GRIDLOCK POLITICS HOW TO

These twin motivations were the genesis of Beyond Gridlock. As citizens, we don’t only need to understand gridlock, but to find ways to break it. And normatively, it paints a bleak picture of a world locked by history into a downward spiral. Intellectually, it does not account for a number of exceptions and anomalies, empirical facts that any good social scientific theory must engage with. While gridlock describes much of world politics today, it is also unsatisfying in two distinct ways.

GRIDLOCK POLITICS HOW TO

How to move forward? Exceptions and anomalies This rejectionist ideology deepens gridlock and begins the whole cycle anew. But instead of calibrating nuanced and effective solutions, such leaders tend to reject global cooperation and openness altogether, often exacerbating the very problems that brought them to power in the first place. This creates the political conditions under which nationalist, populist leaders can succeed. Exposed to the hard edge of globalisation, populations naturally react against it, seeking to reassert national control. Think of the failure of global financial regulation to stem the 2008-2009 crisis, or the failure to address adequately the current refugee crisis, for example. Gridlock weakens our ability to manage globalisation and deal with global issues, which inflicts real harm on significant segments of the world population. Though this trend has multiple causes and many local variations, we argue these nationalist leaders are not isolated cases, but in part products of a systemic trend we call self-reinforcing gridlock (figure 1). From Trump’s America to Brexit Britain, from Modi’s India to Xi’s China, from Erdogan’s Turkey to Duterte’s Philippines, national leaders are winning by promising to “take back control” and (re)assert their national power. Most dramatically, there has been a sharp rise in nationalism and populism around the world. Since we wrote Gridlock, the problem has probably worsened. Vicious cycle of gridlock and nationalism As international organizations expanded to address these new challenges, many found themselves locked into sub-optimal policies and decision-making rules that could not adapt to changing circumstances.Īnd this institutional inertia in turn has led to a proliferation of new institutions and organisations, fragmenting many areas of world politics into a confusion of overlapping jurisdictions and redundancies. Deepening interdependence brought many benefits, but also generated harder, more complex problems, “intermestic” issues that penetrate deep into domestic affairs. Increasing multipolarity reflected the success of bringing millions out of poverty, but also increased the number and diversity of voices that had to agree on global issues. New countries joined the global economy, companies expanded multinationally, and once distant people and places found themselves increasingly – and, on average, beneficially – intertwined.īut the virtuous cycle between deepening interdependence and expanding global governance could not last because it set in motion trends (see Box 1) that ultimately undermined its effectiveness. The “success” of the postwar order in building a managed form of globalisation allowed interdependence to deepen. In our 2013 book Gridlock (Polity, 2013), written with Kevin Young, we argued that these instances of multilateral breakdown were not just a string of bad news, but products of the same historical process. From the wars in the Middle East, to nuclear tensions in East Asia, to an ongoing migration crisis, to the looming threats of pandemics and financial shocks, to the growing danger of climate change, our ability to meet global challenges is falling short. Beyond Gridlock (Polity Press, 2017), seeks pathways of change through the gridlock.Ĭan we manage the globalised world we have created? Every day seems to bring new evidence to the contrary. Deepening interdependence, due in part to the success of the postwar order, has contributed to an anti-global backlash across the world.

Gridlock politics