The discontent afflicting democracy stems from two main sources. One is a pervasive sense of disempowerment—a feeling among many that their voices no longer matter, that they lack a meaningful role in shaping the forces that govern their lives. In the United States, ahead of this election, 85 percent of Americans told pollsters they believed their voices did not matter to those in power. The other is the widespread sense that the moral fabric of community is unraveling—from family to neighborhood to the nation. This links to Ivan Krastev’s point about the boundaries of political community and Seyla Benhabib’s reflections on the anxious discourse surrounding migration, a topic I would like to address further in a moment.
The populist backlash against elites and mainstream political parties, along with the re-election of Donald Trump, draws from these sources of discontent, which have deepened and become more toxic over recent decades. To fully understand the roots of the politics of grievance, anger, and resentment, we must look back at the past five decades, during which the divide between winners and losers has widened, poisoning our politics and driving us further apart. This divide reflects the widening inequalities in income and wealth, driven by the market faith, and more broadly, by the neoliberal project of globalization, financial deregulation, and the financialization of advanced economies. It’s crucial to note that this project was embraced not only by pro-business conservatives but also by mainstream center-left parties.
When Reagan and Thatcher came to power, they explicitly argued that government was the problem and that markets were the solution. However, when they were succeeded by center-left political figures such as Bill Clinton in the United States, Tony Blair in Britain, and Gerhard Schröder in Germany, these leaders moderated the harsh edges of Reagan and Thatcher’s laissez-faire approach, but never challenged the fundamental premise of market faith — the idea that markets and market mechanisms were the primary instruments for defining and achieving the public good. Thus, both center-left and center-right mainstream parties oversaw a neoliberal globalization project. But it wasn’t just the economic inequality that fueled anger and resentment; the resentment also arose from the changing attitudes toward success that accompanied the rising inequality. Those who landed on top during these decades came to believe that their success was their own doing, the measure of their merit, and that they therefore deserved the full rewards that the market bestowed upon them and, by implication, those who struggled, those left behind, deserved their fate as well. This way of thinking about success—what I call “the tyranny of merit”—was the moral companion of the neoliberal faith.
Neoliberal globalization and meritocratic attitudes toward success, taken together, fueled the toxic polarization that paved the way for the politics of grievance. Donald Trump exploited this discontent powerfully in the United States, while similar right-wing authoritarian populist parties across Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere tapped into this widespread backlash.
Much was said in the run-up to the election in the United States about the gender gap, and indeed, there was a significant gender divide in the voting for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. However, even more pronounced than the gender gap was the education gap. The divide in voting patterns between those with and without a university degree was deeper than the gender divide between these two candidates. This speaks to the meritocratic hubris of the era, and to the sense among many working people that elites looked down on them.
By 2016 and continuing into 2024, we’ve witnessed a significant realignment in voting patterns among working people. By 2016, the Democratic Party had so alienated working-class voters that they played a crucial role in Donald Trump’s victory. This shift has only deepened in 2024. Historically, voters without university degrees supported center-left parties—such as the Democratic Party in the U.S., the Labour Party in Britain, the Socialists in France, and the Social Democrats in Germany. However, in all these countries, the trend has reversed. Center-left parties have become more aligned with the values, interests, and outlook of the professional, credentialed, and well-educated classes, while alienating working people. As a result, many of these voters have turned to Donald Trump in the U.S. and to populist, authoritarian right-wing parties across Europe.
Part of the challenge moving forward is recognizing that the path to right-wing populist backlash has been paved by the combination of neoliberal globalization and financialization, projects embraced by center-left parties, alongside a credentialist prejudice and meritocratic attitudes toward winners and losers. To address the crisis this has created, it is essential to acknowledge the failure of the neoliberal globalization project and to work toward articulating and developing a moral and political economy of citizenship. This would be a project of democratic renewal that takes citizenship seriously, as both Ivan and Seyla have pointed out. Achieving this won’t be easy, as it requires center-left parties to embrace a left-populist economic agenda, similar to the one Bernie Sanders has proposed in the United States, while also combining it with a social democratic or center-left version of patriotism and solidarity.
The center-left has often been wary of patriotism, associating it with the xenophobia of right-wing hypernationalists. I believe this is a mistake. Any project aimed at democratic renewal must take the meaning of citizenship, membership, belonging, and solidarity seriously. This includes acknowledging the importance of borders in relation to the flow of goods, which highlights the failure of NAFTA-like free trade policies, as well as the unfettered movement of capital, a key element of the neoliberal project. This brings us to the complex issue of migration, which Seyla referred to as an “anxious discourse.” The solution is not to replicate the xenophobia of the far-right, but to recognize that patriotism is too powerful a moral and civic aspiration to cede to hypernationalists.
This requires a project that is economically more radical, and perhaps more populist, but also one that addresses the cultural anxieties felt by people who believe that a country unable to control its borders is a country unable to control its destiny. Self-government and political community go together. The answer to right-wing populism is a bold project of civic renewal that takes solidarity seriously, that asks what we owe one another as fellow citizens.
Cover photo: A man holding an American flag and wearing a jacket that reads “this is what democracy looks like” is pictured following a “March of Silence” and call for a statewide general strike in support of all Black lives in Seattle, Washington on June 12, 2020. (Photo by Jason Redmond / AFP)
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