By all evidence the modern, liberal, Euro-American state is in deep crisis. Whether or not self-inflicted, multiple failures during the 21st century have dissipated arguments about its inherent stability, raising questions about how it was constructed, how it functions, and what forces are at work undermining its authority and legitimacy. Keeping in mind important milestones in this history, and using a broad lens, the passage of time now allows us to see them clearly and ask, how did this present crisis of the modern, liberal state come to be?
In the discussion below, I will offer my thoughts on this crisis by reviewing the history of how the modern state developed, and then offer some of the writing of others who have thought about the crisis of the modern liberal state over the last century. In doing this, I will try to identify the principal threads and overall direction of these analyses, teasing out the assumptions they reflect and identifying the way they succeed or fail in their arguments about the modern, liberal state, how it developed, and how and why it has generated crises, and not just the current one.
My purpose is to take a deep dive into the historic framing of governance to identify how that process led to the development of the modern, liberal state as it is today, then ask what if anything can be done to remedy its disabilities. The literature I will include is representative but not exhaustive of the questions asked, and includes thinking from outside the standard, mainstream, Western thinking. This invites readers to reframe and supplement them with analyses that can offer additional insights, because I believe how we define and address the crisis of the modern, liberal state is the defining issue of our time.
At the end, I want to spend some time looking at the practical questions of what tools do we need to resolve this crisis, and what do we want to achieve in its aftermath. These questions should not be separate from but built into how we analyze the crisis because the future is always connected to the past, and because this is not only a crisis of the modern, liberal state, but a crisis of imagination and trust that must resolved within the process of finding durable resolutions.
At the beginning
At the beginning, I would like to frame this discussion by asking four foundational questions:
What are the relevant predicates to the emergence of the modern liberal state, including who created it, for what purpose, and under what historic conditions?
How has the modern, liberal state responded to political, social, and technological changes that influenced the evolution of the present crisis?
What are the constituent parts of the present crisis, and why did they appear in the way they have at this moment in history?
Can we fashion resolutions that not only resolve this crisis but provide durable answers to the problems of governance that it raises?
These are VERY big questions, and I don’t propose exhaustive, definitive answers. Rather, this is a “thought project” to examine questions to suggest answers others can confirm or dispute by connecting the critical dots themselves. Thus, I challenge readers to consider the arguments this article offers, and arrive at their own conclusions, using their own intellectual tools and analyses. I would only ask we keep in mind this crisis is the central problem in our modern world, and our treatment of it should reflect the virtue of offering insights with concern and commitment to the people whose lives it affects.
What are the relevant predicates to the emergence of the modern, liberal state, including: who created it, for what purpose, and under what historical conditions?
There isn’t a consensus about the beginning or structuring of the modern liberal state because the broad, critical debates about this question largely dried up after World War I. In fact, I argue the abandonment of this debate itself has contributed to the present crisis by leaving these questions in the background where it has lost its ability to see the modern, liberal state as a sociological/anthropological governance construct that goes back to the beginning of organized human communities. If that construction is missing, the full character of the crisis is obscured, limiting our ability craft a durable response to this crisis.
