Challenges, Tensions, and Strategic Implications
Introduction: From Ideological Order to Identity Fracture
For much of the twentieth century, Western political life was structured by a relatively stable ideological architecture. Liberal democracy, social democracy, and various forms of conservatism operated within a shared epistemic framework rooted in Enlightenment rationalism, economic modernity, and the nation-state. Even during moments of intense conflict—fascism versus liberalism, capitalism versus communism—the antagonists shared a belief that history progressed through identifiable ideological projects capable of universal application.
That architecture has now fractured.
The early twenty-first century is witnessing not merely political polarization, but a deeper transformation in the grammar of politics itself. Ideology, once anchored in coherent economic doctrines and institutional visions, has increasingly been displaced by identity—a mode of political organization grounded in cultural belonging, historical grievance, and symbolic recognition rather than programmatic coherence. This shift does not simply represent a new phase of political contestation; it marks a structural reordering of how legitimacy, power, and collective meaning are produced in Western societies.
This paper argues that the West has entered a post-ideological but not post-political era—one in which identity functions as the primary medium of political mobilization, reshaping domestic governance, international alignment, and the strategic behavior of states. The consequences of this transformation are profound, and they increasingly define the operating environment confronting the G7. Recent empirical evidence from 2024-2025 confirms the deepening and acceleration of these trends, revealing a democratic order under unprecedented strain.
I. The Post-War Ideological Settlement: Coherence, Constraint, and Consensus
The post-1945 Western order rested on a delicate synthesis of ideological commitments. Liberal democracy provided political legitimacy; Keynesian economics underwrote social stability; and multilateral institutions managed interstate competition. Ideology served not merely as belief but as structure—a shared grammar that constrained political imagination and made conflict intelligible.
Even ideological opposition was systemically stabilizing. Social democracy and Christian democracy contested distribution without rejecting capitalism; communism, though antagonistic, offered a coherent alternative system against which liberalism could define itself. Political struggle occurred within bounded ideological universes, reinforcing the idea that history had direction and that political progress was cumulative.
This architecture began to erode in the 1970s. Economic stagnation, deindustrialization, and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system undermined the material foundations of post-war compromise. The neoliberal turn that followed—often mischaracterized as an ideology—was in fact a technocratic response to crisis, prioritizing efficiency, market rationality, and depoliticization. Politics increasingly became managerial; ideology thinned into governance.
The paradox, however, was that the erosion of ideology did not depoliticize society. It merely displaced conflict into other registers. As recent scholarship from the Quarterly Journal of Economics demonstrates, since 2010 the political systems of advanced democracies have undergone momentous change: economic conflict over redistribution has weakened substantially, while conflict over cultural issues such as immigration, race, and abortion has intensified dramatically.
II. The Structural Conditions for the Rise of Identity
The rise of identity politics cannot be understood as a cultural aberration or generational pathology. It is a structural response to four converging transformations, whose effects have become more pronounced and empirically documented in recent years.
1. Economic Disembedding and Social Fragmentation
Globalization and financialization severed the link between national economic performance and individual material security. As class-based solidarities eroded, individuals increasingly sought meaning and protection through ascriptive identities—ethnic, racial, religious, or cultural. Identity became a substitute for the solidarities once provided by labor institutions, welfare states, and mass parties.
Research from Bocconi University analyzing data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study reveals that in the United States, the share of citizens identifying with "low-trust" ideologies increased from 30% in the late 1980s to 50% by the mid-2000s, with this "disappearing center" phenomenon now evident across multiple Western democracies. Questions related to trust in institutions have emerged as central to defining citizens' ideological positions, beyond the traditional left-right axis.
2. The Hollowing of Political Representation
As political parties converged around technocratic governance, ideological choice narrowed. Voters experienced a growing disconnect between electoral participation and substantive influence. Identity politics filled this vacuum by offering moral clarity and emotional resonance where policy debate appeared technocratic, opaque, or predetermined.
The most comprehensive analysis of political trust to date, published in the British Journal of Political Science in early 2025, examined 3,377 surveys covering 143 countries between 1958 and 2019, representing over five million respondents. The findings are stark: trust in parliament declined by approximately nine percentage points from 1990 to 2019 across democracies globally. Trust in parliament is declining in 36 democracies, including Argentina, Brazil, France, Italy, Spain, South Korea, Australia, and the United States, and has risen in only six countries. Critically, while trust in representative institutions declined, trust in non-representative institutions such as police rose by 13 points, pointing to a specific crisis of confidence in elected representatives rather than state institutions generally.
