Entangled Inequalities: Exploring Global Asymmetries POLITICAL MODERNITY AND BEYOND CRISIS, STRUGGLES AND RECONFIGURATIONS Edited by Sofa Aboim, José Maurício Domingues and Filipe Carreira da Silva Political Modernity and Beyond Amidst rising tensions affecting democracy, capitalism and planetary life, this book discusses the multiple crises, processes and conflicts reconfiguring moder- nity. Tracking the political, social and ecological dynamics at play, it offers a criti- cal perspective on the forces that may redefine the futures of political modernity. It asks whether a transition is unfolding and whether a new phase of modernity is emerging, or whether it is only an inflexion that we are witnessing, with the pre- pandemic imaginary and institutions retaining their strength, apart from smaller adaptions. Drawing on a range of cutting-edge contributions emerging from a con- ference at the Social Sciences Institute of University of Lisbon, it tackles issues of democracy, statehood, empire, coloniality, authoritarianism, the Anthropocene and the social bond, to offer a systematic analysis and conceptualization of ongo- ing changes. It offers a global perspective on the debate. Empirical and theoretical threads are brought together by the idea that we are transitioning to a world some- how yet unknown but whose contours we can already fathom. An innovative, empirically based and path-breaking analytical contribution it will appeal to specialists, researchers and postgraduate students of sociology, social theory and political theory. Sofia Aboim is Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS), University of Lisbon (Portugal). Her fields of interests are gender, migration, race and ethnicity, especially in the historical borders of the former Portuguese Empire. Her last book is Gender Fields (2024). José Maurício Domingues is Professor at Institute for Social and Political Re- search of University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (IESP-UERJ) (Brazil). He received the Anneliese Maier-Forschungspreis from the Alexander von Hum- boldt-Stiftung (2018). He researches on social, political and critical theory. His last book is Political Modernity and Social Theory (2024). Filipe Carreira da Silva is Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sci- ences (ICS), University of Lisbon (Portugal) and Fellow of Selwyn College, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). His interests include sociological, social and political theories. He has authored, with Mónica Brito Vieira, the forthcoming book Democratic Resentment. Entangled Inequalities: Exploring Global Asymmetries Series Editor: Sérgio Costa Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Departing from classical approaches to the study of social inequalities between individuals and social classes within particular national settings, this series em- phasises the production and reproduction of inequalities across borders, as well as the multiplicity of categories - whether ‘race’, ‘sex’ or ‘nationality’ amongst others – according to which contemporary inequalities are shaped. Entangled Inequalities constitutes a forum and a catalyst for discussing re- cent advancements in inequality research from a transnational, global and inter- sectional perspective, highlighting the fact that social inequalities are always the product of both global interpenetrations and of complex intersections between different social categorisations. The series therefore welcomes monographs and edited volumes across the social sciences that deal with inequalities from an ‘entangled’ perspective – with an intersectional or a transnational focus, or both. Titles in this series Bridging Fluid Borders Entanglements in the French-Brazilian Borderland Fabio Santos Ancestral Knowledges and Postcoloniality in Contemporary Ecuador Epistemic Struggles and Situated Cosmopolitanisms Julia von Sigsfeld Middle Class Identities and Social Crisis Cultural and Political Perspectives on the ‘Global Rebellion’ Alejandro Grimson, Menara Guizardi and Silvina Merenson Political Modernity and Beyond Crisis, Struggles and Reconfigurations Sofia Aboim, José Maurício Domingues and Filipe Carreira da Silva For a full list of titles, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Entangled-Inequalities-Exploring- Global-Asymmetries/book-series/ASHSER1413 https://www.routledge.com/Entangled-Inequalities-Exploring-Global-Asymmetries/book-series/ASHSER1413 https://www.routledge.com/Entangled-Inequalities-Exploring-Global-Asymmetries/book-series/ASHSER1413 Political Modernity and Beyond Crisis, Struggles and Reconfigurations Edited by Sofia Aboim, José Maurício Domingues and Filipe Carreira da Silva https://www.routledge.com First published 2026 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2026 selection and editorial matter, Sofia Aboim, José Maurício Domingues