The crisis of problem-solving — and the way out

The spectacular rise of populist parties and social movements was one of the paramount concerns for workshop participants.

Naming the problem was key. In the first session, researchers described widespread political breakdown caused by new social and ideological cleavages in affluent societies and the rise of the far right.

Colin Hay from Sciences Po shone a bright light on the distinctive nature of the problem, observing that while there was nothing new about a “politics of the people” in, say, America or the UK, western democracies confronted an unprecedented form of populist backlash to the specific governing consensus that had defined preceding decades: a pro-austerity, nominally globalized, free-market-espousing regime.

Silja Häusermann, from the University of Zurich, went on to examine the rise of the far right as the product of a worsening divide between universalistic and particularistic worldviews. Right-wing populism, Häusermann explained, feeds off of status grievances of groups who feel left behind by trends such as deindustrialization and rural depopulation, and disparaged by establishment values that prize open borders and common humanity over so-called traditional and local ways of being. The schism has educational and occupational, identity, and party coordinates, but fundamentally results in anti-system agendas that imperil even the most basic discussions about an inclusionary state answerable to a broad range of constituents.

Participants agreed that problem-solving policies need to resonate with the grievances that drive people into the arms of the far right. But the question remained: on what principles, and by what means, should a response take shape?

Here, the deeper dynamics of breakdown became apparent. The group debated the extent to which we were seeing not just new political formations but also the thoroughgoing loss of mission and telos in mainstream political culture, beyond attempts to respond to the radical right.

As Oxford political scientist Jane Gingrich observed, “governing is [no longer] a source of power but a source of political liability.”

Edinburgh professor Philip Rathgeb explained the right-wing narrative frames its deliverables in terms of status and pride, e.g., patriotism, authenticity, and validation and reward for the hard-working. But others, including Pierson, noted a buried assumption present in many analyses: a tacit expectation that right-wing governments need to deliver economically in order to stay in power. What kind of world are we entering if populism does not actually have to deliver material improvements to maintain its pull, but only deliver on stoking anger and resentment? This insight must inform future research, the participants agreed.

In short, social alienation and the rise of social media have created fertile ground for right-wing populism to put forward an alternative moral economy, rooted — as Hay vividly elaborated — in nationalism and zero-sum thinking, and deep distrust of experts and institutions. The challenges ahead, then, are how to govern in a low-trust environment, and how to build up systems rooted in expertise without reverting to knee-jerk defense of the status quo.

Getting the answers to these problems right involves taking a hard inventory. As Beckert observed, “Parties need stories, projects. Social Democrats had that; they’ve lost it.”

It also means doing so with clarity of purpose. Here, the workshop stoked new thinking about the stakes of rising inequality and the urgency of balancing economic policy with a morally resonant response.

Alan Jacobs, a professor of political science at the University of British Columbia, delivered extensive evidence that the long-term rise of inequality has decreased trust in, and support for, public goods provision across western democracies.

Income inequality undermines key features of collective life, such as the principle of reciprocity and individual willingness to sacrifice for broad-based gains. When people perceive gross unfairness in the tax system, or in daily life, social alienation increases: Why should those already struggling have to pay beyond their means for costly policies, while people with skyrocketing wealth barely contribute?

The crashing sense of social collectivity and the rise of non-rich citizens’ distrust for politicians leads to a breakdown in programs essential to the material health of democracy such as preventive health care, assistance for the elderly and vulnerable, and climate harm mitigation. As Jacobs concluded, growing inequality reinforces the abandonment of collective problem-solving, alienating citizens from one another and the state— just when common sacrifice to close the gap between the rich and the rest is most needed.

Across the two days, speakers wrestled with this fundamental dynamic — rising inequality driving democratic breakdown, democratic breakdown driving rising inequality — while assessing its distinctive forms in different countries and pondering how to loosen its chokehold on policy.

Harvard political theorist Jenny Mansbridge enjoined colleagues to step back and appreciate wider historical dynamics, with an eye to U.S. experience. As she sees it, increasing interdependence and the hollowing out of local economies and lifeways required more coercion, which led to more anger at the state.