3. The Media and Algorithmic Amplification of Difference
Digital platforms transformed identity from a social attribute into a political weapon. Algorithms reward emotional intensity, grievance, and moral absolutism. Identity narratives—simpler, more visceral, and more polarizing—outperform complex policy discourse in attention economies, reinforcing fragmentation.
Recent research on climate polarization, published in Politics and Governance in 2025, reveals how algorithmic systems favor sensationalism over nuance, deepening divides between opposing political factions. This "techno-affective polarization" exacerbates political debates beyond healthy disagreement into increasingly binary "us versus them" antagonisms. Studies across multiple democracies show that populist leaders have effectively weaponized social media platforms, with figures like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro fundamentally altering news cycles through inflammatory content that treats the media as part of an insider establishment.
4. The Crisis of Universalism
Post-war liberalism assumed that universal rights and rational deliberation would gradually dissolve parochial identities. Instead, globalization exposed the uneven distribution of its benefits, delegitimizing universalist claims and elevating demands for recognition over redistribution. The result has been a re-politicization of identity as the primary currency of justice.
A 2025 study published in Frontiers in Political Science argues that Western democratic systems now face an "antinomian" challenge—irresolvable contradictions between universalist principles and particular expressions of popular will. The liberal focus on freedom, individual rights, and rule of law must coexist with republican emphases on equality, collective will, and civic virtue, yet the balance between these poles has become increasingly unstable as identity conflicts intensify.
III. Identity as the New Political Grammar
Crucially, identity politics does not merely coexist with ideology; it reconfigures it. Where ideology sought to explain how society should be organized, identity politics asks who belongs, who speaks, and whose suffering counts. It transforms politics from a contest over material arrangements into a struggle over symbolic hierarchy and moral legitimacy.
This transformation has several consequences, now extensively documented:
Moralization of Politics
Disagreement becomes moral transgression. Opponents are not wrong but illegitimate, ignorant, or malicious. Research on affective polarization published in 2024-2025 reveals a troubling trend: while citizens may not be more ideologically polarized than before in most Western democracies, contemporary polarization is increasingly characterized by a disproportionate weight of out-group dislike. Analysis of 143 elections across 12 Western democracies since the 1960s shows a generalized decline in out-party evaluations and a growing prevalence of "out-party hate" versus "in-party love" over time. In several countries, citizens now express stronger negative attitudes toward opposing parties than positive attitudes toward their own.
Erosion of Universalism
Rights are increasingly framed as contingent upon identity rather than inherent in shared humanity. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's 2025 update notes that populist movements paradoxically constitute their own form of identity politics, construing "true citizens" narrowly and exclusively, often marked by white supremacism, misogyny, and homophobia. Judith Butler's 2024 book "Who's Afraid of Gender?" examines how feminist and anti-racist interventions are portrayed by populist movements as dangerous to the nation, family, and tradition—revealing how universalist progressive claims are reframed as particularist identity impositions.
Fragmentation of the Public Sphere
Political discourse fractures into parallel moral communities with incompatible premises. A 2025 study on climate policy polarization found that disagreements on climate-relevant matters have become increasingly tied to party support across 36 countries from 1993 to 2020. This alignment of policy positions with partisan identity makes it progressively harder to build broad-based political support for climate reform or other collective challenges. The research reveals that growing partisan polarization is not explained by changes in linkage to economic ideology or levels of general societal disagreement, but rather by the intensifying connection between policy positions and partisan identity itself.
Instrumentalization by Elites
Identity becomes a tool for elite mobilization, distraction, or legitimation in the absence of credible economic narratives. A 2025 article in International Affairs examining populist foreign policy notes that while populist leaders deploy confrontational rhetoric around identity and sovereignty, there often exists a significant gap between discourse and actual policy implementation. This "bark versus bite" phenomenon suggests that identity mobilization serves primarily as a political strategy rather than reflecting substantive policy commitments.
Importantly, this is not confined to the political left. Nationalist and civilizational discourses on the right similarly mobilize identity—often in reactionary or exclusionary forms—revealing that identity politics is not a partisan deviation but a systemic condition. Research on nationalist populism published in 2024 shows how leaders like Modi, Bolsonaro, and Orbán have positioned themselves as defenders of national identity against cultural imperialism, using crisis narratives and fear to mobilize support while restricting civil liberties in the name of "saving" the nation.