and Filipe Carreira da Silva; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Sofia Aboim, José Maurício Domingues and Filipe Carreira da Silva to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-041-08414-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-041-09453-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-65018-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188 Typeset in Times New Roman by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. https://www.taylorfrancis.com https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188 mailto:GPSR@taylorandfrancis.com Contents List of Figures About the Editors List of Contributors vii viii ix SOFIA ABOIM, JOSÈ MAURÍCIO DOMINGUES AND FILIPE CARREIRA DA SILVA 1 PART I Crisis 13 1 Democracy and Statehood: Varieties of (Pandemic) Crises and Their Consequences WOLFGANG KNÖBL 15 2 The Fate of Democracy and the Weakening of Its Moral and Socio-Cultural Supports in Contemporary Societies: The Case of Chile KATHYA ARAUJO 33 3 Taxing Political Modernity: Fiscal Relations in Europe Since 2020 LARS DÖPKING 50 4 Modernity and the Anthropocene: Between Rupture and Fulfilment MANUEL ARIAS-MALDONADO 70 Introduction vi Contents PART II Struggles 85 5 From the Geopolitics of Inter-Imperial Rivalry to the Geo-Ideology of Inter-Civilizational Struggle HO-FUNG HUNG 87 6 Empire Reloaded: Rethinking Modernity through Territorial and Digital Border Crises SOFIA ABOIM 103 7 Intersectional Situations and Political Choices: Far-Right Voters in Brazil and Germany SÈRGIO COSTA 122 8 Racial Capitalism, the Politics of Care, and People as Profit PREMILLA NADASEN 140 PART III Reconfigurations 155 9 Modernity and Its Horizon Today: Phases, Challenges and Perspectives JOSÈ MAURÍCIO DOMINGUES 157 10 Re-Modernity: Making Sense of Social Experience in Times of Digital Platforms, New State Interventionism and Technological Megalomania PAOLO GERBAUDO 175 11 Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics: Rethinking Political Modernity FILIPE CARREIRA DA SILVA 188 12 Global Perspectives on Local Solutions: eHealth and Digital Divide through the Comparative Law Lens ELENA GRASSO 205 Index 224 Figures 3.1 Tax-to-GDP ratio in Western Europe, 1980–2022, selected countries 55 3.2 Total expenditure excluding interest, in % of GDP, 1995–2024 56 3.3 Gross public debt, in % of GDP, 2000–2024 58 3.4 Defense expenditure as % of GDP, 2014–2024, selected countries 59 3.5 VAT compliance gap, in % of VTTL, 2000–2022 62 About the Editors Sofia Aboim is Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS), University of Lisbon (Portugal). She has been involved in several research projects on gender inequalities and rights, including an ERC Consolidator Grant. Her current research explores the intersections of gender, migration, race and ethnicity in the historical borders of the former Portuguese Empire. This work reflects an interest in the interplay between modernity and colonial history, with research conducted in postcolonial contexts such as Mozam- bique. Among her recent publications is Gender Fields (2024). José Maurício Domingues is Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Institute for Social and Political Research of University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (IESP-UERJ) (Brazil). He received the Anneliese Maier Forschung- spreis from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung in 2018. Researching on social, political and critical theory, including the theories of modernity, his last book is Political Modernity and Social Theory: Origins, Development and Alternatives (2024). In preparation, as co-editor, is Einheit und Differenz. Für eine ökumenische kritische Theorie der Gegenwart. Filipe Carreira da Silva is Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sci- ences (ICS), University of Lisbon (Portugal) and Fellow of Selwyn College, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). His current research revolves around sociological theory and citizenship studies, as well as social and po- litical theories, the ‘multiple modernities’ approach and populism as well as the historicism vs. presentism methodological debate. His last book is The Politics of the Book. A Study on the Materiality of Ideas (2019). Forthcom- ing, with Mónica Brito Vieira, is Democratic Resentment. A Global History of Populism from the American Populists to the Present Day. Contributors Kathya Araujo, PhD in American Studies, is Professor at the Institute of Ad- vanced Studies of the University of Santiago de Chile. Her scholarly work explores social and political bonds, individuation and social moralities. Her recent publications include ¿Cómo estudiar la autoridad? (2021) and The Circuit of Detachment (2022). Manuel Arias-Maldonado is Full Professor in Political Science at the Univer- sity of Málaga (Spain). A Fulbright Scholar at the University