The Interchange between Democratic Institutions and the Globalisation of the Economy

The globalisation and liberalisation of markets triggered a period of unprecedented growth – as well as improvements in standards of living and consolidation of liberal democracies – in the decades following the Second World War. Recently, however, we have witnessed a substantial reversal in these trends. Today, globalisation and multinational corporations rather appear to challenge liberal democracy, social cohesion as well as (environmental) sustainability. In effect, the notion that liberal, representative democracy is in some form of crisis – or even a terminal decline – has been brought forward by numerous scholars (for a recent review, see Bickerton & Accetti, 2021). The academic literature studying these developments often focuses on describing and interpreting what is going ‘wrong’. However, the key challenge is to outline and understand the emerging type of politics as well as to envisage and develop the contours of new promising approaches to re-embed democracy and capitalism.