p. 255 “Public choice theory, a key theoretical aspiration for redesigning economic institutions from the 1970s on, was quite explicit about its goal to strip elected politicians of the power to regulate, control or suppress markets, often seeing government as an unfortunate necessity that ndded to be constrained at all costs. … robbed government of the ability to intervene in the public interest when markets failed, which is precisely the scenario that unfolded after 2007… the burden of fixing the market meltdown fell on central bankers not directly accountable to voters, with the consequence that policy prioritized stabilizing the banking system rather than addressing the broader social and economic damaged caused by the crisis.”
p. 256 “The loss of political influence and organizational capacity of trade unions undermined progressive politics by isolating workers from each other and limiting the ability of broad social interests to mobilise and pressure business and government. Strikes became a rarity, and governments in many countries abandoned systemic consultation with unions over social and economic policy, while business interests maintained a direct line to decision0makers.”
“As a result of these deep structural changes to the political economy, deviating from the neoliberal playbook became increasingly difficult for elected politicians, lacking as they do the political and economic clout to resist market pressure and business lobbying. The experiences of anti-system politicians reaching government demonstrated in a short time just how difficult it is toimplement serious change, when so many of the policy instruments that would be needed are lacking.”
“The collapse of the neoliberal economic model and the political actors that sustained it make continued mass opposition to the status quo the most likely scenario, expecially in the countries worst hit by the financial crisis. Anti-system politics will not go away while the ‘system’ is perceived by a growing share of the population to have failed. The job of politicians is to develop a diagnosis of this failure, and a set of proposals for fundamental change, that make sense and resonate with voters.”
p. 257 “The idea that markets can resolve most social problems, and that government should simply provide the basic institutions to allow this to happen has run out of political capital. Whatever new paradigmm emerges must facilitate meaningful mass participation in political decision-making over whatever matters society thinks are important. In other words, what most people understand by the word “democracy”.
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