In my view, the choices facing us in the next decades may be far starker than the optimists admit. There are three reasons why attempts to shore up living standards are unlikely to stem the populist threat: the right policies might not be adopted; even if they were adopted, they might fail to redress economic grievances sufficiently; and, most important, even if they did redress economic grievances, they would not necessarily defuse the culturally-based anxieties of many citizens. As Harvard’s emphasizes – and as the Brexit vote clearly showed – the “sense of ‘us’” is more important to many people than achieving greater success through integration with “others.”
From: Trumpism: A New Era in World Politics? by Yascha Mounk – Project Syndicate
