Is Trump the End of Democracy? with Herbert Kitschelt

In the first episode of the In_equality podcast, hosts Marius R. Busemeyer and Gabi Spilker discuss the rise of right-wing populism and its impact on democracy with political scientist Herbert Kitschelt. They explore Trump’s influence, global populist movements, economic realignments, and the future of democratic institutions in an era of shifting political landscapes.

Hosts:

Marius R. Busemeyer – Professor of Comparative Political Economy at the University of Konstanz and Speaker of the Cluster of Excellence “Politics of Inequality”.

Gabriele Spilker – Professor of Global Inequality and Co-Speaker of the Excellence Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality”.

Guest:

Herbert Kitschelt – George V. Allen Distinguished Professor of International Relations at Duke University.

® Expert in comparative politics, party politics, social movements, Latin American clientelism, and the rise of right-wing populist parties.

Key Topics Discussed:

1. The Rise of Right-Wing Populism in the U.S. and Beyond

2. Trump’s Political Impact & the 2024 U.S. Election

3. The Role of Big Tech and Economic Elites

4. The Global Context: Right-Wing Populism in Europe

5. The Evolution of Populist Economic Policies

6. The Future of Democracy and Social Movements

Links & Resources:

Further Readings:

o Häusermann, S., Kitschelt, H., eds (2024): Beyond Social Democracy: The Transformation of the Left in Emerging Knowledge Societies. Campridge University Press. 

o Kitschelt, H. P., & Rehm, P. (2023). Polarity Reversal: The Socioeconomic Reconfiguration of Partisan Support in Knowledge Societies. Politics and Society, 51(4), 520–566. 

o Kitschelt, H. P., & Rehm, P. (2019). Secular partisan realignment in the united states: The socioeconomic reconfiguration of white partisan support since the new deal era. Politics and Society, 47(3), 425–479. 

Mehr über den Exzellenzcluster „The Politics of Inequality“.

More about the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality”

Kontakt: cluster.inequality@uni-konstanz.de

Contact: cluster.inequality@uni-konstanz.de

Transcript

In_equality Podcast 1_Kitschelt

Marius R. Busemeyer

Welcome everybody to the Inequality Podcast. My name is Marius Busemeyer. I am professor of Comparative Political Economy at the University of Konstanz and also speaker of the Excellence Cluster, the Politics of Inequality.

And with me here is Gabi.

Gabi Spilker

Yeah, and I'm Gabi Spilker. I'm also co speaker of the Cluster of Excellence, the Politics of Inequality. And I'm professor of Global Inequality.

Marius R. Busemeyer

Thanks, Gabi. We are talking in this podcast about newest research on inequality, especially the politics of inequality, but also current day events that are relevant from the perspective of our cluster and also of interest to a broader community, not only of scholars, but also the broader public. And today we have a very distinguished guest. This is Herbert Kiltschel. Welcome, Herbert, to our podcast.

Herbert Kitschelt

Yes, good afternoon.

Marius R. Busemeyer

Herbert is George V. Allen Distinguished professor of International Relations and at Duke University. He's been there for quite some years. Interestingly though, he actually works more on comparative politics, especially party politics. But he has worked on so many different issues that very hard to summarize here in a few words. He has also worked on social movements more lately on Latin America clientelism. He has worked a lot, especially on right wing populist parties from the beginning.

And that's a little bit also the topic of our podcast today, but we'll see wherever we go.

Gabi Spilker

Okay. And we think we could not have found a better expert to talk about the rise of right populism lately. And we want to talk with Herbert about whether we are potentially witnessing a qualitatively new episode in this process, as we have seen with recent elections. And this is really where I want to get things started. And asking you about the most recent case, the US Case, which is probably on the mind of many people at the moment. And the first question I would like to ask you is Trump or the regaining presidency of Trump, the end of American democracy and the beginning of an autocratic period? Herbert?

Herbert Kitschelt

Well, that's maybe taking a little too far, but I would agree with sort of two statements. Number one, we see generally an uptick of radical right populist movements and parties all across the Western Hemisphere. But beyond that, the United States is a very specific case. So I'm not going to talk about the more general conditions that in my view contribute to this. They have, of course, to do with changing economic challenges, dramatic changes in the occupational structure over the last 40 years. Keep in mind that in the United States, populism began to rise for the first time in the 1890s to 19 teens, at a time when the farm population collapsed from 40% to 20% and eventually to 5% and less. Now we have seen the collapse of industrial employment, manufacturing employment in the United states from about 30% in the 1970s to 10% now.

