Transformations of work and democratic decay
| Author | Johan Andreas Trovik |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14748851211035475 |
| Published date | 01 April 2023 |
| Date | 01 April 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article EJPT
Transformations of work
and democratic decay
Johan Andreas Trovik
Princeton University, USA
Abstract
Democracies worldwide are under stress. Two distinct families of explanation can be
identified by the relative emphasis they place on the cultural versus the economic.
Protesting against this dichotomy, there arethose who insist that economic and cultural
grievances interact. A conceptual scheme which ties together the economic and the
cultural through interaction, however, rests on a prior separation. In this article, a
richer and more plausible account of the relationship between transformations of
work and contemporary democratic decay is developed. This account is based on a
social practice model of work, in which the economic and the cultural are entirely
intertwined. The social practice of work is among other things a privileged site for the
realisation of certain ‘goods of work’. These include self-respect, self-esteem and self-
realisation. It is by altering expectations about the realisation of the goods of work that
transformations of work have contributed to an environment within which democra-
cies are under stress.
Keywords
Capitalism, crisis, democracy, democratic decay, transformations of work, work
Democracies worldwide are under stress. They are, we are told, dying,
ending, deconsolidating and backsliding. On the rise is ‘electoral authoritarianism’,
‘competitive authoritarianism’, ‘populism’ and ‘illiberal democracy’. As the pro-
liferation of labels indicates, we do not yet have a full grasp of what the present
threats to democracy consist of. Nevertheless, the suspicious synchronicity with
Corresponding author:
Johan Andreas Trovik, Department of Politics, Princeton University, Fisher Hall, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
Email: jtrovik@princeton.edu
European Journal of Political Theory
!The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/14748851211035475
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2023, Vol. 22(2) 238–259
which democracies have found themselves under pressure has stimulated a profu-
sion of attempts to account for this stress by relating it to broader transformations
of the cultural and economic environment of post-industrial societies.
1
On the one
hand, some writers posit the recent political trends as an effect, as one book puts it,
of a ‘cultural backlash’ (Norris and Inglehart, 2019). On the other hand, apparent
references to the autonomous logic of the cultural are dismissed by those who
instead emphasise the economic roots of the political turbulence of the last
decade. Whilst they disagree about the underlying dynamics, some stressing glob-
alisation, others automation, this latter group of writers all try to explain recent
political developments as a consequence of transformations in the economy, and
transformations of work in particular (Boix, 2019; Rodrik, 2018).
Predictably, there are those who reject the above as a fake dichotomy, repudi-
ating the choice between either a cultural or an economic explanation of the
reshaping of politics. Catherine de Vries (2018) makes this point forcefully.
‘While proponents on both sides of the debate have put forward ample evidence,
by focussing on either side of it’, she argues, ‘we seem to have lost track of one
important point, namely that economic and cultural grievances interact’. Now, it is
not so clear that we have lost track of this point entirely. Norris and Inglehart have
no problem conceding that economic conditions accelerate the ‘cultural backlash’.
Moreover, on the side of the theorists who stress the primacy of the economic, few
deny that economic transformations have politically salient cultural ramifications.
Typically, their point is rather, as Rodrik puts it, that ‘[w]hat may look like a racist
or xenophobic backlash may have its roots in economic anxieties and dislocations’
(Rodrik, 2018: 26). However, as a corrective to the dichotomy constructed between
the economic and the cultural, it has its limitations.
A conceptual scheme which ties together the economic and the cultural through
interaction rests on a prior separation. Conceiving of the cultural as the emotional
and value-laden, the economic is reduced to instrumental rationality. Work, on
this model, from the perspective of those who work, is conceived, above all, as a
means to an income. Attempts to clarify how the interaction between the economic
and the cultural is meant to take place thus typically refer to the importance of
‘ressentiment’: economic hardship, manifested in the disappearance of work and
worsening working conditions, creates ‘economic anxieties’. Simmering for a while
under the surface, passions then erupt into the political culture as ressentiment,
bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly, anger against those perceived as
enjoying unmerited advantages. Economically rooted distress is ‘expressed’ as cul-
tural anxiety.
2
I do not wish to dispute that this hints at something both true and important.
No serious political history of the last decade can be told without reference to the
global financial crash of 2008, and the pain rooted in the economic hardships
caused jointly by the Great Recession and the austerity measures imposed to con-
front it. Present day UK, John Lanchester (2018) points out, has suffered ‘the
longest period of declining real incomes in recorded economic history’.
‘Recorded economic history’ means as far back as to the end of the Napoleonic
239Trovik
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