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What Happened to Liberal Democracy?: Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity - Hardcover

Acemoglu, Daron

 
9798217182169: What Happened to Liberal Democracy?: Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity
Hardcover
ISBN 13: 9798217182169
Verlag: Dutton, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

International Bestseller

From Daron Acemoglu, 2024 Nobel laureate in economics and coauthor of Why Nations Fail, an ambitious and expansive inquiry into the biggest story in global politics over the last hundred years: the rise and fall of liberal democracy.

"A very important work and a must-read." —Thomas Piketty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

"Daron Acemoglu is one of the most brilliant and insightful thinkers I’ve ever known. This book is a tour de force that left me feeling more optimistic about the future than I have in a long time." —Steven Levitt, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Freakonomics

The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 raised hopes that we were one step closer to the triumph of liberalism. Soon, many predicted, we would all be living in functional liberal democracies. Sustained economic growth would benefit all segments of society and war would be a relic of the past. A generation later, one can only ask: What happened?

Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu argues in this powerful book that liberal democracy flourished when it pursued its core promises of shared prosperity, democratic governance, and the free pursuit of knowledge. But liberalism, a philosophy built to challenge power, never fully adjusted to becoming the establishment. Nor was it able to deal with the economic and social disruptions that digital technologies wrought. Worse, in the postindustrial economy, liberalism turned its back on its core promises. As a segment of college-educated elites became politically dominant and separated from the rest of society, they sowed the seeds of widespread inequality while intensifying efforts to reshape mass culture and values.

Acemoglu, using the interdisciplinary lens that has won him acclaim, documents the extraordinary, unparalleled progress that liberalism created, and recounts how liberal democratic institutions plunged themselves into crisis over the last several decades. Looking at rapid advances in technology, shifts in regulatory environments, global political history, and economics, Acemoglu lucidly lays out the successes and failures of our most important political system. And he envisions a new way forward, which he calls working-class liberalism: a philosophy that prioritizes shared prosperity, empowers communities, and accommodates a range of values and views.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Daron Acemoglu is an Institute Professor at MIT. His previous books include the New York Times bestseller Why Nations Fail, The Narrow Corridor, and Power and Progress. He is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, the BBVA award, the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics, and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

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Chapter 1
Liberal Democracy in Crisis

But the century that began full of self-confidence in the
ultimate triumph of Western liberal democracy seems at its close to
be returning full circle to where it started: . . . to an unabashed
victory of economic and political liberalism.

-Francis Fukuyama

I follow the Moskva

Down to the Gorky Park

Listening to the wind of change.

-Scorpions

June 16, 1989. Six coffins rest beneath the monumental steps of the Mu˝csarnok colonnade, a neoclassical art museum dressed in black crepe for that day. Five hold the remains of Prime Minister Imre Nagy and his comrades, executed by the Soviets in 1958 for leading the uprising to end Soviet rule in Hungary. So secret were their graves that it took seven years to find them. The sixth is empty: a mute casket for every unnamed victim of the failed revolution. A quarter million Hungarians fill the square, hopeful that this is a new day for their country and fearful that the events of 1956-58 will repeat.

The last speech is delivered by a bearded young man representing Fidesz, the Alliance of Young Democrats, Viktor Mihály Orbán. With an unwavering voice, he bellows:

If we believe in our own strength, we are capable of bringing the communist dictatorship to an end. If we are determined enough, we can compel the ruling party to submit to free elections. If we have not lost sight of the ideas of fifty-six, we can vote for a government that will immediately enter into negotiations leading to the immediate beginning of Russian troop withdrawals.

Seventy thousand Soviet troops still occupied Hungary at the time, but that was about to end, partly thanks to Orbán's powerful call for democracy and independence from Soviet control. Orbán would then go on to serve as one of the youngest prime ministers in Europe.

This was the background to Francis Fukuyama's declaration that the end of history had arrived and that a brighter future for liberalism and liberal democracy was upon us. Fukuyama wasn't alone in his sentiments. Many believed the world had changed, that the drive toward greater democracy and liberty was unstoppable. In 1991, the legendary German rock band Scorpions would give another voice to these hopes by singing about the failed coup that spelled the collapse of the Soviet Union-an event that seemed to bring Fukuyama's prediction one step closer to reality.

Yet the widespread optimism has now given way to a sense of crisis, and Viktor Orbán is again at the forefront. By 2014, still in power, he had completely changed his tune. Gone were calls for liberty. Orbán instead proudly announced that he was "building an illiberal state" and "work-based society" while "defending European Christianity." He centralized executive powers in his hands, clamped down on freedom of speech, and closed media outlets and universities. Orbán is an inspiration to many antiliberal politicians across the world, including in the United States. He has become a symbol of the downward arc of "liberalism."

For a while, liberalism and liberal democracy inspired the world, delivering much of what people longed for. Then came the crisis. What happened?