And we have, of course, parallel movements at higher levels elsewhere. On top of that, of course, multiculturalization is very important. But let me get to three very important items that distinguish the United States and create what may be more of a regime crisis than elsewhere. Actually, I can tell you I listened yesterday to a podcast by the Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman, and he said for the first time in his life, and he's just about as old as I am, he is really afraid about what's happening in the United States. So here are the three factors. Number one, the United States has the legacy of a deep racial divide based on enslavement. There is no equivalent to that.

And the animosities and racist prejudices that drive it. Number two, the United States has a form of evangelical nationalist Christianity that is unprecedented. There's no country anywhere in Europe that has anything equivalent. These people have felt that they are backed against the wall, essentially, if you go back in that their doctrinal development since the first half of the 20th century, their anti state and they are anti religious pluralism. And they feel that with their decline, this may be their last chance to dominate America. And the third one is, of course, and that is sort of, when you look at politics, the most important and sort of the proximate cause for the US Situation. The US Has a winner take all system.

You have plurality elections for Congress. You have, of course, the presidency as this big prize. Keep in mind that Donald Trump was elected with only one and a half percent more than his competitor Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris got almost as many votes as he did. And here at the margin, voters who voted because the price of eggs is now too high, and that's because of bird flu and has nothing to do with governments made it possible now to have a major, major change of a political regime at the same time. And this is my last sentence, I would say it's too early to say what the real consequences for the political regime will be. That depends a lot on, number one, the strength of US Civil society, and number two, the internal contradictions of the Trumpist populism, contradictions you find in the history of populist movements essentially, again from the 1890s to the present and wherever you go, not just in the Western hemisphere.

Marius R. Busemeyer

Thanks. There was already a lot of stuff in there, but maybe just to pick up on one point, because you mentioned the decline of manufacturing and these products, societal tendencies. This was already there in 2016. To some extent or to a large extent, it was already there in 2020. But somehow something was apparently different about 2024. Even though, as you say, the popular vote was close, but he actually won the popular vote different from the previous elections. Something has changed a little bit.

How did that happen? What was different about 24 than, for instance, about 2020 or 2016?

Herbert Kitschelt

Well, let's first look at the numbers. Trump actually did not get many more voters than in 2020. There was lower turnout. So there are many people who stayed home. And we still don't know yet who these people were. Many of them may have been people who voted in 2020 against Trump. They didn't necessarily vote against Biden, but they were disappointed by Biden.

Biden was elected as they entered Trump, but then he turned out, at least in the first two years of his presidency, that his presidency in part was captured by the radical progressive wing of the party. It's a little bit like the radical wing of the Greens, if they captured the Greens. And that created also a backlash. That's one thing you have to take into account. The second thing that is really different hasn't really to do so much with the US Working, I could say more about this. One has to actually differentiate this. It's not that the working class has gone over, but let me highlight one other element.

The really critical change is that the same kind of, if you will, stratificational divisions, I hesitate to call them class divisions that you find among whites are now spilling over into other ethnicities. The biggest change is that a very substantial share of Hispanic and especially Hispanic men, older men and less educated men went to Trump. And you see this change even at the margin, African American electorate, and again among men and older and less educated people, interesting. They go over to Trump. So it's a stratificational realignment that spills this fiction that the Democrats are the rainbow coalition that get everyone else but whites is really falsified by this election.

Gabi Spilker

Just a follow up question on that. So you repeatedly said it's men and it's less educated men. So I see two cleavages here. One is a gender divide and one is an educational divide. Would you agree on that?

Herbert Kitschelt

Oh, yes. I think these are the two major factors and not just in the West. You see the same thing all around the world. Think of Putin, think of Mr. Xi. I think what this also puts into the limelight for political science and hasn't yet been Enough is demographics. So the politics of population control. Michel Foucault anticipated this a little bit.

His history of sexuality is really a history of political control, of fertility and demographics. And I think this is going to be a major topic also of inequality in the 21st century.

Marius R. Busemeyer

But maybe something else also seems to have changed. I mean, if you look at the inauguration that took place a few days ago, there are new people in the room that weren't there before, namely Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, of course, the tech billionaires and now have a seat at the table. And it seems that this is also a change in the coalitional politics. Right. That before the tech elites were a little bit skeptical of Trump especially, but also of right wing populism in general. So somehow now they are part of the coalition, part of the deal.

