Healing Broken Democracies: All You Need to Know About Populism

When did it yet again become acceptable within so called polite society, fashionable even, to dismiss disempowered voter groups as “uneducated throwbacks”? When did many voters who struggle to make ends meet start seeing the Labour parties as part of “the metropolitan elite”? As always when perceptions and norms change there is no clear initiation date. It is, however, clear that the dramatic changes in perception, during recent decades, have been triggered by the middle class having overtaken the working class as the politically dominant voter group. Money talks and so does its twin brother: political dominance. As a consequence it should come as no major surprise that “bourgeoise” values are back in vogue. Even if in a new shape.How the rise and rise of the middle class has been triggered by technology shifts, with closely linked decades of economic growth, and a massive expansion of white collar jobs at the (relative) expense of blue collar jobs was the stimulus for this book - and also the subject of how we can now heal the broken democracies in the western world..So why the fuss about this seismic shift, since this means society has been left richer? Not a cause for celebration? It certainly is. But it is also a cause for concern since millions of people who have ended up with the short end of the transformation stick are no longer taken (as) seriously within the establishment sphere. Read more