of Berkeley and a Visiting Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich and the Department of Animal Studies at NYU, he has worked extensively in the field of environ- mental political theory. He is the author of Real Green: Sustainability after the End of Nature (2016) and co-editor of Rethinking the Environment for the Anthropocene (2019). Sérgio Costa was trained in economics and sociology in Brazil and Germany and is Professor of Sociology at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, as well as Director of the Maria Sibylla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America (Mecila). His most recent monographs are Desiguais e divididos (2025); A Port in Global Capitalism (2021, with Guilherme Gonçalves); Entre el Atlántico y el Pacífico negro (2019, with Manuel Gón- gora and Rocío Vera). Lars Döpking works at the German Historical Institute in Rome (Italy). He is a historical sociologist and researcher in contemporary history and his primary research interests are focused on capitalist dynamics in Western Europe, with a particular emphasis on taxation. In addition, he investigates the canonisa- tion of sociological theory since the 1950s. He is the author of Fiskalische Herrschaft. Staat, Steuern und Politik in Italien seit 1945 (2023). Paolo Gerbaudo is Senior Researcher in Social Sciences at Complutense Uni- versity of Madrid (Spain). His research interests cover political parties, so- cial movements, digital culture and the digital transformation of the state and public services. Formerly at King’s College London, he has authored x Contributors several books on digital politics, populism and activism the last of which is The Great Recoil (2021), and publishes widely in academic journals on media and democracy. Elena Grasso is a researcher in Comparative Law at the University of Genoa (Italy). Her research explores multilingualism, social and reproductive rights, and the role of information in legal and societal contexts. She was previously affiliated with the University of Turin and has published in the areas of health law, family law and legal translation. Ho-fung Hung is the Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Politi- cal Economy in the Department of Sociology and the Nitze School of Ad- vanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University (United States). He is the author of Protest with Chinese Characteristics (2011), The China Boom (2015), City on the Edge: Hong Kong under Chinese Rule (2022), Clash of Empires: From ‘Chimerica’ to the ‘New Cold War’ (2022) and The China Question: Eight Centuries of Fantasy and Fear (2025). His academic publications have been translated into at least 12 different languages. His analysis of global and Chinese politics and economy has been cited or fea- tured in major media outlets worldwide. Wolfgang Knöbl was Professor at the Institute of Sociology, Georg-August University of Göttingen before he became Director of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research in 2015 (Germany). His main research interests concern political and historical sociology, social theory and the history of sociology. Die Soziologie vor der Geschichte. Zur Kritik der Sozialtheorie (2022) is his most recent book. Currently he is about to finish a volume on the history and sociology of violence in Germany after 1945. Premilla Nadasen is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York (United States). She researches and writes about social policy, labour history, feminism and grass-roots commu- nity organizing. Her most recent book is Care: The Highest Stage of Capital- ism (2023). Introduction Sofia Aboim, José Maurício Domingues and Filipe Carreira da Silva The Book At the end of the twentieth century, most social scientists and political analysts believed that future political conflicts in post-colonial and post-socialist con- texts would primarily revolve around competing visions of social democracy and neoliberalism, i.e., debates over redistribution, state intervention, economic governance, cultural identity and recognition, not to mention the tensions sur- rounding globalisation and transnational governance. At their core, these debates focus on how political power is organised, exercised and experienced within modern societies, and how such arrangements profoundly shape social life. However, the first decades of the twenty first century have profoundly chal- lenged these expectations, revealing new and complex lines of conflict that reshape our understanding of advanced political modernity. The rise and expan- sion of financial capitalism, coupled with transformations in labour and surplus extraction – such as the gig economy, deregulated labour markets and pervasive outsourcing – initially appeared to have weakened the redistributive and interven- tionist power of nation-states. Yet, multiple and overlapping