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Abstract
The crisis of liberal democracy is closely associated with major global shifts, which have been accelerated by the global financial crisis of 2008, with its dislocating effects in the established democracies of the global centre. Relative stagnation and rising problems of inequality and unemployment, coupled with additional shocks in the form of mass migration and terrorist attacks have generated fertile grounds for the rise of right-wing radical populist sentiments, which have been turned into electoral advantage by charismatic leaders. The crisis of liberal democracy is also a global phenomenon in the sense that liberal democracy has been severely challenged by the rise of strategic models of capitalism, notably its authoritarian version represented by the growing power and influence of the China-Russia coalition. Indeed, the success of the latter has served as a kind of reference for many authoritarian or hybrid regimes in a changing global context, at a time when the key Western powers appear to be losing their previous economic and moral appeal.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Belgin San Akça, Ravza Altuntaş-Çakır, Tim Dorlach, Ali Burak Güven, Barış Gülmez, Mustafa Kutlay, Murat Somer, Güneş Uzunoğlu and the two anonymous referees of the journal for their valuable comments and criticisms. He would like to dedicate this article to the memory of the late Chris Rumford, an excellent scholar and good friend.
Notes
1 Particularly relevant in this context are Diamond, “Facing the Democratic Recession”; Bermeo, “On Democratic Backsliding“; Dawson and Hanley, “The Fading Mirage”. Foa and Mounk, “The Democratic Disconnect”, make an important contribution to the debate on the possible de-consolidation process underway in established Western democracies.
2 Acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
3 Kupchan, No One’s World, provides a powerful analysis of the rise of BRICS and other emerging powers and its global implications. Cooper, The BRICS, also provides a valuable survey of the key debates involved.
4 Öniş, “Democracy in Uncertain Times”, and Öniş and Kutlay, “Global Shifts”, provide the basis of the ‘push and pull framework’ and highlight the similarities between the Turkish and Central and Eastern European experiences in recent years. Ünver Noi and Toperich, Challenges of Democracy, is a valuable source on the weakening of the EU’s democratisation impulse and the broader trends concerning the rise of illiberal democracy in the European periphery.
5 Somer, “Understanding Turkey’s Democratic Breakdown”, and Esen and Gümüşçü, “Rising Competitive Authoritarianism in Turkey”, offer convincing accounts of the Turkish experience with severe democratic backsliding.
6 Stiglitz, The Great Divide and The Euro, present in-depth analyses of the challenge of rising inequality in the United States in the post-crisis era and continued stagnation and unemployment and the weakening of the welfare state in Western Europe, which he associates with the mistaken policy of sticking to a single currency in a union with widely differing levels of development. The recent work of Streeck, Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, also provides a cogent analysis of the challenges faced by capitalism in advanced industrialised countries, notably with reference to Western Europe.
7 Youngs, The Uncertain Legacy of the Crisis, provides a subtle analysis of the challenges facing the EU and EU foreign policy in the post-global crisis context. To be fair, the absence of a political will was, in part, a result of the inability of Western leaders to figure out how they could intervene in a region without doing more harm to their interests, than simply a greater focus on domestic problems, which was always there even during the times of uncontested Western hegemony.
8 The basic principles associated with the Chinese economic model and the Beijing consensus are discussed in Noughton, “China’s Distinctive System”; Zhao, “The China Model”; Li et al., “Redefining Beijing Consensus” and Yağcı, “A Beijing Consensus”. Putten, “Harmony with Diversity”, Garrett, “G-2 in G-20”, and Yinhong, “China: Global Challenges”, point towards the problems of cooperation in a world where the United States and China are the dominant players but a large number of actors participate in the global governance process; the clash of norms emerges as an important problem.
9 Malle, “Russia and China in 21st Century”, provides a valuable analysis of the emerging China-Russia axis. Stuenkel, “Rising Powers”, is a useful source on the nature and limits of the influence of key democratic BRICS. Piccone, Five Rising Democracies, extends the range of democratic emerging powers by including near-BRICS with democratic credentials, which could potentially be influential in a global setting.
10 See Stuenkel, “The Uncertain Future of IBSA” on the challenges and dilemmas facing IBSA.
11 Nathan, “The Authoritarian Resurgence”; Ortman and Thompson, “China and the ‘Singapore Model’”; Pei, “Is CCP Rule Fragile or Resilient?”; Chen and Kinzelbach, “Democracy Promotion and China”, provide valuable insights into the nature of the authoritarian regime in China and its global implications.
12 For evidence on the long-term benefits of globalisation, see Wolf, Why Globalization Works.
13 Milanovic, Global Inequality, provides a comprehensive analysis and empirical evidence of inequality on a global scale.
14 See Ibid., chapter one, in this context. Also relevant is Landy, “A Tale of Two Recoveries”.
15 For evidence, see Acharya, End of the American World Order, and Li, BRICS and Beyond.
16 One can observe this trend by comparing the high growth performance of China with the sluggish growth rates of Brazil and South Africa.
17 For a critical overview, see Sharma, “Broken BRICs”. Also relevant in this context is Didier et al., Slowdown in Emerging Markets.
18 For extensive evidence, see Ivins, “Inequality Matters”.
19 Luis Henrique, “Inequality Reduction in Brazil”, provides a valuable analysis of Brazil’s attempts to reduce inequality under Lula and the inherent difficulties in sustaining this process. The GINI coefficient in Brazil was 0.58 in 2003 when Lula assumed his post. It declined to 0.51 in 2014, which suggests that inequality continues to be a serious problem.
20 See Judis, The Populist Explosion, for a cogent analysis underlying the rise of radical populism in the Western world in the post-global crisis context. Mudde, Populist Radical Right Parties, provides a comprehensive account of the rise of the radical right-wing in Europe predating the crisis period. For recent developments concerning the rise of Trump, Brexit and the rise of populism on a global scale, see Inglehart and Norris, Trump, Brexit, and Aydın-Düzgit and Keyman, “The Trump Presidency”.
21 On the rise of the global populist wave, see Moffit, Rise of Global Populism.
22 For a comprehensive analysis of the limits of social democratic, redistributive politics in Latin American settings in the face of powerful corporate interests, see Luna and Kaltwasser, Resilience of the Latin American Right.
23 This shift is particularly striking in both Argentina and Brazil, where current presidents Macri and Temer are clearly politicians with a marked centre-right, neo-liberal orientation. For a succint account of recent shifts, see Haynie, “Latin America’s Right Turn”.
24 For an assessment of this inherent tendency for fragmentation in centre-left parties following the election of a radical leader, with reference to the Labour Party in the UK, see Diamond, “Trouble with Jeremy Corbyn”, and Beacon, “Labour has become two parties”.