office would quickly put its stamp on him. Trump’s inaugural address, in the capital, was a first indication that these hopes would be in vain. Moreover, at that time there were already signs that the crisis of democracy would not be confined to the United States. Other nationalists were also seeing that their hour had come. Trump favorite Nigel Farage, the former head of the British right-wing U.K. Independence Party, was also in Washington for the inauguration. He saw Trump’s success as an omen for renationalization on the European side of the Atlantic. According to Farage, Brexit was the first chink in the wall, and Trump’s victory was another Brexit from the global scene. In turn, this dynamic would find further expression in Europe, for example, in the Italian referendum in which the people took a bazooka and fired a whole salvo at the pro-E.U. establishment, and thus gave voice to those who were defending themselves against the centralization of power and against Brussels’s rigidity and its rules.²

So it was not terribly surprising, the day after Trump’s speech, as the Who’s Who of European right-wing populism met in Koblenz, Germany, to evoke their common purpose, that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front (now the National Rally) in France, spoke triumphantly of 2017 as the year in which the peoples on the European continent are waking up. She called out to the audience, which throughout her speech was constantly chanting, Merkel must go, Merkel must go, saying that we are living through the death of one world and the birth of a new one.³ For Le Pen, and more generally for this rebirth of nationalism in Europe, the element of fear is central, as it is for Trump. Whether it is fear of Islamization, which supposedly makes women even in proud Germany afraid to show their blonde hair—as Dutch demagogue Geert Wilders, leader of the Party of Freedom, emphasized in Koblenz⁴—or fear of the European Union, which started out regulating the curve of cucumbers and ultimately wants to regulate our thoughts, as Frauke Petry, party spokesperson of Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) at the time, asserted.⁵

But where does this openness to populists come from? How could the growing strength of the right-wing nationalists come to pass? So suddenly? Out of nowhere? There is only one thing most pundits on both sides of the Atlantic seemed to agree on after the turbulent spring of 2017: they would not have thought the rise of the neonationalists was possible.

How Did It Happen?

Let us dial back, then, to the evening after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. On the night of November 8, 2016, as the results of the election were gradually becoming clear, the media showed images that could hardly have been more different. On one side, in a windowless auditorium in midtown Manhattan, we see a small band of frenetic Trump supporters in red baseball caps bearing the slogan Make America Great Again. The international press is not allowed into the room to follow the improvised victory speech of the surprised president-elect as he addresses the not-very-large group of his supporters. A few miles away, we observe a completely different picture. In the pompous Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, to the cheerful accompaniment of a brass band, Hillary Clinton followers, confident of victory, are forced to witness the loss of one state after another—North Carolina, then Wisconsin, then Michigan—until they are finally asked by campaign chairman John Podesta to leave the room without having caught a glimpse of their candidate. The unexpected defeat in the contest with a grotesque outsider had hit her too hard, it was rumored in the days that followed.

Not one of them saw Trump coming—not even Trump. Days later, Hillary Clinton was still in shock. None of the experts had given the eccentric real-estate billionaire even a sliver of a chance. At the beginning of the campaign, members of Clinton’s team went so far as to hope for Trump as the opponent: this is how little he was seen as serious competition. Like everyone else, Nate Silver, the numbers guru for political predictions, was also miles off with his prognoses. Even during the night of the election, on the front pages of established media, such as the New York Times and Politico, the probability that Clinton would win was calculated at 90 percent.

And yet Trump won.

But was the electoral outcome actually so surprising? Months before, with Brexit, a very similar pattern could have been observed. There, too, everything seemed clear on the evening before the decision. Next morning came the unexpected electoral result, the shock. The neonationalists of the U.K. Independence Party were jubilant. Elsewhere, too, a very similar departure from the status quo was occurring. In France, the extreme right party National Front, under the leadership of Marine Le Pen, reached the second round of the presidential election. The plot thickened. And the general impression of a crisis of democracy becomes even stronger if we look beyond the borders of European nations and the United States, the countries that in the past have often boasted of their democratic tradition. Further east, for some time now, there has been talk of so-called sovereign democracy, in Russia, or illiberal democracy, in Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. Turkey, under Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has also turned away from its own democratic tradition. Some people, looking at China’s example, even think that economic growth is not compatible with democracy anyway—that it is quite possible to do without the latter, in everyone’s interest.

What is new now, though, is that the United States and member states of the European Union—countries that not long ago would still have been described as functioning, even exemplary democracies—have also stumbled. The crisis that is evident in both places is an expression of divided, increasingly unequal societies that feel decoupled from the advantages of globalization. In a number of countries, the crisis of democracy is directly expressed as the centralization of power in the hands of individual personalities. Most of these nations show a lack of accountability by elites to their electorate. In the transatlantic context, there is a desire for strong personalities who promise a way out of the deeply felt economic and social crisis. In the United States, this took the form of Trump on the conservative side and Bernie Sanders on the progressive side. Both men mobilized supporters based on a critique of the political establishment and demands for thoroughgoing political change. Sanders even spoke of a political revolution and called himself a socialist—something that in the United States, a country that supposedly never wanted to have anything to do with socialism, would normally be considered certain political suicide.⁶

But where is this crisis actually to be found? Is the indignation just an allergic reaction by the educated class and left-leaning intellectuals to the fact that their favored candidates did not emerge victorious in the election? Isn’t the whole meaning of democracy that there is a pluralism of opinions? Are Trump and Brexit, to put it differently, not proof positive that democracy is working?

In fact, we are not talking primarily about an institutional crisis. Trump was democratically elected, the established control mechanisms (still) seem to be functioning, and there is political resistance to his absolutist claims. That is correct. And yet it is quite clear that we are facing a tangible crisis of democracy—one, however, that can be understood only if we look further back than the events of the last couple of years. The causes of the crisis of democracy are much more profound than the rise of various demagogues, autocrats, and oligarchs. That triumphal procession of populists is a symptom of the crisis, not its cause. This is decisive. They are the consequence of a deeper-lying crisis of democracy. The failure, then, is not only to be blamed on those people who are now voting for antidemocratic politicians, as though they had just been too simple-minded to understand how good free markets had actually been for them. It must be sought in policies that over the past decades have become increasingly removed from the interests of broad segments of society.

The Contours of the Crisis

Our thesis is as simple as it is radical. We argue that the core of the crisis lies in a politics of no alternatives. Over the last four decades, this politics has put the market above all other social and political relations. It starts from the assumption that the welfare of the public is best served by the efficiency of private actors. It disparages public goods as a waste of taxpayer dollars and regards state intervention as clumsy interference. Economic and social policy, says the politics of no alternatives, must adapt to the givens of globalization. In this brave new world of the markets, everyone is responsible for himself or herself.

On one hand, therefore, we are talking about a crisis of political practice. In the name