Here, I would like to offer that anthropological/sociological frame and apply it to the crisis of the modern, liberal state through five historic contexts:
Neolithic revolution. As families evolved into clans and formed agricultural communities with common cultural ideas and practices, they developed shared organization and normative choices, such as land ownership, that required systems of governance. 1
Late Neolithic period. As neolithic communities became networks of similar but not perfectly aligned communities that traded among themselves, their systems of governance had to adapt and become more complex to accommodate this diversity. 2
Early modern period. As nations evolved more complex and stable political organization, they adapted governance to normalize practices, such as commodity production and trade, to facilitate interacting with other states. This led to norms, laws becoming “institutions” with exclusive authority to maintain order within states. 3
The Greek city-state. If we frame the crisis of the modern, liberal state as Euro-American, we must consider how it was affected by the ideological and institutional influences for governing the Greek city-state, which limited political participation to ethnically authorized “citizens” (“polis”). 4
Roman republican governance. The political governance of imperial Rome, which was ethnically and culturally diverse, required a formal, institutional system with structures for representative and deliberative governance. 5 This introduced the concept of a civil state authorized by popular participation. 6
This leaves two additional predicates that were important to the creation of the modern, liberal state: 1) the emergence of the “European Enlightenment”, which substituted secular humanism for tradition, culture, and religion as the source of authority for state governance; 7 and 2) the development from this root of modern science, which both reinforced humanism by providing it an ideological base in rationalism, which in turn introduced rationalism as the base for political governance. 8 These two predicates then shaped the way modern, liberal states formed themselves into a legal-institutional construction as it first appeared in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. 9
The effect of these predicates can’t be exaggerated. Prior to the Treaty of Westphalia, Europe was divided into three religious camps – Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant – each of which had very different cultural contexts for the exercise of political power. Roman Catholics were associated with feudal, authoritarian forms of governance underwritten by the Catholic church; Eastern Orthodox also supported feudal authoritarian forms of governance but conditioned them on complying with the authority of Orthodox church as an independent moral and ethical source of authority superior to feudal monarchies; and Protestants, who strongly supported Enlightenment ideas, including liberalism, secularism, and capitalism. The negotiation of the Treaty was most strongly influenced by Protestant thinking, as it occurred in a Protestant setting and for purpose of protecting emerging capitalism from the residual power of feudal monarchies and their cultural/theological conflicts. 10
These predicates have continued their influence for 300 years, encouraging the development of British, Dutch, and American empires as Protestant and capitalist projects, and authorizing the creation of the first fully modern, liberal state in 1790 as the United States was and continues to be, at least in form if not substance. This helps explain the rise of the US as a global, capitalist, and primarily Protestant empire under the claim of “manifest destiny”, as well as its strong influence over the European Union, whose powerful northern states also embrace Protestant identities and capitalist values as they appeared in the Treaty.
These predicates thus have hidden effects by locking modern, liberal states into forms of governance controlled by Protestant, capitalist political and economic elites, using formal, institutional structures to reinforce their authority and legitimacy. Operationally, this works by: a) promoting illusions of “liberal values” inherited from the Greeks and Romans; and b) using these borrowed narratives to imply modern, liberal states are implicitly more virtuous than other forms of governance, which then promotes the idea of their entitlement to empire and justifies wars to prove which states are more entitled than others.
How has the modern, liberal state responded to economic, political, technological, and social changes that broadly affect its member states?
The evolution of the modern, liberal state since the Treaty of Westphalia has focused on forming and reforming its institutions to protect itself from the contradictions produced by its ideology and structure. Immediately after the Treaty of Westphalia, the most powerful European states began to form classical, liberal economic institutions to promote small-scale, entrepreneur capitalism. 11 But small capitalism was quickly overrun by corporate capitalism in the mid-19th century, and then monopoly capitalism in the mid-20th century. 12 Each step away from entrepreneurial capitalism took the economy and politics of modern, liberal states further and further from its roots in the cultural and ethical foundations of Greece and Rome.
This redefinition of economic institutions and ideological rationale during these two centuries, and particularly the 20th century, was accompanied, if not preceded, by a contraction of the politics of modern, liberal states. This occurred in concert with the rapid growth in the size and power of modern, liberal governments, even as popular participation in governance shrank. Likewise, innovation, which is driven in part by open and inclusive discourse in economic and political affairs, shrank as it fell victim to the political interests of noncompetitive economic and political monopolies that prioritize control over innovation. 13
This trend became particularly visible in the sphere of communications, which proceeded from systems of information and distribution to expand participation in the 18th and 19th centuries, to systems driven by government propaganda and private advertising which sought to manipulate perception and manage mass impressions and popular ideas for power and profit. 14
When did the current crisis of the modern liberal state begin, what are its constituent parts, and why did it appear at this moment in history?
