Former US President Donald Trump represents a broader trend in international politics, toward what has been labelled populist nationalism. Populist leaders seek to use the legitimacy conferred by democratic elections to consolidate power. They claim direct charismatic connection to ‘the people’, who are often defined in narrow ethnic terms that exclude big parts of the population.

They don’t like institutions and seek to undermine the checks and balances that limit a leader’s personal power in a modern liberal democracy: courts, the legislature, an independent media, and a nonpartisan bureaucracy.

Other leaders who could be put in this category are Vladimir Putin of Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, Viktor Orbán of Hungary, Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland, and Rodrigo Duterte the former president of the Philippines.

Global Surge toward Democracy

The global surge toward democracy that began in the mid-1970s has gone into what my colleague Larry Diamond calls a global recession. In 1970, there were only about 35 electoral democracies, a number that steadily increased over the next three decades until it reached nearly 120 by the early 2000s. The greatest acceleration came from 1989 to 1991, when the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union led to a democratic wave throughout that region.

What was far more unexpected was that threats to democracy should arise from within established democracies themselves. Hungary had been one of the first countries in Eastern Europe to overthrow its Communist regime. When it entered both NATO and the European Union, it appeared to have rejoined Europe as what political scientists characterised as a ‘consolidated’ liberal democracy.

Yet under Orbán and his Fidesz party, it has been leading the way toward what Orbán has labelled ‘illiberal democracy’. But a far bigger surprise yet were the votes in Britain and the United States 2016 for Brexit and Trump, respectively. These were the two leading democracies that had been the architects of the modern liberal international order, countries that led the ‘neoliberal’ revolution under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s. Yet they themselves appeared to be turning away toward a more narrow nationalism.

What are the Advantages of Liberal Democracies?

Liberal democracies have been pretty good at providing peace and prosperity (though somewhat less so in recent years). These wealthy, secure societies are the domain of Nietzsche’s Last Man, ‘men without chests’ who spend their lives in the endless pursuit of consumer satisfaction, but who have nothing at their core, no higher goals or ideals for which they are willing to strive and sacrifice. Such a life will not satisfy everyone.

This liberal world order did not, however, benefit everyone. In many countries around the world, and particularly in developed democracies, inequality increased dramatically, such that many of the benefits of growth flowed primarily to an elite defined primarily by education.

Megalothymia thrives on exceptionality: taking big risks, engaging in monumental struggles, seeking large effects, because all of these lead to recognition of oneself as superior to others. In some cases, it can lead to a heroic leader like a Lincoln or a Churchill or a Nelson Mandela. But in other cases, it can lead to tyrants like Caesar or Hitler or Mao who lead their societies into dictatorship and disaster.

Demand for Recognition

Since megalothymia has historically existed in all societies, it cannot be overcome; it can only be channelled or moderated. This problem was fully recognised by the American founding fathers. In their effort to create a republican form of government in North America, they were aware of the history of the fall of the Roman Republic and worried about the problem of Caesarism. Their solution was the constitutional system of checks and balances that would distribute power and block its concentration in a single leader.

According to Hegel, human history was driven by a struggle for recognition. He argued that the only rational solution to the desire for recognition was universal recognition, in which the dignity of every human being was recognised.

Universal recognition has been challenged ever since by other partial forms of recognition based on nation, religion, sect, race, ethnicity, or gender, or by individuals wanting to be recognised as superior. The rise of identity politics in modern liberal democracies is one of the chief threats that they face, and unless we can work our way back to more universal understandings of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.

Demand for recognition of one’s identity is a master concept that unifies much of what is going on in world politics today.

Sometime in the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century, world politics changed dramatically. The period from the early 1970s through the mid-2000s witnessed what Samuel Huntington labelled the ‘third wave’ of democratisation as the number of countries that could be classified as electoral democracies increased from about 35 to more than 110.

In this period, liberal democracy became the default form of government for much of the world, at least in aspiration if not in practice.

Globalisation leads to Economic Interdependence

In parallel to this shift in political institutions was a corresponding growth of economic interdependence among nations, or what we call globalisation. The latter was underpinned by liberal economic institutions such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and its successor, the World Trade Organisation.

These were supplemented by regional trade agreements such as the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Throughout this period, the rate of growth in international trade and investment outpaced global GDP growth and was widely seen as the major driver of prosperity.

In many countries around the world, and particularly in developed democracies, inequality increased dramatically, such that many of the benefits of growth flowed primarily to an elite defined primarily by education.

Since growth was related to the increasing volume of goods, money and people moving from one place to another, there was a huge amount of disruptive social change. In developing countries, villagers who previously had no access to electricity suddenly found themselves living in large cities, watching TV or connected to the internet via ubiquitous cell phones.

Labour markets adjusted to new conditions by driving tens of millions of people across international borders in search of better opportunities for themselves and their families, or else seeking to escape intolerable conditions at home.