Democratic Capitalism at the Crossroads by Carles Boix;

Author:Carles Boix;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

5

Dire Straits

The technological and economic transformations spurred by Detroit capitalism reshaped—mostly over the span of one or two generations—the nature of politics in the advanced industrial world. The rapid expansion of the economy, a much higher rate of social mobility, and a secular trend toward a more equal distribution of earnings pacified the social and class struggles of the nineteenth century. Roosevelt’s New Deal relied on the economic and productivity gains of the previous three decades to overcome the Great Depression and buttress public support for a free-market economy in the United States. Europe’s postwar growth miracle put to rest the dramatic confrontations that had erupted in that continent during the interwar period. As affluence and relative equality became the new norm everywhere, Left and Right parties came to see democracy and capitalism as inextricably intertwined, converging in their policy promises and competing at the ballot box on the basis of the professionalism and competence of their leaders.

Likewise, the unfolding of Silicon Valley capitalism has transformed both public discourse and the political arena—albeit in a different, often opposite, direction. As both new ICTs and a much deeper form of globalization disrupted the employment and wage patterns that had prevailed during the twentieth century, the liberal postwar consensus looked increasingly fragile. A generalized pattern of attachment to parties and trade unions and of deference toward political elites gave way to a growing sense of mistrust and political alienation—mostly among the American and European working class. In the 1970s, at least fifty percent of respondents in surveys taken in countries as diverse as Austria, France, Germany, Sweden, and the United States believed that politicians cared about what people thought. Thirty years later, that proportion had plunged to thirty percent or even less (Dalton 2004, 26–30). Political mistrust eventually spilled over into actual political behavior. Electoral participation in Europe, which had peaked at over eighty percent during the Cold War, fell after 1980. By the early 2010s, almost one out of every three Europeans—most of them clustered within low-income strata and young cohorts—abstained in national elections. In due course, new populist parties sprang up, at the right and left tails of the political spectrum, to give voice to that growing number of unsatisfied voters. And, rattling the prevailing system of orderly alternation of mainstream parties in government, they threaten to reconfigure the structure and dynamics of political competition that has been in place since the end of World War Two.

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