Colonialism, the defining historical context for the early modern, liberal state was fueled by the power of the industrial revolution, and could not have occurred except for a collaboration between the modern, liberal state and private interests. 15 From the 16th through the early 20th century, this colonialism, which produced the raw materials for the expansion of the modern, liberal state, also drove the competition that increasingly divided the European states, settling the stage for the ultimate crisis of the modern, liberal state – World War I. It began with the competition between Spain, France, and England to control the Americas, continued with the Napoleonic wars of the early 1800s and the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, which elevated a unified German state into the European club of nations. It then produced the proxy Boer War in South Africa in the 1890s, and then the 1898 Spanish-American War, which vaulted the US to a competing colonial power. When World War I began in 2014, the stage was set for a reordering of colonialism and the imperial system of governance among modern, liberal states.
As Oswald Spengler argued in his thesis, Decline of the West, World War I marked the beginning of the current crisis of the modern, liberal state by exposing the illusions of democratic governance they claimed. When the colonial/imperial system collapsed, it released the restraints provided by those illusions, and drove modern, liberal states toward a totality of institutional integration, which then led to authoritarian and totalitarian societies during the interwar years of 1920 to 1940, as reflected in the rise of fascism, Nazism, and Stalinist state socialism. 16
Spengler’s sweeping cultural/historical narrative argues history is progress and civilizations fail because they exhaust their ideas, which leads to a decline in their capacity to govern. This view was subsequently challenged in the late 1980s by Paul Kennedy, 17 and in the early 1990 by Francis Fukuyama, 18 who reflected the late 20th-century rise of ahistorical neoliberalism and neoconservatism revisionist ideologies. Thus, their views sought to rehabilitate the power of the liberal West by externalizing the multiple internal political and economic crisis that confronted the modern, liberal states after World War II as anomalies, and instead pointing to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 as reflecting instead the triumph of Western liberalism.
Other writers supported Spengler’s thesis by looking inward at the decay of their liberal values, which they argued reinforced the decline in the efficacy of the economic and politics of the modern, liberal states. One of the first of these was Hannah Arendt, who in 1951 dissected the rise of totalitarianism of the interwar years, based on her direct experience and intimate knowledge of Nazism as a German intellectual, identifying five key factors: 19
An assumption of “entitlement to power”, which in the case of the US was/is articulated as “manifest destiny”, and “American exceptionalism”.
A shift in politics to mass formations of people who can be manipulated by propaganda.
The institutionalization of essential functions in society, such as education, social associations, and economic relationships, that can be controlled by hierarchies of power.
The promotion of isolation and loneliness, which devalues the influence of personal relationships which can act as a barrier to the destruction of values and accountability.
The use of “terror” in its many forms to refocus consciousness on self rather than collective interests.
Arendt’s analysis was bolstered by evidence that before, during, and after World War II the power of modern, liberal states shifted away from organized voluntary social interest groups to secular public and private bureaucracies that amassed and concentrated power by working together collaboratively to assume control over the state. As Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy argued, this shift invited corruption and promoted collective interests over public interests in the pursuit of maximum profit and control. 20
In 1989, Zygmunt Bauman, a Polish sociologist intimately familiar with the Holocaust, offered substantial sociological support for Arendt’s theses by providing substantial evidence that the existence of bureaucratic institutions within the German Nazi state facilitated authoritarian and totalitarian governance. They did this by: 1) first allowing senior bureaucrats to authorize violations of ethical norms to promote the interests of the state; and then 2) normalizing those violations by providing protection to those who followed their orders. 21
The analyses and findings of Arendt and Bauman were more recently substantially confirmed by American journalist Chis Hedges, who in four books written between 2010 and 2015 diagnosed the crisis of the US modern, liberal state as: 1) the triumph of “spectacle” over factual truth; 22 2) the abandonment of liberal values; 23 3) the adoption of delusion of power; 24 and 4) the merger of corporate and state power. 25 Thematically, each of his books points to a critical element in the unravelling of the modern, liberal state such as is the United States, from which Hedges’s mentor, Sheldon Wollen, argued the US is in crisis because it has abandoned its roots in a representative democracy. 26
Looking back on the last two decades, it is hard to disagree with Hedges’s diagnosis as: 1) the triumph of spectacle over fact now appears daily in the widespread abandonment of journalistic ethics by the corporate media, 2) the normalization of abuse of the power and abandonment of citizen rights by the US federal bureaucracy, 3) the pursuit of US foreign policy devoid of rational restraint, and 4) the emergence of public-private (corporate) partnerships that effectively make and enforce public policy.
