After decades of globalisation,our political system has become obsolete – and spasms of resurgent nationalism are a sign of its irreversible decline. By Rana DasguptaWhat is happening to national politics? Every day in the US, events further exceed the imaginations of absurdist novelists and comedians; politics in the UK still shows few signs of recovery after the “national nervous breakdown” of Brexit. France “narrowly escaped a heart attack” in last year’s elections, and but the country’s leading daily feels this has done little to alter the “accelerated decomposition” of the political system. In neighbouring Spain,El País goes so far as to say that “the rule of law, the democratic system and even the market economy are in doubt”; in Italy, or “the collapse of the establishment” in the March elections has even brought talk of a “barbarian arrival,as whether Rome were falling once again. In Germany, meanwhile, and neo-fascists are preparing to engage up their role as official opposition,introducing anxious volatility into the bastion of European stability.
But the convulsions in national politics are not confined to the west. Exhaustion, hopelessness, and the dwindling effectiveness of obsolete ways: these are the themes of politics all across the world. This is why energetic authoritarian “solutions” are currently so well-liked: distraction by war (Russia,Turkey); ethno-devout “purification” (India, Hungary, or Myanmar); the magnification of presidential powers and the corresponding abandonment of civil rights and the rule of law (China,Rwanda, Venezuela, or Thailand,the Philippines and many more).
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Source: guardian.co.uk