IV. The Deepening Crisis: Empirical Evidence from 2024-2025
Recent data reveals the acceleration and intensification of identity-driven political fragmentation:
The Disappearing Political Center
Research from the Economic Journal analyzing World Values Survey data through 2024 identifies a "disappearing center" across Western democracies. In the United States, citizens identifying with centrist ideologies declined dramatically while those holding "low-trust" anti-establishment positions increased from 30% to 50%. Similar trends, though less pronounced, appear across European countries. This ideological fragmentation correlates with declining trust in institutions, creating conditions where populist alternatives become increasingly attractive.
Affective Polarization Becomes Structural
Multiple studies from 2024-2025 document that affective polarization—defined as the gap between positive feelings toward one's own party and negative feelings toward opposing parties—has become structurally embedded. While the United States leads in intensity, the phenomenon has spread across Western democracies. Research published in Public Opinion Quarterly in 2025 analyzing 143 elections across 12 democracies reveals that contemporary polarization is increasingly driven by out-group hostility rather than in-group loyalty. This shift from ideological disagreement to emotional antagonism has profound implications for democratic stability.
Climate Change as Identity Battleground
Climate policy has emerged as a case study in how identity supersedes ideology. Research published in multiple journals through 2025 demonstrates that climate change has become one of the most polarized political issues globally, with political identity now predicting climate attitudes more strongly than scientific literacy, personal experience with climate impacts, or economic considerations. Studies show that when political identity is made salient, individuals' climate beliefs shift to align with partisan positions—a phenomenon called "identity-protective cognition."
Significantly, analysis of U.S. presidential campaign rhetoric from 2016-2020 reveals that both Republican and Democratic candidates framed climate change primarily through nationalist rhetoric, dividing over which position better strengthened American national identity and power. This embedding of climate debate within struggles over national identity exemplifies "nationalist polarization"—where elites draw from competing conceptions of national identity to drive polarization over policy problems.
Democratic Backsliding and Trust Erosion
The Democracy Index 2025 reports continued global democratic deterioration, with civil liberties, electoral integrity, and public trust weakening across all major regions. The OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions, conducted in late 2023 with nearly 60,000 responses across 30 countries, found that 44% of people had low or no trust in national government compared to 39% with high or moderately high trust. Only around 40% believe government can balance intergenerational interests, regulate emerging technologies appropriately, or reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively.
V. Geopolitical Consequences: The Strategic Cost of Fragmentation
At the international level, the identity turn weakens the West's capacity for coherent action in ways now clearly observable:
Undermining Strategic Consistency
Domestic identity conflicts increasingly constrain foreign policy as leaders calibrate external commitments to internal cultural battles. The European Council on Foreign Relations' 2025 analysis of populist influence on European foreign policy reveals significant divergence among G7 and EU members. Following European parliamentary elections in June 2024, radical-right groups became the third and fourth-largest in the EU legislature. The tilt away from mainstream politics is reshaping foreign policy, with countries divided over issues like Russia policy, China engagement, and climate commitments based primarily on domestic identity politics rather than strategic interests.
Eroding Normative Authority
When Western societies appear internally fragmented and morally incoherent, their claims to universal values ring hollow abroad. Authoritarian powers exploit this contradiction, portraying liberal democracy as hypocritical, unstable, and culturally imperial. Research on populism's international effects notes that democratic societies show more resilience than previously thought, yet their internal divisions provide authoritarian regimes with powerful propaganda material.
Hampering Collective Action
The G7 faces structural challenges—climate change, technological competition, demographic decline—that require long-term coordination. Identity-driven politics, however, incentivizes short-term symbolic victories over durable policy coalitions. The persistent polarization around climate policy exemplifies this dynamic: despite overwhelming scientific consensus and mounting evidence of climate impacts, policy action remains constrained by identity-based divisions that have intensified over the past decade.
VI. The Populist-Nationalist Synthesis
Perhaps the most significant development is the successful fusion of populist anti-elite rhetoric with nationalist identity appeals. Research published in Studies in Comparative International Development analyzes this "nationalist populism" as an amplifying force that exacerbates both positive and negative consequences of populism. Those beyond nationalist-populist boundaries face heightened hostility and discrimination, while those within benefit from enhanced opportunities—creating starkly polarized societies.