These observations by Hedges echo other writers who have been developing a powerful collective critique of this present crisis over the last half-century. R. B. J. Walker has argued since the early 1990s that culture has been overlooked and underestimated as a contributing factor to sustaining and/or undermining state power. 27 Similarly, Andre Gunder Frank accurately forecast the return of China as a great power and Asia as the center of global politics. 28 And Alexandr Dugin, a Russian ethno-sociologist, has reached back in the deep history of the development of the Slavic civilization to argue not only that culture matters, but that fundamental value systems matter even more because they are deeply embedded in the organization an functioning of states. 29
At the time of their writing, these authors were commonly marginalized as “outliers” and “contrarians”, thus excluding them from the debate about the US and its crisis. In their place, “mainstream” commentators were lauded and promoted as their narratives didn’t significantly challenge status quo thinking. Among these were Samuel Huntington, who argued culture was a threat which could/should be contained to assure Western liberalism won the global culture war and preserved itself as the most virtuous of all “civilizations”; 30 Fareed Zakaria, who argued liberal states were failing because they were underperforming in imposing modernity as a secular ideology on non-Western states; 31 and Zbigniew Brzezinski who, as National Security Advisor to US President Jimmy Carter, offered a sweeping view of US foreign policy as the centerpiece on a grand chess board pursuing its interests as the dominant hegemon in the world. 32
What these writings share, is a “progressive,” modern, Eurocentric liberal view of history evolving within systems of modern, liberal state power, where political institutions function as meritocracies, economics has been tamed by technocratic management, and all ideologies rotate around a hub of liberal uni-parties 33 which showcase political personalities, not ideas, and never engage in critical self-reflection. Errors in judgment can occur, but can be corrected by “reform”, and the world itself spins without substantive change. It is a system where illusions are born, nurtured until they become delusions, and finally die without ever meeting the deeper realities of human history.
Beyond the views of modern liberal states of the collective West, a very different narrative is developing of a global system of states in crisis, weighed down by their collective illusions and lack of capacity for introspection and adaptation. Ironically, this narrative is simultaneously post-modern, incorporating ideas from Marx and Heidegger, as does Sheldon S. Wollen, 34 and deeply aware of the long history of human experience and culture, which lies at the heart of Alexandr Dugin’s writings. 35
What this dichotomy exposes is more a closing down of intellectual inquiry in the collective West, rather than merely a departure from the emerging thinking in the rest of the world. That brings us back to the seminal thinking of Hannah Arendt on the origins of totalitarianism and how it works to isolate and contain narratives to serve existing political power. The extent to which the collective West has drifted into the realm of totalitarianism has yet to be documented. But the broad attacks on alternative thinkers now have been documented as excluding all who are not within the institutions controlled by the state, regardless of their qualifications. What this leaves us is the challenge of thinking about resolving the crisis of the modern, liberal state without having the protection of the liberal values it claims.
Can we fashion resolutions that not only resolve this crisis but provide durable answers to the problems of governance that it raises?
Note, this question is posed not as an academic exercise, but as an intellectual challenge. We need not only proposed resolutions to aspects of the challenge posed by the crisis of the modern, liberal state, but also to find these as durable answers to the problems of governance. That should begin with thinking clearly about both the process of governance and the outcomes they produce. Those are questions that impinge on two questions governance always raises: how do we imagine governance as a means to secure justice, and how do we design governance to secure the trust required to make governance durable? Here are some of my thoughts.