What's going on there?

Herbert Kitschelt

First, let's specify what we mean by coalition. So far we have talked about the electoral coalition, the new elements that come in here. They don't have any votes. They have money, they bring money. The others brought votes. I would say that the Trump the effective political coalition that makes authoritative decisions consists of three potentially contradictory elements. One is the old hardcore maga, Make America Great Again, that already finds its origins in the Tea Party movement.

My Harvard colleague Theda Scotchball wrote a book about this some years ago. These tend to be well established, affluent older whites who are mainly concerned about taxation. There you have the old market liberal agenda combined with the nativist and xenophonic agenda. But then what Trump managed to do in this campaign, 201516 bring in the other MAGA, which I would call these are left authoritarians. These are people who are existentially threatened and who want to see him do something about this situation of threat that the Democrats did not deliver. Of course, he hasn't delivered it either. But they want something very different than the first group.

Their representative is probably the smartest man in Trump's environment, but not pushed a bit to the periphery. And that is Steve Bannon. Don't under. He is sort of essentially what I don't want to go too far with the comparison to fascism. He is the Ernst Rohm to the left fascist who wanted the second revolution in 1934, or the strasses of the world, the unionist wing of the fascist, a populist movement that is essentially this group. And the question will be whether they can be fed and will be satisfied just with xenophonic and nativist theater, or whether they will insist and if they are not satisfied, effect from a coalition that will not deliver on their needs and economic requirements. Keep in mind, one of the first things that Trump did is to vote the agreement of the Biden administration with the pharmaceutical industry to cap drug prices.

This is something that will violate the interest and hurt this group particularly badly. Now, the new developments, this is beyond the electoral coalition. This is the third thing that came into the fore only recently. This is essentially modern IT capital. And they are mostly concerned about a very different agenda. They don't really care about immigrant, they love immigration in many ways. What they are concerned about is the regulation of the AI industry. They also bring in a completely different ideology that's only emerging and that some have called post humanist accelerationism to treat also us as a species, as essentially a transitional form to the establishment of a higher intelligence where governance is exercised through code, not through these antediluvian states, I mean nation states.

This is sort of something that is on the way out, if you ask those who govern by code. So that is bringing in a completely new element. And that is of course also in contradiction with the other two.

Gabi Spilker

Absolutely. May I ask one more follow up question on that? Because in contradiction was a lot of things already happening in the first presidency of Trump. But often his voters did not seem to mind that much that he potentially didn't deliver on their core policies, but rather seemed to either rhetorically say he is aligned with them or whatever. But so often it seems, at least from the outside, that what he does is not necessarily the way he's judged by his voters. And that seems to me at least very problematic if he is not even accountable really to his core voters or he can do potentially anything and they might be happy. Is that the case or is this just an outside perspective?

Herbert Kitschelt

Well, that depends on what it actually is on which he defaults. The situation in the first presidency was very different from the one now. Number one, the first presidency was during a time of economic upswing and a time when budget deficits were very low. Essentially, Obama had cleared out the pigsty created by the previous administration pinnacling in the financial crisis of 2008. 9 and so Trump was cruising smoothly with the economy. And number two, the Trump presidency at the time was not well organized. They didn't get things done.

Now we have Project 2025 of which all of you have heard a lot. It's a completely different ball game now. And keep in mind the United States, hey, everyone says the United States is doing economically so well, but at the peak of the business cycle, with six and a half percent deficit, GDP deficit Tell the Germans this is just, I would say even if you are a Keynesian, this is completely unsustainable. And they will have to manage scarcity in a way that the Trump administration didn't have to deal with. So while his followers may discount a lot of things, they will have now to swallow a whole bunch of other things that they never had to confront in the previous administration.

Marius R. Busemeyer

Yeah, but if we're talking about policies, I mean, this is always at least a little bit my impression when I talk to Americans also in political science, that they have very strong belief in the stability of American democracy, the checks and balances, and Congress will take care of the fiscal rules. Maybe you could give an assessment what you think in terms of policy change, what is realistic and whatnot. I mean, posturing with executive degrees is one thing, as he did, but what can he actually do in terms of policy change? You mentioned the fiscal deficit, some of the economic policies, if they ever turn into policies with the terrorists, they are self defeating to some extent. That could trigger an economic downturn and make things even more bad, especially also for his voter base. So are we maybe a little bit worried too much or what could happen in terms of policies?