The 2025 thesis on "Populism and Western Democracies" documents how populist leaders across the West employ similar structural characteristics:
Crisis Narratives: Leaders like Bolsonaro, Modi, and Trump depict their nations as under existential threat from crime, corruption, immigration, or cultural decay. These narratives evoke fear and anger, creating conditions where extreme policies become acceptable.
Direct Communication: Social media platforms enable populist leaders to bypass traditional media filters, creating direct relationships with supporters while demonizing mainstream journalism as part of corrupt establishments.
Identity-Based Mobilization: Populists mobilize support not through detailed policy platforms but through appeals to threatened national, racial, or cultural identities. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), National Rally in France, and similar movements gain support primarily by channeling fears about cultural change and national identity loss.
Institutional Ambivalence: While rhetorically attacking "elites" and institutions, populist leaders often govern pragmatically, revealing gaps between discourse and policy. This pragmatism allows them to maintain power while sustaining anti-establishment postures.
VII. Beyond Identity: Toward a Post-Fragmentation Political Synthesis
The critical question is not whether identity politics will disappear—it will not—but whether it can be integrated into a broader political synthesis capable of sustaining democratic governance. Evidence from 2024-2025 suggests this integration faces severe obstacles but remains theoretically possible.
Such a synthesis would require:
Repoliticizing the Economic Sphere
Reconnecting political legitimacy to material outcomes—wages, housing, security—rather than moral signaling alone. Recent research confirms that economic grievances persist beneath identity conflicts. Studies linking distrust and populism show that negative economic outcomes correlate with both populist voting and institutional distrust. However, contemporary identity politics often obscures rather than addresses these material concerns. A genuine repoliticization would require political entrepreneurs to articulate economic visions that transcend identity divides while acknowledging identity-based inequalities.
Reconstructing Universalism Without Homogeneity
Articulating civic identities that are inclusive without being empty; pluralistic without dissolving into relativism. The 2025 Frontiers in Political Science article on democratic antinomies offers a framework: recognizing that democracies inherently contain irresolvable tensions between universal principles and particular expressions. Rather than seeking to eliminate these tensions, successful democracies balance them through "antinomic" arrangements that allow competing principles to coexist. This suggests universalism must be reconstructed not as cultural homogenization but as institutional frameworks accommodating diversity while maintaining democratic coherence.
Reasserting Institutional Mediation
Strengthening institutions that can translate social conflict into negotiated outcomes rather than performative antagonism. Research on political trust published through 2025 emphasizes that while trust in representative institutions has declined, trust in implementing institutions like police and civil service has remained stable or increased. This suggests citizens distinguish between political contestation and state capacity. Rebuilding trust requires not depoliticization but better institutional performance—responsive governance that demonstrates competence on issues citizens prioritize.
The challenge is formidable: a 2025 article in the Journal of European Public Policy examining protest movements notes that while "critical citizens" who combine democratic values with skepticism toward authorities can drive democratic advancement, declining trust can also signal fundamental disconnection between citizens and democratic institutions. The key distinction lies in whether distrust motivates engagement or withdrawal.
Reframing Identity as a Dimension, Not a Totality
Identity must be acknowledged without becoming the exclusive lens through which political life is interpreted. Research on breaking climate polarization published in 2024 proposes the acronym "BREAK" (Balance, Reactance, Essence of the problem, Adherence to ingroup norms, Knowledge) as a framework for understanding and addressing identity-based political divisions. This approach recognizes that identity concerns are legitimate but need not determine positions on all issues. Interventions that leverage superordinate identities (national, human, generational) can reduce polarization without denying particular identities.
Studies on climate interventions across 60 countries reveal a crucial finding: while political polarization of climate beliefs is substantial globally (with liberals believing and supporting climate policy more than conservatives), this "conceptual-behavioral polarization incongruence" results from conservatives acting despite not believing rather than liberals not acting on beliefs. This suggests identity and behavior can be partially decoupled through appropriate framings and interventions.
VIII. The Challenge of Affective Polarization
Perhaps the most insidious aspect of the identity turn is the rise of affective polarization—the transformation of political disagreement into personal hostility. Research published through 2025 reveals this phenomenon's depth and implications:
A meta-analysis of 143 elections across 12 Western democracies since the 1960s shows that while overall polarization levels have not uniformly increased, the character of polarization has fundamentally changed. Contemporary polarization is increasingly characterized by out-party hatred rather than in-party love. In many countries, citizens now express stronger negative feelings toward opposing parties than positive feelings toward their own—a concerning asymmetry that indicates politics has become primarily about opposing the enemy rather than supporting a vision.