Imagining governance
As good anthropologists have told us, human societies have created many systems of governance that differ substantially one from another. The predicate for creating governance, however, is always the same: the need to establish culturally acceptable norms and, where appropriate, institutions to standardize expectations and conduct. But each of these systems have different historical contexts, as does the crisis of the modern, liberal state. So, understanding the context appears to be critically important to imagining governance in a post-liberal world.
I would argue in this case we should begin with the tools that define the modern, liberal state: rationalism and the search for facts provided by the scientific method, operating within a system of values. These appear in the US as central parts of its Constitution that identify “the People” as the authorizing body for its system of governance, separate the powers of government into three competing branches to enhance accountability, and allow the citizens to change or amend the Constitution though the agency “the People” provide to their elected political representatives. This Constitution has survived for almost 240 years, making it the most durable of all modern, liberal states. That qualifies this form of governance as a good starting point in thinking about how and why it has been so durable, then looking at what outcomes are appropriate for other states and the people who occupy them.
Creating trust
I can’t remember a time when there was such great distrust in all modern, liberal states and the institutions they have created. Part of that distrust comes from rapid technological change, part from the erosion of credibility of the centralized systems of the power these states have created, and part comes from the evolution of popular thinking about what governance means. We need to look carefully at each of these to ensure they cease undermining trust.
I see creating productive trust as a two-step process: conducting self-reflection to understand our own prejudices, then looking for objective facts unaffected by prejudice. At any moment in time, we can be right about some things and wrong about others. But if we see learning as a voyage of discovery, it will be easier to discard and pick up what we need. When we look for facts, we should understand that facts are subject to change as our knowledge and tools expand. That is the essence of scientific enquiry, which is constantly testing established “facts” to learn more and then revise what we understand as “fact”. The more trust that exists, the more there will be opportunities to agree to disagree and learn. We don’t need to be perfectly correct, only open and consistent in what we say. This is an implicit part of the scientific method designed to promote collaboration by building confidence and trust to identify real facts.
As we know, technology is a two-edged sword that can enable new and more effective forms of meaningful work or produce weapons to control and destroy. Historically, technological change has always presented this conundrum which argues that the creation and use of technologies must be accountable to those it effects, and not just those it benefits. This is a political question of great importance, which requires we address it politically and transparently from the beginning.
Some final thoughts
As a governance problem, the crisis of the modern, liberal state is deeply intertwined with its institutional structures. This, perhaps, is one of the most important lessons it teaches. With the refinement of method and the explosion of new forms of communication, this becomes our first barrier to addressing the serious matters that lie behind the crisis. This leaves our attention distracted and thoughts confused, with facts are left out of the discussion and opinion dominating. Rather than waiting for this problem to be resolved by others, we need to devote some thought on how we can blunt, if not avoid its effects. Hannah Arendt and Zygmunt Bauman offer us some tools, if not clues in how to go about doing this.
The central problem in this crisis is the question of power, as it always is in matters of states. How can we reconstruct power to serve people and not oligarchs and bureaucrats? And is the state itself an obstacle to reaching that goal? I presently live in a very culturally diverse, economically poor, very small Central European state where people have been confronting this question for 30 years, if not longer. The desire to resolve this question is very strong, but the resources are limited.
I argue that situation provides both opportunities and dangers: opportunities because its size and diversity limit the ability to concentrate power, while also creating opportunities for outside interests to intervene, which they have. But there are also other important factors that play roles, such as the strength of social relationship, the deep sense of history among the people, and the development of critical skills, including the multilingualism of its society, its spirit of civic pride, and the ability of people to work together and innovate solutions to problems. The forces outside a society are never as powerful as they appear, and the inner strengths can leverage changes in ways outside forces cannot control.
Every society is different, and some are radically different than our own. In my experience, listening is more important than talking, and humility is a virtue we should cultivate. The idea of a crisis of modern, liberal states is intimidating, as it should be. But while the state is in crisis so also is the society it governs, which has consequences for everyone, whether or not their citizens immediately see them. Eventually, this crisis will be resolved. But how we approach it will determine its aftermath for everyone.