How societies can preserve democracy with a human-directed social contract The recent rise of populist movements, especially in Western democracies, has prompted considerable thoughtful analysis. This remarkable book, digging deeper than most such efforts, cites the global financial crisis as the proximate cause but finds the ultimate source in the twin failures of modern capitalism and the democratic state to fulfill a meaningful social contract for the vast majority of people. The book’s focus on the financial crisis underscores how the promises of liberal democracy were repeatedly broken by financial and political elites, with a backlash emerging in the form of “us-against-them” populism. By undermining the hopes and livelihoods of millions of people, the crisis created its own narrative, with consequences capable of causing lasting damage to the liberal world order. To restore the values of liberal democracy, the author proposes a “truly human social contract” supported by a narrative of empathy. The basis of such a contract is a new view of civil and social rights as an expression of human dignity, with economic factors understood as moral concerns, not just as a matter of who gets the most.
Оглавление
Alexander Görlach. Homo Empathicus
Contents
Acknowledgments
One. INTRODUCTION
Two. THE FINANCIAL CRISIS SOUNDS THE DEATH KNELL OF THE LIBERAL WORLD ORDER
Three. WHAT CONSTITUTE(D) A LIBERAL DEMOCRACY
Four. THE NEW POPULISM AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY
Five “US AGAINST THEM”—ECONOMIC SEPARATISM
Six. THE TECTONIC TREMOR
Seven. THE COMMON GOOD AND THE ETHIC OF PARTICIPATION
Eight. STRONGMEN ARE NOT STRONG: WHAT WE REALLY NEED NOW
Nine. A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT
EPILOGUE
Index
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Alexander Görlach
HOMO EMPATHICUS
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September 15, 2008, did not produce any powerful images. But the financial crisis did reveal that those who work hard do not automatically succeed in obtaining a rewarding livelihood. The thousands of people who lost their homes in the US due to speculators can tell a sad story about it. September 15 therefore emblematically represents the beginning of the end of the liberal world order as we knew it. The crisis of liberal democracy did not fall out of the sky.
This book aims for nothing less than interpreting the current crisis of democracy and the liberal order, and explaining how to solve it. The analysis starts off with a look at the mechanisms behind the financial crisis, then explains the promises of liberal democracy that were persistently broken by the financial crisis and its poor management. This is the origin of the present moment’s populism and “us against them” exclusionary attitudes—old tools for resisting change, although liberal democrats will not be able to deal with them by using the same methods as in the past. The crisis of social democracy, which is an unmistakable fact in the US, England, and Germany, shows that this new age needs new answers. Increasingly, these answers are also no longer found along a right–left axis, but rather in a framework of urban and rural, metropolis and village, cosmopolitans against nationalists.