Research distinguishes three forms of polarization, each requiring different interventions:
Opinion Polarization: Actual disagreement on policy positions. While significant, this remains within normal democratic bounds and is often overestimated.
Perceived Polarization: How different people think their views are from opposing groups. Studies consistently show this exceeds actual disagreement, suggesting significant misperception.
Affective Polarization: When disagreement transforms into judgments that opponents are "not good citizens" or "not good people." This form most threatens democratic functioning by making compromise appear morally unacceptable.
The 2025 literature emphasizes that affective polarization has distinct sociopolitical implications. When politics becomes primarily about expressing hostility toward out-groups rather than supporting in-group positions, democratic institutions struggle to translate preferences into compromises. Electoral losers increasingly view defeats not as temporary setbacks but as existential threats, undermining losers' consent—a cornerstone of democratic stability.
IX. International Dimensions: G7 and Global Order
The identity turn's implications extend beyond domestic politics to reshape international relations. Analysis from International Affairs' September 2024 special section on global populism reveals several patterns:
Foreign Policy Inconsistency: Populist governments often display gaps between confrontational rhetoric and pragmatic policy. Despite deep criticism of the international order, many populist parties prove "more bark than bite" in foreign policy. However, this inconsistency itself creates uncertainty that undermines alliances and multilateral cooperation.
Liberal Order Contestation: Populist movements actively work to hollow out the liberal international order from within, promoting illiberal alternatives. While democratic societies show resilience, the proliferation of identity-based populist movements across G7 countries fragments Western cohesion on critical issues.
Authoritarian Learning: Research shows authoritarian regimes have learned to exploit Western identity conflicts, using propaganda to portray liberal democracy as hypocritical, unstable, and culturally imperialist. China's narrative of its authoritarian system providing stability contrasts with Western "chaos," while Russia amplifies Western identity conflicts through information warfare.
Multilateral Paralysis: The European Council on Foreign Relations' June 2025 report projects scenarios where G7 cohesion continues eroding through 2029. With populist parties holding or influencing power across multiple G7 members, collective action on climate, technology governance, and security policy becomes increasingly difficult. Identity-based domestic politics prevents leaders from making commitments that might appear to prioritize international cooperation over national identity assertion.
X. Case Study: Climate Change as Identity Proxy War
Climate policy provides the clearest example of how identity has displaced ideology. Multiple studies from 2024-2025 document that:
Identity Predicts Position: Political identity now predicts climate attitudes more strongly than scientific literacy, personal climate experience, economic interests, or stated values. When partisan identity is made salient experimentally, individuals' climate beliefs shift to align with partisan positions—evidence of identity-protective cognition overriding other considerations.
Nationalist Framing Dominates: Analysis of U.S. presidential campaign rhetoric reveals both parties frame climate primarily through nationalist identity. Republicans emphasize energy independence and American sovereignty; Democrats emphasize American leadership and innovation. Both make climate about what strengthens American identity rather than about global collective action or intergenerational justice.
Interventions Show Limited Success: Large-scale experiments testing climate interventions across 60 countries find three interventions boost climate beliefs across ideological spectrum (emphasizing collective action, writing to future generations, and writing from future self). However, no tested intervention significantly increased actual climate behavior among self-identified conservatives, though some increased liberals' actions. This "conceptual-behavioral incongruence" suggests identity shapes stated beliefs more than behaviors.
Polarization Increasingly Structural: Longitudinal analysis across 36 countries from 1993-2020 shows growing partisan polarization on climate attitudes. This results not from increasing societal disagreement generally but from climate positions becoming increasingly tied to party support—a structural embedding of climate as partisan identity marker.
The implications are sobering: as climate change intensifies and requires coordinated international action, identity politics makes such coordination progressively harder. The issue becomes not "what does science say?" but "what does accepting this say about who I am?"
Conclusion: The End of an Era, Not the End of Politics
The age of ideology has not vanished; it has been disassembled and reconfigured. What we are witnessing is not a post-ideological world, but a post-coherent one—where ideological fragments circulate without an integrating framework. Evidence from 2024-2025 reveals this fragmentation has intensified and become structurally embedded across Western democracies.
