Bao Gangsheng: How to understand the changing Western world?

Professor Bao Gangsheng's new book covers all the political aspects of the Western world in recent years, and analyzes the challenges and crises faced by Western countries in the context of globalization, such as political and economic imbalances, migration shocks, ethnic contradictions, and religious pluralism on the basis of profound political theory and comparative politics. The author has also engaged in academic speculation dialogues with many famous contemporary Western political scientists, the breadth and depth of which are rare in the field of Chinese political science. ——Wang Jisi (Founding Dean of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University, Emeritus Chair Professor of Liberal Arts, Peking University, Professor, School of International Studies, Peking University)

preface

How to make sense of the changing Western world?

The benign development of no country can be separated from a correct understanding of the outside world. For China, the West is also the leader and dominant player in the outside world. Therefore, how to correctly understand the West and Western politics is a very important issue. However, since the beginning of the 21st century, especially in the last decade or so, many important new changes have taken place in Western politics, some of which have far exceeded many people's expectations. In popular parlance, "black swan events" are frequently staged in the Western world. This makes it more difficult to properly understand Western politics.

In the 10 years of the 21 st century, a series of major events that followed in Western countries seemed to have disrupted the original political order and made the whole world no longer peaceful. These major events include: Trump's unexpected election as president of the United States in 2016, the United Kingdom's unexpectedly chosen to start "Brexit" in the 2016 referendum, the second round of the presidential election for the first time in 2017, the representative of the French far-right Marine Le Pen entered the second round of the presidential election for the first time, and the AfD, a far-right party in Germany that was only five years old in 2017, became the third largest party in parliament, and so on. All this has created great anxiety and concern among the moderates, moderates, and centrist forces in the West and even in the whole world. They began to ask: What is wrong with the Western world?

In the last two or three years, if we ignore the Ukraine crisis, which is on the periphery of the Western world, the domestic politics of the Western countries themselves have ostensibly returned from a "turbulent cycle" to a "stable cycle", but this relative stability cannot be concealed by the fact that many deep structural factors within the West have quietly changed. Biden liked to say "America is back" when he first became president of the United States, but his approval rating in the polls is not high at present, and it is not yet known whether it will be a Democrat or a Republican, and which politician will be in the White House in the next election. Although Britain has completed "Brexit" under the leadership of the Conservative Party, and a relatively politically stable Britain seems to have returned, the Conservative Cabinet has not been stable in recent years, and the prime minister has changed several times in just a few years. In France, Emmanuel Macron, who represents the moderate force of the centrists, was re-elected, but Le Pen won a record number of votes in the second round of the presidential election, with a proportion of more than 40%. In Germany, the moderate center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SDP) is in power with the support of the Free Democrats and Alliance 90/Greens, but the fragmentation of the German party system is increasing, and the AfD remains one of the five main parties in parliament. All this means that the current Western world seems to be stable, but in fact it is still in a situation of undercurrent surging.

In particular, in the November 2023 general election in the Netherlands, the far-right party Freedom Party, which advocates "Brexit" and opposes religious minorities, won the election and became the largest party in parliament. The BBC and other international mainstream media believe that this will bring new uncertainty to European politics.

Taken together, all of these political phenomena constitute the "new reality of Western politics." The main focus of this work is: what does this new political reality mean, what factors drive this new political reality, and what kind of political impact will the new political reality bring to the West and the whole world?

I'm a political scientist, or as Western academia sounds more "lofty," I'm a "political scientist." The basic task of both political science and social science in general is to describe and explain facts, with the former solving the question of "what" and the latter solving the question of "why". The task of political science is to describe both what is meant by the new political reality of the West and what factors give rise to the new political reality of the West. New realities often require new theories, because old theories are sometimes not enough to explain new realities. The main goal of this book is to describe and explain the new realities of Western politics from a new theoretical perspective.

There are three essential features of this book's understanding of the new realities of Western politics. The first is the introduction of a new paradigm. In the past, academic analysis of Western politics tended to emphasize the paradigm of class analysis. The political rivalry between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in Britain and the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in the United States is interpreted more in terms of the political differences between the upper and lower classes. In addition, in recent years, academics have become accustomed to understanding many new political phenomena in the West from the perspective of populism – from the rise of Trump to Brexit, from the soaring of the French National Front (renamed the National Alliance on June 1, 2018) to the rise of the AfD in Germany, and even from the phenomenon of Erdogan in Turkey to the political platform of Modi in India, which has been interpreted by many scholars and media as "the rise of populism". This book argues that this is already an old paradigm for analyzing new phenomena in politics. The paradigm of class analysis is still important, but class fragmentation is only one dimension of the complex structure of social division. In terms of current Western politics, the political divisions of the ethnic dimension (perhaps with the religious dimension and the linguistic dimension) have become more prominent. Therefore, a single paradigm of class analysis should be replaced by a pluralistic paradigm of the structure of social fragmentation. With the help of this paradigm of pluralistic and divisive structures, we can understand more accurately what is happening in the Western world. Similarly, there are big problems with populist interpretations of Western politics. It views many of the most disparate and anti-status quo political phenomena as the rise of populism. But know that when a concept is all-encompassing, that's a problem in itself, or at least a very unrigorous phenomenon in academics. In the framework of this book, many new political phenomena in major Western countries in recent years certainly have populist elements, but the more substantive aspect is the "revival of realism". It may be a more valid theoretical perspective to understand Trump's election, Brexit, Le Pen's rise, and the success of the AfD in terms of realism, rather than populism.