The Meaning of Liberalism

"Liberalism" has a muddled meaning in common parlance. Depending on the context, it can be used with left-leaning or right-leaning connotations, such as progressive versus classical liberalism. Its meaning shifts with geography. Liberalism denotes a left-leaning ideology in the United States but typically designates a right-leaning, free-market stance in Europe. Liberalism also refers at once to a political philosophy, to the institutions built upon it, and to the practices of activists who draw-sometimes loosely-on its ideals.

This reflects the fact that liberalism is a big tent, defined by a core set of ideas shared by all its varieties. All liberals would agree on the desirability of basic individual rights and freedoms (including the right not to be coerced and the freedoms of expression, religion, association, and choice); constraints on power, especially political power; and broad protections for equality before the law. Liberals believe that progress is feasible and desirable, even though they may disagree on how "progress" should be defined. Most liberals, especially left liberals, would also add to this list a firm commitment to helping the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. This bundle of beliefs is central to liberalism around the world and is typically fused with ideas of democracy, hence defining liberal democracy as the archetype of liberal institutions. Democracy, as I'll explain, is neither at odds with liberal ideas nor an add-on but an integral part of liberalism's values. Liberalism demands self-government and the responsibilities that go with it.

This book is as much about liberalism as a political movement and liberal democratic institutions as it is about liberalism as a political philosophy that undergirds the movements and institutions. I often focus on the left-leaning corner of the big tent (such as New Deal liberalism in the U.S. and social democracy in Europe) because this kind of liberalism has historically been an engine of material and social progress. It is also this left-leaning version of liberalism that has shaped the core of liberal democratic institutions and spurred the expansion of basic rights to the working classes, women, ethnic minorities, and other groups, and set the agenda for much of the post-World War II era in the industrialized world. Any movement that departs from this bundle of core commitments-especially from the freedom from coercion and freedoms of expression, religion, association, and choice-is not liberal. This includes fascism, authoritarianism, Marxism, communism, and leftist and rightist identity-based ideologies.

It was this left-leaning liberalism that lifted aspirations, spurred movements on both the Left and the Right to borrow its ideas, and, for the most part, succeeded. It is also this version of liberalism that is in crisis today-both as a political movement and in the form of liberal democratic institutions.

The data tell the tangible part of this crisis-most vividly for the United States, though similar patterns appear across much of the West. Over the last three decades people of all ages have become increasingly hesitant to affirm that democracy is the best form of government. The shift is particularly pronounced among Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five.

Americans also report shockingly low levels of trust in democratic institutions. As of June 2023, only about a quarter of Americans said they had a great deal or quite a lot of trust in the presidency or the Supreme Court-and just 8 percent said the same about Congress. Newspapers and media fared no better. Gallup polls dating back to the early 1970s show that people once placed far greater confidence in these bedrock democratic institutions. We are witnessing an erosion of democratic trust at an unprecedented scale.

When the Pew Research Center asked Americans to describe the state of the country's politics in one word in 2023, the most common choices were "bad," "corrupt," "divisive," "chaos," "messy," and "polarized." The last one is particularly apt. In survey after survey, Americans report levels of polarization unparalleled in recent history. In the 1990s, about half of surveyed Americans reported holding an equal mix of left and right views. Today, there is much less common ground between Republicans and Democrats. In the 1990s, few Republicans and Democrats held very unfavorable opinions of the other side. The majority of voters in both parties now do. No less alarming are signs that Americans are growing less willing to compromise. Majorities in both parties report that they are against deals that would meet the other side halfway.

But perhaps none of this should be surprising. After all, liberal democracy hasn't lived up to its promises.

"Democracy and Proper Drains"

In the 1990s, democracy-fused with liberal ideas such as individual freedoms and equality before the law-became the only game in town, in the West and beyond. Even authoritarians had to dress their regimes in democratic robes, and putschists insisted that their coups were just an effort to hunt wolves. This acceptance of liberal democracy was predicated on three promises.

Sharing: Democracy pledged shared prosperity, meaning that no group would be left behind and the fruits of economic and technological change would be divided between those with economic privilege and those without. This promise was so axiomatic to democracy that when British Chartists campaigned to extend the franchise to working men in the 1840s, they argued that "the question of universal suffrage is a knife and fork question, a bread and cheese question." Everywhere around the world, people's aspirations to shared prosperity spiked when talk of democracy started. For example, the critical role of labor unions and the Workers' Party in Brazil's arduous journey from military dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s can be understood in this light. Workers organized and demanded democratic rights in part because democracy was viewed as an effective path for higher wages and better conditions. The situation in Eastern Europe wasn't entirely different. While many were drawn to democratic institutions as a way of escaping the yoke of Soviet oppression, they were equally motivated by the hope of achieving the levels of economic prosperity witnessed in the West.