The danger for Western societies lies not in identity itself, but in the absence of a unifying political project capable of integrating diversity into a shared vision of the future. Without such a project, identity hardens into faction, politics into spectacle, and governance into paralysis.
Several findings from recent research warrant emphasis:
Trust Collapse is Specific: While trust in representative institutions (parliaments, parties, governments) has declined dramatically across 36 democracies, trust in implementing institutions (police, civil service, courts) remains stable or has increased. This suggests the crisis is not of state capacity generally but of representative democracy specifically—citizens distinguish between governing competence and political responsiveness.
Affective Polarization is Asymmetric: Contemporary polarization is increasingly characterized by out-party hatred rather than in-party love. This asymmetry matters because politics organized around opposing enemies differs fundamentally from politics organized around supporting visions. The former makes compromise treasonous; the latter makes it prudent.
The Center Has Not Held: The "disappearing center" phenomenon documented across Western democracies reveals not merely polarization but collapse of the ideological middle ground that historically enabled democratic compromise. This leaves increasingly binary political landscapes where cross-partisan cooperation appears tantamount to betrayal.
Identity Transcends Left-Right: Both progressive identity politics (emphasizing recognition of marginalized groups) and reactionary identity politics (emphasizing preservation of traditional national identity) represent departures from traditional left-right economic cleavages. This suggests the identity turn is systemic rather than partisan—a fundamental transformation in how Western publics organize political conflict.
Institutions Matter: Despite widespread distrust of politicians, citizens in most Western democracies maintain strong support for democratic ideals. Research on the "critical citizen" suggests appropriately skeptical engagement with authority can strengthen rather than undermine democracy. The challenge is channeling distrust into democratic participation rather than authoritarian alternatives.
For the G7, the central strategic challenge of the coming decade is therefore not merely economic competition or geopolitical rivalry, but the reconstruction of political meaning itself: a renewal of democratic purpose capable of reconciling diversity with cohesion, and pluralism with common destiny.
Recent scholarship suggests several pathways forward:
Material Reconnection: Linking political legitimacy back to tangible economic outcomes rather than primarily symbolic recognition. This requires political entrepreneurs capable of articulating economic visions that transcend identity divisions while acknowledging identity-based inequalities.
Institutional Innovation: Developing democratic institutions better suited to pluralistic societies. This might include citizens' assemblies, deliberative forums, and other mechanisms that facilitate genuine engagement across divides rather than mere electoral competition between identity blocs.
Epistemic Reconstruction: Rebuilding shared epistemic foundations without imposing homogeneity. In an era of algorithmic amplification and information fragmentation, this requires new approaches to media, education, and public discourse that promote critical thinking while respecting plurality.
Geopolitical Coordination: Despite domestic fragmentation, G7 nations retain immense material and institutional power. Converting this potential into effective action requires recognizing that coordination must now navigate domestic identity politics rather than ignore them. This may require new forms of multilateralism more compatible with identity-conscious domestic politics.
Temporal Reframing: Some successful interventions (like writing to future generations) work by shifting temporal perspective beyond current identity conflicts. This suggests potential for transcendent framings that maintain identity recognition while subordinating it to longer-term collective imperatives.
The evidence accumulated through 2025 paints a sobering picture: Western democracies face not temporary political turbulence but fundamental transformation in how political life is organized. The post-war ideological settlement that structured Western politics for six decades has collapsed, and its replacement by identity-based politics creates dynamics that threaten democratic stability.
Yet the same evidence suggests democratic collapse is not inevitable. Countries like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland buck global trends, maintaining or increasing institutional trust. Research on "critical citizens" shows that skepticism toward politicians need not entail rejection of democracy. Interventions leveraging superordinate identities can reduce polarization. The question is whether Western democracies can adapt their institutions and practices to accommodate identity pluralism while maintaining sufficient cohesion for collective action.
If that challenge is not met, the West may retain power—but lose the capacity to know what it is for. The transition from ideology to identity represents not just political change but epistemological transformation: from politics organized around competing visions of social organization to politics organized around competing assertions of belonging and recognition. Whether this transformation ultimately strengthens democracy by including previously marginalized voices or destroys it by fragmenting society beyond repair remains the defining question of our era.
