Turbulence, Anxiety and Transition
Making sense of 2016
by PolicyInnoHub
The “November surprise” of Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, and the days of protests that followed capped a year of political and economic uncertainty — from Britain’s decision to leave the European Union, to Australia’s double-dissolution federal election.
These ‘shock’ results have been interpreted as representing a revolt against the ‘elites’; as a backlash against globalisation and an international economic system that has delivered for the wealthy, but has undermined the prospects and livelihoods of many ‘ordinary’ people.
Their embrace of populist, ‘post-truth’ anti-politicians promising a return to a more familiar nationalist past has been described as a ‘democratic crisis’. It reflects a profound loss of trust in and respect for political institutions and processes perceived as remote and out of touch.
Australia is not immune from these challenges. Economic and political uncertainty and concerns about national security, personal safety and the adequacy of our politics loom large in the national consciousness. They are driving what some describe as ‘hyper-government’ as political leaders struggle to make sense of and navigate a resentful electorate, a media environment that feeds on and fosters reactivity and a growing sense that policy-makers have exhausted the toolkit of instruments to restore an ailing international economy.
How are we to make sense of 2016? We asked four experts to share some recommended reading to help transition into a new year.
Professor Simon Jackman recommends:
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America
American democracy is beset by a sense of crisis. Seismic shifts during a single generation have created a country of winners and losers, allowing unprecedented freedom while rending the social contract, driving the political system to the verge of breakdown, and setting citizens adrift to find new paths forward. In The Unwinding, George Packer tells the story of the past three decades by journeying through the lives of several Americans, including a son of tobacco farmers who becomes an evangelist for a new economy in the rural South, a factory worker in the Rust Belt trying to survive the collapse of her city, a Washington insider oscillating between political idealism and the lure of organized money, and a Silicon Valley billionaire who arrives at a radical vision of the future. Packer interweaves these stories with sketches of public figures, from Newt Gingrich to Jay-Z, and collages made from newspaper headlines, advertising slogans, and song lyrics. Packer’s novelistic and kaleidoscopic history of the new America is his most ambitious work to date.
“The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker”
Since the election of Scott Walker, Wisconsin has been seen as ground zero for debates about the appropriate role of government in the wake of the Great Recession. In a time of rising inequality, Walker not only survived a bitterly contested recall that brought thousands of protesters to Capitol Square, he was subsequently reelected. How could this happen? How is it that the very people who stand to benefit from strong government services not only vote against the candidates who support those services but are vehemently against the very idea of big government?
With The Politics of Resentment, Katherine J. Cramer uncovers an oft-overlooked piece of the puzzle: rural political consciousness and the resentment of the “liberal elite.” Rural voters are distrustful that politicians will respect the distinct values of their communities and allocate a fair share of resources. What can look like disagreements about basic political principles are therefore actually rooted in something even more fundamental: who we are as people and how closely a candidate’s social identity matches our own. Using Scott Walker and Wisconsin’s prominent and protracted debate about the appropriate role of government, Cramer illuminates the contours of rural consciousness, showing how place-based identities profoundly influence how people understand politics, regardless of whether urban politicians and their supporters really do shortchange or look down on those living in the country.
Dr Wes Widmaier recommends:
“Unholy Fury: Whitlam and Nixon at War”
by James Curran
In the early 1970s, two titans of Australian and American politics, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and President Richard Nixon, clashed over the end of the Vietnam war and the shape of a new Asia. A relationship that had endured the heights of the Cold War veered dangerously off course and seemed headed for destruction. Never before — or since — has the alliance sunk to such depths.
Drawing on sensational new evidence from once top-secret American and Australian records, this book portrays the bitter clash between these two leaders and their competing visions of the world.
“Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World”
It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person’s or government’s control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of that economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades. As yet another period of economic turmoil makes headlines today, Lords of Finance is a potent reminder of the enormous impact that the decisions of central bankers can have, their fallibility, and the terrible human consequences that can result when they are wrong.
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
by J. D. Vance
From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class
Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis — that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.
Professor John Wanna recommends:
“The Prince”
As a diplomat in turbulent fifteenth-century Florence, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) knew how quickly political fortunes could rise and fall. The Prince is his controversial handbook about the dynamics of power, leadership and strategy. Machiavelli’s shrewd argument that sometimes it is necessary to abandon ethics to succeed made his name notorious. Consequently, The Prince has been read by strategists, politicians and business people ever since.
“Lazarus Rising: A Personal and Political Autobiography”
by John Howard
John Howard’s autobiography, Lazarus Rising, is the biggest-selling political memoir Australia has seen. In it he talks about his love for his family, his rollercoaster ride to the Lodge and how — as prime minister — he responded to issues like climate change and the war on terrorism. Drawing on his deep interest in history, he paints a fascinating picture of a changing Australia. In this new revised edition, he also analyses the cataclysmic lead-up to the 2010 election and the vexed political paradigm that emerged. From the future prospects of the Greens and Independents to the performance of Barnaby Joyce, Howard pulls no punches. No stranger to power struggles himself, he is uniquely qualified to note the remaking of the Nationals, decode tony Abbott’s strategies and understand the pressures facing Julia Gillard and the comeback prospects of Kevin Rudd. Essential reading for all followers of politics.
“Keating”
Paul Keating is widely credited as the chief architect of the most significant period of political and economic reform in Australia’s history. Twenty years on, there is still no story from the horse’s mouth of how it all came about. No autobiography. No memoir. Yet he is the supreme story-teller of politics.
This book of revelations fills the gap. Kerry O’Brien, the consummate interviewer who knew all the players and lived the history, has spent many long hours with Keating, teasing out the stories, testing the memories and the assertions.
What emerges is a treasure trove of anecdotes, insights, reflections and occasional admissions from one of the most loved and hated political leaders we have known-a man who either led or was the driving force through thirteen years of Labor government that changed the face of Australia.
Professor Anne Tiernan recommends:
Is this how democracy ends?
“On” election night, almost as soon as it was clear that the unthinkable had become a cold reality, Paul Krugman asked in the New York Times whether the US was now a failed state. Political scientists who normally study American democracy in splendid isolation are starting to turn their attention to Africa and Latin America. They want to know what happens when authoritarians win elections and democracy morphs into something else”.
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