Herbert Kitschelt

Well, I think no one knows. I don't think that anyone now with a straight face can make a prediction. We can analyze the contradictions in his coalition.

And you're absolutely right. I mean, these executive orders is just more or less a short term theater, at least as far as economic things are concerned. And he will have to address some major challenges. And I think they know very clearly that they have only a brief window to get this done as soon as bad economic news sets in. You have already some of this. You have a big bargaining participant silently at the table that never opens its mouth. That's the bond market.

The bond market is already doing just the opposite to what Trump wants. You saw him talk at Davos about that. The interest rates have to come down so that his less well off constituency can more go into debt. The bond market is not cooperating. So you could. It's almost an irony. There was these structuralist Marxist theories of the state that you may remember from your undergraduate years that capital votes with its financial allocations.

And I think that's something that's happening now as well. And that contradicts populism. And we have to see how much this feeds also into Congress where the Republican Party is divided among different streams. So your guess is as good as mine, how much is going to get done. But he has to get it done.

Marius R. Busemeyer

Quickly, capitalism saving democracy maybe, or just.

Gabi Spilker

Offering an even more pessimistic view on this is not that it's policy that responds, but that at the end of the day, if they can't get their policy done, what if politics respond, responds and he just tries to get things done by shrinking the freedoms of others, by allowing things that are potentially unimaginable for us currently. That is what I think worries many, especially here in Germany, that things are possible that we should not see in a democracy. Do you think that's just too pessimistic?

Herbert Kitschelt

No, I think that the danger to American democracy comes in if there's a performance failure of this administration, then they will pull what you might call in Germany the note bremse. They pull the emergency break and that will mean trying to disenfranchise groups and who knows what else. So yeah, that's. I think we have this with all authoritarian regimes. They are popular as long as they have performance legitimacy. But if this performance legitimacy fails, then they go on and change the politics. So I agree with you.

Marius R. Busemeyer

We talked a little about us right now, but maybe we can also start talking a bit more about other countries, especially European countries. You mentioned in the beginning the special circumstances that make the US a special case. And I think I very much agree with you. That is and remains a special case, especially in terms of its form of capitalism, but also its political institutions. But of course we've seen also the rise of right wing populism in many European countries. You yourself have studied it since 30 years. And we have also potentially reached a new stage in that development in the sense that there are now countries where their right wing populist parties are already in government, leading governments to some extent or becoming the strongest parties in polls and in elections.

Austria, Netherlands, Slovak Republic and so on. So it's not just happening in the United States, it's also happening in Europe. What's going on in Europe? I mean, you mentioned this American special case, but somehow, of course, it's happening in Europe as well. What is driving these developments?

Herbert Kitschelt

Well, in Europe you have of course, the long term upswing. I wouldn't focus so much on recent developments which actually have been quite mixed. If you think of the European election last summer, quite a few of the populist right wing parties didn't do so well. Think of Holland, where Wilders went down, Sweden as well. Then you did not mention that there is a populist right wing party that has in government office for the last 30 years that almost got 30%. That's Switzerland, my very good friend, Swiss friend who should unnamed always says, well, what are you talking about? The way really to moderate or restrain them is actually to force them to participate in governments and they have no economic program.

Gabi Spilker

But is the Swiss case really a good one to compare? I mean, the Swiss political system is so different to others. It's just, I mean, clearly the US case is the most extreme with the winner takes it all system. But in the Swiss case it's just the absolute opposite where there are this grant, grant, grant coalition, so to say, each time where they really try to accommodate almost all parties. And so shouldn't we worry a bit more about these cases where if they are in government, right wing populist parties are not checked as well as they are in Switzerland? For me personally, I worry about Austria.

Herbert Kitschelt

So these are the extremes, but in between you always, as long as you have coalition governments with veto players, think of what's going on in Holland, which is probably the closest comparison, and the paralysis that I think many voters actually also now in Germany vote for the populist radical right because they see paralysis among the established parties. We are in a situation where really new ideas would be called for. There's an exhaustion of ideas.

Think of the late 1920s. I know, I can't go too long. We had in Germany, in the Weimar Republic, we had a social democratic led government of the Weimar democracy parties. And when austerity came, they did what every government, no matter what its partisan stripes were all across the Western hemisphere, they engaged in austerity and they had no new ideas. And then you had three pathways to new ideas. One was the red green coalition in Sweden. Another one was the New Deal in the United States.

