THE ELITES AND THE PEOPLE

The rise of populism and the crisis of democratic capitalism

Martin Wolf
chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 “for services to financial journalism”. Mr Wolf is an honorary fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, an honorary fellow of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy (Oxonia) and an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham.

The governance of complex modern societies requires technical knowledge — and we already face the danger that the gulf between economic and technocratic elites on the one hand, and the mass of the people on the other, becomes too vast to be bridged. At the limit, trust might break down altogether. Thereupon, the electorate will turn to outsiders to clean up the system. We are seeing such a shift towards trust in outsiders not only in the US but also in many European countries.
A complacent view is that the disaffected may let off steam but the centre will hold. This is quite possible. But it is a risky strategy. If the disaffection grew worse, the centre might not hold. Even if it did, a democratic society in which a large minority is disaffected while a majority is full of distrust would not be a happy one. Yet such a gap has emerged between the attitudes of informed elites towards established institutions and those of the wider public.
What are the root causes of this divide in attitudes?

Moderation:
Robert Misik, Journalist and Author