The second is the introduction of new methods. Methodologically, academics often have a strong "stability preference" in their analysis of Western political phenomena. Behind this preference for stability is a more emphasis on static analysis and equilibrium analysis. The stability preference is more inclined to recognize the status quo, recognize the stability of the existing party system, policy issues, and power structure, and at the same time take a more cautious or negative stance on factors that may challenge the status quo and situations that may change drastically. This preference for stability is actually understandable. It exists in basic human nature, because people tend to be familiar with structures and patterns, which gives people more certainty and security. However, this method of overemphasizing static analysis and equilibrium analysis often affects people's objective perception of the real political world. As another lens of the world reveals, change is everywhere, and the only constant is change itself. With the passage of time, all kinds of possible destabilizing factors are always emerging, both inside and outside the Western world. This requires the academic community to adjust its mentality and be more willing to accept new things and new phenomena, and to consider more dynamic analysis and non-equilibrium analysis methods in terms of methodology. The basic tendency of the book is to view the recent major changes in the Western world as a norm, rather than as something to be rejected. Therefore, the key to examining the problem is not whether the change should happen, but how to explain the change if it acknowledges that the change has already occurred. This should also be a conscious innovation in our approach to understanding the political phenomena of the Western world.

Finally, new variables have been introduced. New variables are an aspect that is highly relevant to new paradigms and methods of analyzing problems. Needless to say, new political phenomena in the Western world are often triggered by a combination of many variables. Variables such as individual rationality, class interests, political party interests, power competition, and institutional structure at the domestic level, and variables such as power competition between major powers and nation-state interests at the international level are all common variables used to explain political phenomena in the Western world. But what this book emphasizes is that it is not primarily the old variables that contribute to the new reality of Western politics, but the new ones. Among all the new variables, globalization and demographics play an important role. Both of these variables have changed more slowly over the past few decades, and it is only in the last decade or two that the accumulation of such slow changes has finally led to a number of important political consequences. Many of the recent major events in the Western world, mentioned at the beginning of the preamble, are either the result of a political backlash triggered by globalization or the product of a dramatic demographic shift. Peter Drucker, an American management scholar, is often known for being forward-looking, and an important characteristic of his way of thinking is to pay attention to change, especially to critical changes. In the language of the social sciences, change may mean the emergence and rise of new variables, and critical changes may mean the emergence and rise of key new variables. In the book's analytical framework, globalization and demographics are often seen as the two most important new variables for understanding the new realities of Western politics.

The new paradigms, new methods, and new variables emphasized here are the basic features of the first part of this book. This book is not intended to provide a single systematic theoretical explanation for the new reality of Western politics, but to try to discuss and explain the new political phenomena in the Western world from different aspects, so as to help peers and readers improve their understanding of Western politics as a whole. Another looming thread in my discussion is the workings of Western democracies today and the challenges they face. Therefore, this book also attempts to discuss the current situation and trends of Western democracy from the perspective of comparative politics.

Whether it is about the political changes in the West and the world, or about the operation of democracy and its challenges, many heavyweight scholars in Europe and the United States have systematically discussed it. These discourses form the theoretical basis for our understanding of many major issues. The second part of the book focuses on dialogue with scholars and thinkers who have contributed to important issues. The book is mainly aimed at several heavyweight scholars from the United Kingdom and the United States, including Carl Polanyi, author of The Great Transformation, Giovanni Sartori, author of A New Theory of Democracy, Francis Fukuyama, author of Political Order and Political Decay, Alan Liphardt, author of The Model of Democracy, Michael Mann, author of The Dark Side of Democracy, and Steven Levitsky and Daniel Zibratt of How Democracy Died. These scholars and thinkers have focused on topics such as the Great Transformation of Western Society, conservative democratic theories, elements of political modernization, the differences between consensus and majority democracy, the relationship between democracy and ethnic cleansing, and the election of Donald Trump and the crisis of democracy. In terms of time, there are significant differences in the discourse of these scholars, some mainly focus on long-term issues, and some mainly focus on immediate realpolitik. However, in the spatial dimension, these scholars generally focus on the comparative study of different countries, and they often start from the Western world to examine the similarities and differences between different countries in many aspects such as transition, democracy, political modernization, and political violence, so as to provide new knowledge and insights for future generations to understand these phenomena.

It is conceivable that any research needs to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before it. This is also an essential feature of a good study. However, the fact that there are many original and important ideas of the predecessors does not mean that the future generations should take them as the norm and not be able to break through and surpass them. On the contrary, all ideas and theories are made through continuous breakthroughs and transcendences. Therefore, the content of the second part of this book is not only to summarize the thoughts and views of these representative scholars in the European and American academic circles, but also to have a high-quality academic dialogue with them, and even to point out the possible theoretical and logical problems in their works. The author hopes that through this high-quality academic dialogue, it will not only enhance the understanding of peers and readers on many complex issues related to realpolitik and democratic theories in the Western world, but also provide colleagues and readers with a series of enlightenment on political science thinking patterns and research methods.

In general, politics in the real world is always changing, both in the West and in human society as a whole. So, history doesn't end, and politics doesn't end. Since human politics is constantly changing, change has always been a part of Western politics and human politics. It is precisely because of this kind of continuous change, when it continues to accumulate, that a series of unexpected new events, new phenomena and new trends will emerge from time to time, and there will always be the rise of new political realities. It is true that stability gives people certainty and security, but change is the eternal law. The mission of political theory and comparative politics should not be to ignore change and resist change, but to understand and explain change, and to provide ideological and theoretical resources for the arrival of new possible changes. This is the attitude we should have as we look to an uncertain future.