And then of course the catastrophic one, there was Adolf Hitler in Germany, some ways in government anticipated by the Adolphus Schuschnik Austrians. So if you think of the Austrians ahead of the Germans a little bit. So we have this situation of checks and balance also Veda players. But it's very important also to see whether you see this paralysis among the democratic parties continuing. And I think this is the most worrisome thing about Austria. They are fiddling while Rome is burning. They cannot agree even if they have relatively minor differences.

But it is, I think, a question of really developing new political economic ideas. In Germany, for example, I don't see this in the current campaign at all. And I think this also creates this frustration both with the CDU as well as the spd. And I'm not an economist and I'm not at the forefront of this But I think we need some new ways of dealing. And think of the welfare state. Think of Iverson et al. The welfare state, throughout its development until the 1980s compensated the losers.

We need new formula to compensate the many losers of the fundamental structural, economic and cultural transitions. We talked earlier about men and boys.

That's going to be another big theme. For whatever reason, men have a competitive, a disadvantage in current political economy for many reasons we could spell out. And the question is, is this something that somehow would be reasonable to compensate? This is a very, very loaded and explosive question. I'm sure we cannot go into this now, but there will be more and more questions of how to compensate all those people who suffer under the current developments. And their way of reacting is actually to support the radical right, regardless of what that stands for.

Gabi Spilker

I very much agree with almost all you said. The question is rather for me, is it economic compensation they are longing for or isn't it rather like culturally rooted a feeling of losing status, A feeling of losing what they think is their place in society that they should have and no longer have, that they feel threatened. And is this something we can compensate people for?

Herbert Kitschelt

There are elements to that. I completely agree. I think let's use a notion that comes from critical political theory. Recognition. There is a sense of recognition. And I think the other side, the educated side, often has in an aggressive way undercut the recognition of those who don't have the cultural capital that they embody. And I think in the United States this is probably stronger than in Germany.

The DEI and WOKE perspectives, they are also anti liberal in many ways. They are also just as the extreme right, suffocating and restricting the public sphere of debates. And that is something I think that also many people react to. I'm not really bringing it over my lips to call them on the left or even libertarian because it's a new very rigorous moralistic sectarianism that has taken part of some of the movements and articulations you find among intellectuals. And I think that's something you also have to counteract.

Marius R. Busemeyer

Is this not all about recognition and inclusion and so on, or what do you see a contradiction in terms there? So you think it's called dei but actually it's not that inclusive.

Herbert Kitschelt

Yes, it's actually in many ways exclusive. I have political economy friends who actually believe this is a new strategy also of creating rent seeking pressure groups in the economy. We parcel out jobs by attributes that need to be represented and that is sort of taking away labor market competition. It's also an anti meritocratic movement. That's by the way, another very big topic of the 21st century. We know that meritocracy in many ways is still just a fiction. Money and Terrence cultural capital affect very much the social mobility of the next generation.

But even if meritocracy was the dominant form of allocating scarce resources and status in society, is this what we want? That's sort of a debate that is only beginning to emerge. And I think that also contributes to the existential anxiety that we find in modern society.

Gabi Spilker

That's very interesting. Just again, a follow up question on that. What we currently observe in the German case at least, is that there is a competitor to the right wing populist movement, so to say, to take up these demands and kind of try to accommodate them. And this is the left wing populism like the for instance. I mean, how do you think that fits in your kind of what you just said? And do you think that that's just a special case and will be gone soon, or is that something that will stay on?

Herbert Kitschelt

No, the extremism I was talking about so far is more the extremism you find sort of on the left wing of the Greens and represented by the now resigned leadership. What you are talking about is something else, a very interesting phenomenon that applies in many countries. Actually. I had an EPSA panel on left authoritarianism and that also shows that it is not the working class that has gone over to the radical right. I could show you, for example for the United States based on data until 2022, that if you take less non college educated people with household incomes in the lower 2/3, that it is only evangelicals who solidly vote for Trump. The others are still up for grabs by different parties. You have lots of people who want economic security and redistribution and who don't vote for the radical right, but they no longer know what to do.

They don't like immigration. Let me give you another very interesting thing. An important constituency also in Germany, and especially among women, I should say, are people who are educated. They are libertarian in the sense they want individual freedoms, they want gender equality, but they're against immigration because they find that too many immigrants bring anti liberal ideas and forms of governance into the country. And that's especially strong among younger highly educated women. And not just in Germany. I think it might be very controversial to mention that.

