The British vote to exit the European Union, or Brexit, has set off hyperbolic descriptions, but “seismic” or “earthquake” perhaps best encapsulates the event.
Britain is at the very bedrock of the modern developed West as we know it.
It is supposed to be among the last to stoutly defend the world that has evolved today, largely on the basis of neoliberal thesis that underpins much of Western thinking, otherwise often described as the “Washington Consensus”.
The essence of the Washington Consensus is a fairly long laundry list that prescribes such established and hitherto largely unchallenged notions: free market, free trade, financial liberalisation, free capital flows across borders and democratic political governance.
It is what makes globalisation possible, and now looks to be the very phenomenon eating away at the West’s very core.
Brexit, the unanticipated rise of presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the United States, or of far-right politicians and political parties in much of Europe, are all of a piece that speaks of increasing popular antagonism and rejection of what globalisation has wrought.
Neoliberal thinking may call globalisation an unalloyed global good, ushering in an unprecedented era of untold increases in global wealth creation and reduction in global poverty rates.
But, the sad reality is that while globalisation has done much to level the global economic playing field, it is also blamed for the upsurge in income inequality in Western countries as industries get hollowed out, leaving masses of disgruntled, often poorly-educated working-class populations feeling ill-served by globalisation.
They also blame their governments, even the entire political class, for doing little to help them adapt to the brave new world that is globalisation’s supposed promise to all.
This lashing out by Western voters as they seemingly reject what has served their countries so well lies behind such otherwise barely comprehensible and utterly self-destructive behaviour as Britain opting out of EU, and American voters’ infatuation with the demagogic Trump.
In truth, what has now happened is perhaps the not unexpected
outcome of a certain hubris that infects the Western, neoliberal consensus. It is a misdiagnosis of the modern global development phenomena, despite such influential voices as Harvard University economics Professor Dani Rodrik eloquently expounding on it.
Rodrik is at the forefront of proponents suggesting that the Washington Consensus of “one size fits all” perhaps fits no one.
The Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, after all, thrived when Western countries enjoyed the bare rudiments of democracy.
Rodrik’s is one of the most lucid intellectual indictments of neoliberalism, which, upon casual observation, should have been clear for all to see: that the most successful economic growth models of recent times, to be found mostly in East Asia, do not fit the Washington Consensus, but are, instead, eclectic amalgams of interventionist governments and free markets.
As a result, among his breathtakingly revealing conclusions is that globalisation sits ill with national democratic governance as we know it. Why so?
This is due to the fact that while globalisation and international trade advance countries that partake of it, they generate electorally-powerful losers within national boundaries.
The awkwardness such national losers can bring is drawn out in sharp relief by Stanford University political scientist Francis Fukuyama.
Writing most recently in an article in Foreign Affairs, Fukuyama pointed to how American whites, who have sunk back into poverty, did not identify with the traditional underprivileged found among blacks and other minorities, who flocked to the Democratic Party, which had, in turn, thrived in exploiting this new-found “identity politics” that was the new feature in American politics.
Instead, underprivileged American whites who are alienated from the pro-market Republican Party have lapped up Trump’s anti-immigrant and often racist rhetoric.
Fukuyama comes to the generally pessimistic conclusion that America’s substantially decayed political system “will not be fixed unless popular anger is linked to wise leadership and good policies”.
The big question is whether such a wise leader can emerge from the ravages of American political decay and even if so, whether he or she can rise above dysfunctional American politics.
The political turmoil in major Western democracies provides sobering insights for the rest of us constantly fed with, and often unquestioningly digesting, Western notions about the inevitability of democratic governance and how that will ultimately bring about a borderless, peaceful and prosperous world.
John Teo is a Kuching-based journalist