Drains: The idea that democracy promised public services was pithily captured by the British Poet Laureate John Betjeman, who wrote: "Think of what our Nation stands for, / . . . / Democracy and proper drains." Public services were so important because many nondemocratic regimes had all but completely neglected providing health, education, roads, and drains. Conditions in British cities in the early nineteenth century, before the process of democratization got underway, were abysmal. In major industrial centers, life expectancy at birth fell below thirty years-dropping to twenty-five in Manchester, twenty-six in Liverpool, and twenty-nine in Bristol. Sewage ran through the streets, and the stench alone made daily life nearly unbearable. Democratization was part of the reason why politicians started to care and British public services started improving.

In Brazil, when poor, low-education voters were effectively enfranchised in 1998, there was a sea change in politics-and in the provision of public services. Several parties promised better infant and maternal care for the poor, received their support, and proceeded to implement these policies. Previously, these voters had been practically disenfranchised owing to cumbersome electoral procedures that made it almost impossible for illiterate people to fill out the complicated forms and cast their votes for their preferred candidates. In a country where almost a quarter of the population was illiterate, a sizable fraction was left out of politics. Correspondingly, parties cared little for the education, health, or welfare of the less well-off. Things changed in one fell swoop after new voting machines were introduced in 1998, enabling people to choose the candidates they wanted on the basis of pictures and without extensive writing. Political participation soared among the poor, and politics transformed as a result.

Voice: Democracy also pledged unfettered voice and self-government. People were free to express their opinions, deliberate in town halls, call their representatives, stand for office themselves, and generally participate in the governance of their communities and lives. Their voice was reflected in the political decision-making process. This is what struck the young Alexis de Tocqueville so vividly when he observed the practice of American democracy in the 1830s. He summed it up in his masterpiece Democracy in America: "The American institutions are democratic, not only in their principle but in all their consequences."

No other country or epoch may have quite the same participatory character as America in 1830s, but the pattern is clear. In country after country, democratization was driven by previously disenfranchised people seeking a political voice and a chance to participate.

Democracy was never perfect, and Winston Churchill's quip that it was "the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" was never too far from the minds of both voters and politicians. Democracy also sometimes veered away from liberal ideas and freedoms. Still, across the industrialized world, liberal democracy gradually advanced, delivering on these three promises-most fully after World War II, when democracy had matured and left-liberal ideas gained greater influence.

Let's look at liberal democracy's track record, starting with sharing prosperity. The three decades that followed World War II witnessed rapid economic growth in the United States. What was truly remarkable was how equally distributed this prosperity turned out to be. Of course, inequality still persisted between geographical regions, between different levels of education, between races, between genders, between bosses and workers, and between the privileged and the rest. Nonetheless, all education groups took their share from growth, with workers benefiting as much as managers (in proportional terms) and those with lower education levels experiencing an even faster rise in their wages than the college educated. Women expanded their employment and saw their earnings relative to men increase rapidly during those decades, even if men returning from deployment took jobs back from Rosie the Riveter and got paid more than women. The gap between Black and white Americans also narrowed at an unprecedented rate, as schooling opportunities improved and labor market discrimination lessened.

The story of shared prosperity wasn't just an American one. Growth was faster in countries-such as Germany, France, and Japan-that had to rebuild the cities and factories decimated by bombing, war, and occupation. European growth in these decades proved even more equitable than in America, thanks in part to the spread of the Scandinavian social democratic model and to the pivotal role of labor unions in the postwar settlement.

Democracy also delivered drains. Public infrastructure in many Western nations in the middle of the twentieth century was still in a pitiful state. In 1947, more than half of houses in the U.K. had no bathroom, and as recently as 1960, four-fifths of houses had no refrigerator. The situation was a little better in the United States on average, but much worse for Black Americans and for those in the rural South.

All of that has improved. By the 1970s, almost all households in the U.S. and the U.K. had indoor plumbing and a few other amenities; most neighborhoods in both countries could access city centers by public transport; and both American and British countrysides now had roads that linked them to highways, which meant much better transport for people and goods, and greater economic opportunities.

Advances in health were equally striking. Inhabitants of the largest U.S. cities had some limited access to hospitals in the 1950s, while rural Americans barely had any. For example, in 1950, Boston, New York, and San Francisco each had more than eighteen general hospitals and Chicago had fifty-five, but there were swaths of the Midwest and the South where people would have to travel hundreds of miles to get any health care. The Hill-Burton Act, passed in 1946 to modernize and expand health care access, began changing that, kick-starting a hospital-building frenzy. By 1975, the United States had 1,500 more hospitals than it did in 1948, and many of those were in smaller cities and rural areas.

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Verlag
Dutton
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 13 
9798217182169
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
416
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Dutton
https://www.penguin.com/dutton-childrens-overview/

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