But Sarah Wagenknecht, she tries to find a market niche among people who have just those sentiments. They want economic redistribution. You read her book. She is a libertarian when it comes to gender questions.

And individual freedoms. She is far removed from the right wing authoritarianism of the AfD and that, but she is against immigration and there is a sort of a three dimensional configuration of appeals where she has a market niche and it's unclear whether she can develop that market niche fast enough to really get a sustained and durable foot in the door. That's going to be the interesting thing next month.

Marius R. Busemeyer

But maybe also looking back at your own research from the 1990s on right wing populism, as I mentioned, I think you were one of the first ones to really study that phenomenology as it emerged. And there's this very well known winning formula that you coined back then, basically stating that it's a combination of neoliberal economic reforms and authoritarian values. That is the recipe of success for right wing populist party. And I guess the case Switzerland fits pretty well. FPU in Austria at that time also fit quite well. But it seems to me at least, or that's my question to you to some extent, that we also see a little bit of a change on the part of right wing populist parties that they have become, even though maybe a bit less or still a little bit more blurry than other parties, but they have become much more supportive of the welfare state. A specific kind of welfare state of course, namely policies that favor deserving beneficiaries, natives of course, pensioners, so called hard working people and so on.

But they have come to embrace the welfare state rather than challenging them. And maybe that's exactly the recipe of success that this nativist interpretation of social policy rather than being in opposition to the welfare state.

Herbert Kitschelt

There's lots of that can be said about this. First of all, when I talked about this winning formula, it was often misunderstood. Already when you read that book and the empirical chapters, I bet you many people don't read, you would find in the chapter on France and in the chapter on Austria already. Then the working class types who voted for the whole national and for the FPO in the 1990s, they were not economically right wing, they were already center, they were not clearly left and rooted in the labor movement and so on, but they were not on the right. The important thing was that at the time you had a coalition. But since working class people put the those who voted for the radical right put more salience on the non economic issues and there was a time when the economy was doing quite nicely, so there was a reason to put more salience on other issues. That's why the winning formula could work at that time.

Under conditions of greater economic stress. It's anyway a different matter then. On top of that, in those days radical right parties had between 10 and 20%.

Now they're more between 20 and 30%. And the expansion of the electorate could only come from those who are more receptive to the welfare state. So that's about the history of it. The current situation, I would say, is that the focus of radical right economic social policy is still very selective on what is often labeled welfare chauvinism, a defense of elements of the welfare state that currently at least mostly benefit natives. But that is not a future perspective for giving the economy and society a new dynamism. That cannot be all that the radical right can stand for. Especially major questions of inequality they always try to shun and bracket.

You see this in the current program of the AfD as well. And so I would be hesitant to say that they can occupy this left authoritarian appeals configuration.

Gabi Spilker

Interesting. Maybe one final question and maybe going to the other, potentially 70 to 80% of the population who do not vote, at least currently, for the right wing populist parties. Some think it might be now the time that they form or they counteract these movements with new or old social movements going to the street, that maybe the Trump election might be the impetus to have social movements come back on environmentalism, on gender questions and the like. Do you share this potentially optimistic idea that we can now see a new age of new and old social movements?

Herbert Kitschelt

Well, I think we have to distinguish here two questions. Number one, what is the form of articulating political interests that we have? Interest groups, movements and parties. I think parties are indispensable because you need an institutional mechanism to aggregate preferences and represent them and turn them into authoritative decisions. Movements and interest groups, they can specialize on particular topics. It's much easier, and that is obviously a transformative element to bring in innovative ideas. But they cannot replace political parties.

That's a predicament. Think of the constitutional process in Chile in 2022, when you essentially had all these individuals, that we are going to make a constitution without parties. And what a mess that created. I use this in my undergraduate classes to show you you cannot run a democracy currently without parties. So these are two different questions. And I think social movements and interest groups have always been motors of innovation. So that's not new.

The question is how they are then translated and configured to provide convincing packages that then can translate into authoritative decisions. I think that's where I think the greatest problems are at this point.

Marius R. Busemeyer

Okay, thank you very much, Herbert. That was a fantastic conversation.

I really enjoyed it. At least the optimistic parts of it. The pessimistic parts I also enjoyed, but on a different level. But anyway, thanks so much for your input and yeah, see you next time.

Gabi Spilker

Yeah, maybe see you in a year. And then we see which of the predictions came true. Thank you.

(This transcript was created using AI.)