Is liberalism dead? Not yet, but not feeling well.

"Liberalism created the conditions, and the tools, for the ascent of its own worst nightmare, yet it lacks the self-knowledge to understand its own culpability."                            Deenen, P. (2016) Why Liberalism Failed (Politics and Culture)

After the unexpected victories of populism in the United States and Britain and its ascent in Europe and a good part of the developing world, some political scientists and many politicians have began to wonder if we are witnessing a deeper turn away from the global liberal order so hardly won after World War II.

Patrick Deenen's argues that the global expansion of a liberal order -based on democratic rule, free markets, free trade and universal rule of law (not to confuse with  "progressivism" as it's incorrectly done in US politics)- has actually exposed the limitations of the rationalistic and excessively optimistic premises of the liberal thought proposed by Emmanuel Kant, John Locke and Adam Smith -to mention the most consequential thinkers usually associated with our current liberal order and open societies-. 
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How we define Liberal in this article:

Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.  Liberals generally they support ideas and programs such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free markets, civil rights, democratic societies, secular governments, gender equality and international cooperation. (More about it)

Looking at the traditional Dickinson's political spectrum (referred to US political tendencies) we can see that the characteristics of "liberal" -as defined in this article and in political sciences- are mostly coincidental with "Hybrid" and "Moderate" -something that few today associate with Trump's Republicans or Bernie Sanders' Democrats-

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The larger division between those benefited by the open world and society created by the globalization based on liberal values seems to be between highly educated "elites" able to work anywhere, multilingual and with a "cosmopolitan" sense of "world citizenship" and those left behind for lack of those same attributes, which are strongly correlated with wealth and affluence.

For those left to lead "local" lives tied to less open places, cultures, countries and labor opportunities, globalization seems to be the cause of steady deterioration in their income, standards of living and employment opportunities. For those that stay (or feel "left") behind, the face of globalization is the closing of local employers, outsourced jobs, stagnant incomes and immigrant inflows competing for fewer jobs and lower pay.

On those realities -as perceived by the "losers" in this game- nationalism, populism and xenophobic politics can and are thriving.

Deenen takes that point of view to warn that the liberal order as we know it might be unsustainable

"From that vantage, I hinted that such a political condition was ultimately untenable, and that the likely popular reaction to an increasingly oppressive liberal order might be forms of authoritarian illiberalism that would promise citizens power over those forces that no longer seemed under their control: government, economy, and the dissolution of social norms and unsettled ways of life. 

And it might provoke a swing towards the other extreme of the political spectrum, characterized as:

"The breakdown of family, community, and religious norms and institutions, especially among those benefiting least from liberalism’s advance, has not led liberalism’s discontents to seek a restoration of those norms. That would take effort and sacrifice in a culture that now diminishes the value of both. Rather, many now look to deploy the statist powers of liberalism against its own ruling class.Today’s widespread yearning for a strong leader, one with the will to take back popular control over liberalism’s forms of bureaucratized government and globalized economy, comes after decades of liberal dismantling of cultural norms and political habits essential to self-governance." 

The emergence of leaders like Donald Trump in US, Nigel Farage in Britain and the rest of EU populist parties (from Spain's Podemos and Catalonian nationalists to Syriza in Greece or the far Right nationalists in Northern Europe, France and Germany) show the relevance of Deenen's question.

In a similar line of discussion, Niall Ferguson debated Fareed Zakaria on the subject "Is the Liberal Order dead?", confronting Zakaria's liberal optimism with Ferguson's more skeptical vision of the "wisdom of the people" behind populist claims:

David Goodhart makes a similar analysis of the Brexit vote in Britain in his also thought-provoking book "The Road to Somewhere" showing similar forces behind the paradox of a slim majority voting for local reasons in a matter of national and regional impact:

I find both positions enormously thought-provoking and rich in insights about the origins of "cultural wars" that have been going on for centuries in both US and EU, and also lacking in balance.

The very idea of a "global order" should call us to some restraint. The current "global order" seems to me very different if we look at it from the viewpoint of longstanding, advanced republican systems such as US, UK, or NW Europe than if we look at it from the systems that emerged from the rubble after the collapse of the Soviet empire just 30 years ago. Most of the latter are still ruled by the same elites that ruled under communism, and to great extent -Putin's Russia being the model- with the same "rule of the leader" rather than rule of the law, in open contempt for any form of "liberal order". China and most authoritarian governments in Asia look no different.

How can a "global liberal order" exist when 70 to 80 percent of the countries and population still live under the rule of military, religious or elected dictators?

If we look at the Democracy Index elaborated by The Economist, we can see that only 4.5 % of the entire global population lives in a full democracy (dark blue). You may notice that US and UK are not at that level, precisely because of their populist revolts and their systems' swings during the last 20 years (think from Thatcher and Clinton to May and Trump).

If we limit Deenen's concept to US and UK -so far the cradles and champions of republican liberalism- we might be closer to a balanced argument.

US with Trump and UK with Brexit are certainly way off their traditional political boundaries, strongly tilted towards an unusually populist direction in their domestic and foreign policies.

In both cases, both experiments seem to be sinking fast in lack of direction, as it has been the case with populism in power in Latin America and Fascist Europe. Populist rage and hatred politics are highly flammable fuel, and as such, they have very little lasting power. 

Neither President Trump nor PM May seem to know what to do to keep the promises that got them elected save for kicking the can further or engaging in distraction tactics. Their "new order" seems less cohesive by the week and the "strong leaders" weaker at each turn, facing ever higher chances of being kicked out of office.

Once again, Kant rule applies: if all the countries in the world were to try nationalistic and populist policies (as it was in 1914, 1930 and 1939) what would the "world order" look like?

We know the response, but those who experienced the last "populist world order" are in their eighties or nineties. Or mostly within the 20 million dead in WWI and 70 million killed in WWII. 

But millions of  people, young and middle age living in US, UK and EU know it well today. 

They are -we are- the millions of Latin Americans, Eastern European, Asian and African immigrants that have experienced illiberal systems -all the gamut from elected populist dictatorship in "banana republics" to money-laundering kleptocracies and autocracies serving plutonium cocktails, using hungry dogs or antiaircraft cannons for firing dissidents- and came to the remaining liberal-ruled republics seeking for rule of law.

We certainly can compare the alternatives and know the consequences of illiberal governance.

Today's challenge seems to me to find a way out of the populist-nationalist trap before it starts to harm the economy or becomes belligerent again.

I comes to my memory what Ronald Reagan said in 1961 about this subject.

"Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction"    

Ronald Reagan