The state became a service provider, citizens became consumers, and politics became about branding, delivery, and metrics. It wasn’t cultish, it was professionalised. But it still weakened the structures that once rooted democratic power in public life.
I read words in your sentences.. but for the life of me I just cannot figure out what you are talking about in practice? Hell, "branding and delivery" seems exactly the opposite of what biden was trying to provide. Constantly pushing for appeasement rather than the angry populist bent people wanted.
When I say politics became about “branding and delivery,” I’m not talking about PR spin. I mean that governments started thinking like managers, not democratic leaders: “What do the polls say? What can we announce that looks like progress?”
Think Blair’s Delivery Unit or Starmer’s obsession with “message discipline.” In the US, Biden rolls out policies with metrics, funding breakdowns, targeted benefits, all of which matter, but they’re delivered like a product, not shaped through public debate.
I disagree on JRB, I'll grant that I have lil insight into Blair, but if Starmer is the example sure I can see the idiocy. But regressing to the mean doesn't seem "neolib"? I mean maybe overvaluing the average voter as "rational" (and with good reasons for their beliefs) is but.. it feels a stretch?
It’s not about intent, it’s about structure. When politics is reduced to managing outcomes and calming markets or headlines, democratic participation gets bypassed. That’s what I mean by hollowing out the deeper structures of public power
This seems instead very anglo-focused, where the economies are so solid that "markets" paradoxically have very little power. It was when the interest rates on the italian debt skyrocketed (with investors forecasting disasters) that both fucking berlusconi and salvini had to tone down their policies.