Moreover, long periods without war — a unifying force — reduced social trust and common purpose. It has been 80 years since the end of the Second World War, Mansbridge reminded the group, and nearly 35 since the end of the Cold War. Yet mainstream politics tended to dismiss place-based, particularist, rural, and working-class worldviews just when structural forces were accelerating their alienation.

Other participants noted the unprecedented, world-historical scale of political and economic inequality in the contemporary United States, exemplified by tech billionaires arrayed behind Donald Trump at the January 2025 presidential inauguration. American populism, however, remained stubbornly racial in its character, whereas in Western Europe it had coalesced behind welfare chauvinism, or in Eastern Europe, against foreign direct investment.

What was to be done? Confronting a potential sea change in social relations and in the workings of capitalism, the assembled researchers contemplated solutions.

One thread that ran through these discussions was the importance of reconceiving and rebuilding communities of interest. Mansbridge delivered a set of prescriptions for developing civic buy-in and improving state capacity, including openly targeting corruption, teaching the logic of free-use goods, and building up service-oriented, responsive, and descriptive representation, especially with respect to working-class spaces.

Oxford professor of government Pepper Culpepper delivered a provocative case for a “good populism” that, far from the “pluto-populism” of the current Republican Party, could “be built on the back of fair, free, and competitive markets” as a pro-citizen movement against large corporations.

BESI technology research lead and professor of sociology at Berkeley Marion Fourcade, along with Kathleen Thelen of MIT and Katharina Pistor of Columbia, sounded rallying cries around the rise of a new form of anti-democratic sovereignty in the form of technology giants privately amassing state power through control of data and vast physical resources with no meaningful oversight from government or society.

Thelen in particular pointed to the ascent of the platform model among tech firms as nothing short of a transformation in contemporary capitalism. The shift from consumer-oriented services to the vast locking-up of data centers, natural resources, and corporate cloud contracts may be hard to see because the company names, e.g., Amazon, have remained the same, but it nonetheless constitutes a radical reconfiguration of political economy as a whole, with platform firms as a new systemic chokepoint. Researchers and policy thinkers needed to wrap their heads around the power these firms have come to wield, not just in the market but in politics, and to clearly convey to the public the pivotal regulatory and moral challenges at hand.

Finally, the goals of rethinking communication and mobilizing civic energy behind state capacity were highly salient on the policy front as the group discussed the bellwether issues of immigration and climate change.

Charlotte Cavaillé, of the University of Michigan, emphasized that it was not immigration itself but the political unsustainability of perceptions of immigration that favored right-wing populist parties and posed a threat to liberal democracy.

Antje Ellerman from the University of British Columbia, put the problem even more bluntly. “How are we able to make good policy and have a constructive conversation when the issue is so highly politicized?” she asked. Confronting the bases of politicization, having sober conversations about the relationship between immigration and the welfare state, and cultivating new spaces for expertise and deliberation — all these possibilities appeared on the table.

Similarly, the session on climate change squarely confronted the problem of a widespread backlash to green energy policies and climate mitigation. BESI climate research lead and Berkeley professor Jonas Meckling surveyed the range of possible solutions, while Rebecca Elliot of the London School of Economics raised the prospect that the most active fronts of climate politics in affluent societies would be fought over the stakes and objectives of broader political interests, such as homeownership or what people saw as the character of the places they live, rather than resilience or sustainability. Entering these worldviews and getting a firmer grip on underlying dynamics of climate denialism would be the first step to developing not only viable policy but to creating a shared reality on which nothing short of planetary survival would hinge.

As Hay — one of the Sciences Po faculty participants — had written elsewhere, crises “are above all public constructions,” where the events or “raw materials” are real but only take on meaning through a process of narration and contestation. “The Crisis of Problem-Solving Capacity” resolutely addressed that fact. In this moment of seeming establishment paralysis and fragmentation in the face of dizzying change, the assembled thinkers presented analytic and policy tools to challenge anti-democratic narratives and rethink the bases of civic life.