Due to a clerical error, the graph for the Presidency was wrong in an earlier version of this piece. My apologies. Perhaps we have misdiagnosed our present predicament. Maybe we have made too much of the catastrophes of the mid-2000s. The breakdown in class relations, more precisely, elite-mass relations, predates these disasters. The unraveling of the class alliance undergirding social democracy has been unfolding slowly for decades. Distrust of elites is certainly not new. How can we get a handle on these social forces beyond the chimera of approval ratings and suchlike? The first step, as Ted Fertik suggests, is to set up the explanandum more precisely. We can't hope to uncover the causal structure at play without a command of the facts.
Net Confidence in National Institutions
Net Confidence in National Institutions
Net Confidence in National Institutions
Due to a clerical error, the graph for the Presidency was wrong in an earlier version of this piece. My apologies. Perhaps we have misdiagnosed our present predicament. Maybe we have made too much of the catastrophes of the mid-2000s. The breakdown in class relations, more precisely, elite-mass relations, predates these disasters. The unraveling of the class alliance undergirding social democracy has been unfolding slowly for decades. Distrust of elites is certainly not new. How can we get a handle on these social forces beyond the chimera of approval ratings and suchlike? The first step, as Ted Fertik suggests, is to set up the explanandum more precisely. We can't hope to uncover the causal structure at play without a command of the facts.