Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

A Crisis Of Representation, Not Of The Constitution

David Abraham 18th November 2016

David Abraham

David Abraham

I am asked now in Germany if the United States has just experienced a crisis of its Constitution.  Sometimes this question refers to winning the popular vote while losing the electoral college vote, but suddenly this question also addresses whether we have installed a government that views the Constitution as an obstacle rather than as a North Star.  I think not.

What happened in the US elections does not represent a constitutional crisis.  It is rather what the Italian social theorist Antonio Gramsci in the 1920s described as a “crisis of representation,” one in which the links between parties and their putative/real constituencies break down. Whether there is a larger ”crisis of hegemony” lurking as well, one in which state institutions no longer accomplish core functions, remains to be seen. The latter could in turn precipitate a constitutional crisis.

The neoliberal, “third way” policies that turned the Clinton Democratic Party into an engine of growing inequality presented a bill that came due yesterday. The Democratic Party came to resemble the Republican Party circa 1960: a coalition of big money, Hollywood, suburbanites focused on personal freedoms, and a patrimonial-like relationship to ethnic, especially Black, politicians. President Obama, with his promises of “hope” and “change,” appealing personal history, and opposition to excessive warfare could make this work.

But inequality has only worsened as the economic situation has improved since 2008, and Hillary Clinton lacked all charm as well as any social program.  She also insisted on displaying an itchy trigger finger at a time when sending working class children off to desert wars had lost all its glamor.  As a result, her neoliberal party proved highly vulnerable to a nationalistically and populistically reconfigured Republican Party as re-assembled by Donald Trump. And she became a victim of misogyny as well.

Trump was elected by an angry and disheartened majority and not, as much of the liberal media would have it, by a racist minority and yahoo blue-collar losers.  He was elected in the same country and to a considerable extent by the same electorate that voted twice for an African-American president in large numbers.  (In fact, outside the old Confederacy, Obama won a bigger share of the white vote than either Kerry or Gore.) Pollsters could not see and pundits did not take seriously the extent of anger and frustration in the US (and beyond). Embedded in the liberal cosmopolitan establishment, they could not imagine that there was a strong countercurrent roiling the Zeitgeist.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

From within the system it is hard to see that this anger is not just understandable but also justified. This is why Clinton’s counter to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” was a total flop:  “America Is Great” is not very sympathetic to the 99%.  As the economists Thomas Piketty and Wolfgang Streeck have shown, the disparity between the top 1 percent and the rest is arguably at a modern high.  Trump voters were not wrong to think that the system is working against them.

Having moved heaven and earth to derail the Bernie Sanders effort to shift the debate from culture war to class war, the neoliberal Democrats had nowhere to go.  All Sanders really sought to do was establish an updated New Deal coalition, but this was too threatening to the Democratic Establishment. When you block the possibility for change from the Left, nationalism and racism will fill the space, and change will come from the Right. That was/is Trump with his latter-day “socialism of fools.”

Clinton was correctly perceived as exactly what they are sick of and sick from: a dismantled social state, status quo cronyism, more wars fought by the young working class, the entanglement of money and government, a globalization from NAFTA to TTIP that hurts the middle class and the economically “left behind” along with a framework of sympathy more concerned with endangered species than with endangered jobs, and the suburban social liberals’ abandonment of the material interests of their erstwhile working class allies in favor of a progressive lifestyle libertarianism. No name, absolutely none, is more associated with NAFTA and the other agreements that have eviscerated America’s industrial base than “Clinton.” She struck many as the embodiment of the Human Resources Manager that sends staff to diversity training while preparing to send their jobs to China.

The failure to offer a serious alternative to the current maladies of capitalism should not, then, be construed as a constitutional crisis.  That those who come to power as a result of such a failure have a lesser regard for the constitution is, however, worrisome enough.

Whether this “crisis of representation” – seen in Europe as well where the big catch-all parties are in decline nearly everywhere – becomes a larger constitutional or hegemonic crisis may depend on whether and how economic and political elites join the Trumpists. We know, unfortunately, that Germany’s Weimar Republic ended once the collaboration between elites and populists was cemented. Trump was initially disdained by all but the most marginal of economic and Republican leaders, from whom he in any case wanted to appear distant. But recent days suggest a very rapid and worrisome reconciliation, one that could well usher in an even deeper crisis and push even higher the price to be paid for a generation of third way, neoliberal neglect of working people.

David Abraham

David Abraham is Professor of Law at the University of Miami and a Guest Professor in Contemporary History at the University of Jena.

You are here: Home / Politics / A Crisis Of Representation, Not Of The Constitution

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube