Retooling to help democracy revive
In the 20th century, the United States built the world’s dominant manufacturing powerhouse.
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To MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, there is a deep intertwining among these things. Democracy, his work has shown, helps economies grow. As the industrial economy expanded, in Britain, the U.S., and other countries in the 19th and 20th centuries, so did democratic participation, as people tried to stake out new rights, or make real the rights ascribed to them.
“The industrial age created the tools for shared prosperity around which democracy organized,” says Acemoglu, a Nobel Prize-winning economist and Institute Professor at MIT.
Today, though, income inequality has grown markedly in the U.S., starting around 1980. The U.S. has deindustrialized to a significant extent, offshoring production and hurting shop-floor workers and their families. As Acemoglu sees it, this economic realignment has had deep civic consequences: A stranded working class has become more alienated from the institutions and ideas traditionally buttressing democracy.
And for those around the world supporting democracy, he says, “You really need to have the working classes in your coalition for it to make any sense.”