What is certain is that answering this question requires more than political strategy—it demands philosophical clarity about what holds pluralistic democracies together when neither ideology nor identity can provide comprehensive integration. The post-war settlement offered one answer; we are now forced to find another. The urgency of this task, documented in study after study from 2024-2025, cannot be overstated. The operating environment for democratic governance has fundamentally changed, and the institutional adaptations required are only beginning to be understood.
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Climate and Environmental Politics
Bromley-Trujillo, R., & Poe, J. (2020). The Importance of Salience: Public Opinion and State Policy Action on Climate Change. Journal of Public Policy, 40(2), 280–304.
Drews, S., & van den Bergh, J. C. J. M. (2016). What Explains Public Support for Climate Policies? A Review of Empirical and Experimental Studies. Climate Policy, 16(7), 855–876.
Funk, C., & Kennedy, B. (2020). How Americans See Climate Change and the Environment in 7 Charts. Pew Research Center.
Goldberg, M. H., van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., & Leiserowitz, A. (2019). Discussing Global Warming Leads to Greater Acceptance of Climate Science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(30), 14804–14805.
Hornsey, M. J., Harris, E. A., Bain, P. G., & Fielding, K. S. (2016). Meta-Analyses of the Determinants and Outcomes of Belief in Climate Change. Nature Climate Change, 6(6), 622–626.
Levi, S., Bagozzi, B., Bragança, A., Colby, B. K.,CSeveri, P., Franta, B., Niles, M. T., & Rudnick, J. (2025). As Countries Become More Affluent, Climate Change Attitudes Are More Politically Polarised. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 101, Article 102474.
Mildenberger, M., & Tingley, D. (2019). Beliefs About Climate Beliefs: The Importance of Second-Order Opinions for Climate Politics. British Journal of Political Science, 49(4), 1279–1307.
Poortinga, W., Whitmarsh, L., Steg, L., Böhm, G., & Fisher, S. (2019). Climate Change Perceptions and Their Individual-Level Determinants: A Cross-European Analysis. Global Environmental Change, 55, 25–35.
Smith, E. K., & Mayer, A. (2018). A Social Trap for the Climate? Collective Action, Trust and Climate Change Risk Perception in 35 Countries. Global Environmental Change, 49, 140–153.
International Relations and Populism
Art, D. (2011). Inside the Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe. Cambridge University Press.
Chryssogelos, A. (2024). Populism and Foreign Policy. International Affairs, 100(5), Special Section.
Eatwell, R., & Goodwin, M. (2018). National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy. Pelican.
Kenny, P. D. (2020). 'The Enemy of the People': Populists and Press Freedom. Political Research Quarterly*, 73(2), 261–275.
Kyle, J., & Gultchin, L. (2018). Populists in Power Around the World. Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.
Laclau, E. (2005). On Populist Reason. Verso.
Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How Democracies Die. Crown.
Mounk, Y. (2018). The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It. Harvard University Press.
Müller, J.-W. (2016). What Is Populism? University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rooduijn, M., van Kessel, S., Froio, C., Pirro, A., de Lange, S., Halikiopoulou, D., Lewis, P., Mudde, C., & Taggart, P. (2019). The PopuList: An Overview of Populist, Far Right, Far Left and Eurosceptic Parties in Europe. www.popu-list.org.
Verbeek, B., & Zaslove, A. (2016). Italy: A Case of Mutating Populism? Democratization, 23(2), 304–323.
Democratic Theory and Institutions
Dahl, R. A. (1971). Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. Yale University Press.
Fishkin, J. S. (2018). Democracy When the People Are Thinking: Revitalizing Our Politics Through Public Deliberation. Oxford University Press.
Habermas, J. (1996). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. MIT Press.
Huntington, S. P. (1991). The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. University of Oklahoma Press.
Lijphart, A. (2012). Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (2nd ed.). Yale University Press.
Przeworski, A. (2019). Crises of Democracy. Cambridge University Press.
Rawls, J. (1993). Political Liberalism. Columbia University Press.
Data Sources
Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES). (2020, 2022). CSES Module 5 Dataset. www.cses.org.
International Social Survey Programme (ISSP). (2022). ISSP Environment Module IV. GESIS Data Archive, Cologne.
Pew Research Center. (2024). Global Attitudes & Trends. www.pewresearch.org/global.
World Values Survey Association. (2024). World Values Survey Wave 7 (2017-2022). www.worldvaluessurvey.org.
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