Globalzsation has changed our worlds domestically and beyond the nation state. Our societies are facing opportunities and risks. It depends not at least on political action what will prevail. Three major factors will be decisive for social and political cohesion in our advanced democratic societies. But they can be changed and are not set in concrete. They are the essential screws for knocking politics into shape.
All three variables can be separated out analytically but, in reality, they are very closely woven together, they overlap and buttress each other. If there’s any mismatch then they may become deactivated; if they overlap then conflicts mount and the problems of integration intensify. Theoretical considerations as well as empirical facts suggest the following basic hypothesis: intelligent political action can create the social and cultural pre-conditions for successful societal integration in liberal democracies. But to do so you must put to one side the postmodern naivety of multi-cultural and cosmopolitan optimism and accept the empirically proven fact that it’s harder to govern heterogeneous societies than homogeneous ones. What is and what should be the case must not be mixed up in any sober analysis.
From the beginning of the 1980s inequality of income and wealth rose in the OECD club of economies regardless of the indicator used: Gini-index, upper and lower quintile, decile, poverty ratio or especially the top 1.0 or 0.1% of the income pyramid. This steep rise in inequality is not the “natural” consequence of the digital revolution, the knowledge economy or bold creative disruption. Mainly, it’s a result of political decisions that have been propagating this particular form of market empowerment and the shrinking of the state for pretty well three decades.
Read more: Economy, Culture And Discourse: Social Democracy In A Cosmopolitanism Trap?
All three variables can be separated out analytically but, in reality, they are very closely woven together, they overlap and buttress each other. If there’s any mismatch then they may become deactivated; if they overlap then conflicts mount and the problems of integration intensify. Theoretical considerations as well as empirical facts suggest the following basic hypothesis: intelligent political action can create the social and cultural pre-conditions for successful societal integration in liberal democracies. But to do so you must put to one side the postmodern naivety of multi-cultural and cosmopolitan optimism and accept the empirically proven fact that it’s harder to govern heterogeneous societies than homogeneous ones. What is and what should be the case must not be mixed up in any sober analysis.
From the beginning of the 1980s inequality of income and wealth rose in the OECD club of economies regardless of the indicator used: Gini-index, upper and lower quintile, decile, poverty ratio or especially the top 1.0 or 0.1% of the income pyramid. This steep rise in inequality is not the “natural” consequence of the digital revolution, the knowledge economy or bold creative disruption. Mainly, it’s a result of political decisions that have been propagating this particular form of market empowerment and the shrinking of the state for pretty well three decades.
Read more: Economy, Culture And Discourse: Social Democracy In A Cosmopolitanism Trap?
