Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2025
“The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, 1930.The quote from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks from 1930 is eerily relevant to our current historical moment. The morbid symptoms that he had in mind included Mussolini's fascist regime that had imprisoned him and the growing strength of Hitler's National Socialist Party in Germany. Today's morbid symptoms are the rising threats to democratic governance posed by ultranationalist right-wing movements and leaders. Using the fascist label for Vladimir Putin, Victor Orbán, Jair Bolsonaro, and Donald Trump remains controversial partly because these leaders have not yet assembled paramilitary gangs dressed in uniforms of the same color. Nevertheless, their unrelenting hostility to liberal democratic norms and institutions is beyond debate.
But why is democratic governance now experiencing the most intense challenges since the 1930s? One powerful explanation emphasizes the global reign of neoliberal or market fundamentalist economic ideas from the late 1970s down to the current moment. Those ideas have led to reduced taxation of corporations and the very wealthy, and constraints on the ability of governments to protect citizens from market fluctuations. Moreover, those ideas have changed the ground rules of the global economy in ways that further constrain what governments can provide to their own citizens. The result has been dramatic increases in income and wealth inequality and relatively slow growth of average household incomes. Frustrated voters have responded by turning to outsider candidates, sometimes of the far right, who promise to restore the good times of the past.
A compatible line of argument emphasizes political realignments that have come with rising educational levels in developed economies. Thomas Piketty has called this the “Brahminization of left parties.” Historically, the majority of voters with a college education had voted with right-wing parties, but in recent decades, much of this group has shifted their allegiance to parties of the left. This has diminished the focus of these parties on improving the economic situation of voters with lower levels of education.
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