How Liberalism Failed

Scholarship and commentary has become consumed by debates about "illiberal democracy," "global authoritarianism," and democratic "deconsolidation." Two narratives can be plucked from the confusion. The first focuses on economic change, and the second on social change. Most analysis stops here, at viewing economic or social change or some combination of the two as leading inevitably to dissatisfaction with liberal democracy and a readiness to embrace populist, illiberal, or even undemocratic alternatives. The issue, of course, is that social, economic, and technological change alone are not the problem—they only become so if politicians and governments don't help citizens adjust to them. If we want, therefore, to understand liberal democracy's current problems, we need to examine not only such changes, but also how elites and governments have responded to them.

Sheri Berman reviews The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Themselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality by Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles, Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy by Sasha Polakow-Suransky, and Counter-Revolution: Liberal Europe in Retreat by Jan Zielonka.