crises – including the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate emergency, escalating geopolitical po- larisation and shifting economic demands – have required renewed state steer- ing and intervention. Since the pandemic, this trend has become increasingly visible, particularly in the realm of economic governance. However, in the do- main of social policy, the response remains more limited and uneven: in Europe, for instance, social policies continue to emphasise ‘social investment’, while elsewhere the focus remains largely on poverty alleviation. Concurrently, eth- nic, cultural and religious conflicts, strategically instrumentalised by ‘illiberal’ forces, alongside the increasing segmentation of political public spaces, seem to be undermining the social and political foundations of democratic coexistence in increasingly diverse and unequal societies. Social practices, forms of indi- vidualisation and modes of sociability have rapidly evolved, accompanied by a troubling resurgence of war and even genocide (Russia-Ukraine, the Democratic Repluic of the Congo, the Gaza Strip) in altered international contexts. DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-1 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-1 2 Political Modernity and Beyond This book seeks to analyse this complex and unsettled conjuncture, marked by profound uncertainty, uneven transformation and contested futures. It ex- plores both the nature and extent of recent shifts and the enduring structures and logics that continue to shape political modernity today. It seems that we are at a moment of momentous change, although many agents resist it and others seem unsure about how to proceed. What kind of change is really at stake, we must ask? What reach will such a change have? The impetus for this volume arose from a conference held at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS) of the University of Lisbon in July 2024, where par- ticipants reflected on how to frame the current moment in broader theoretical terms. The chapters collected here are revised versions of the papers presented at that event. Each contribution engages theoretically with the theme of politi- cal modernity, some through conceptually oriented arguments, others through empirical analyses grounded in concrete cases. Together, they express a shared concern: to take stock of what is changing, but also of what remains resilient, stabilised or reconfigured under new conditions. The volume embraces a plurality of perspectives, methodologies and conclusions – some explicitly, others more implicitly. It is precisely this plu- ralism that makes it possible to construct a multifaceted and encompassing conceptual response to the challenges facing the social sciences today. In particular sociology – arguably the discipline historically most attuned to the task of interpreting modernity in its multiple manifestations – remains vital to this intellectual endeavour. Modernity Before we move forward and grapple with the complex changes of our time, it is important to clarify what exactly we mean by modernity. The term has a long and complex conceptual history that resists simple definitions. As Fredric Jame- son reminds us in A Singular Modernity (2002), the word modern has been in circulation since at least the fifth century AD, and over time it has been applied to no fewer than 14 different historical moments, each claiming to be the site of a radical break with the past. This semantic proliferation tells us something crucial: modernity is not a fixed or self-evident concept, but a dynamic and often-contested narrative – a way of framing change and legitimising new orders in relation to what came before. Jameson helps us distinguish two primary senses in which the term is used. The first is qualitative: it refers to a shift in consciousness, a new sensibil- ity or worldview, often marked by an acute awareness of time, rupture and self-reflexivity. The second is quantitative: it denotes a transformation in the underlying structures of society – economic systems, political institutions, tech- nologies and modes of production. In this second sense, modernity implies a wholesale reorganisation of individual and collective life. These two aspects, 3 Introduction although analytically distinct, are deeply interconnected. Shifts in ‘cultural’ at- titudes and intellectual paradigms often pave the way for, or respond to, more material transformations in how societies function. This brings us to a fundamental question: when did modernity begin? His- torians and sociologists remain divided on this point, which also implies the substantive definition of what modernity is. Some place its origin in the waning of the so-called Dark Ages and the emer- gence of the Renaissance, with its revival of classical learning, embrace of human reason and the secularisation of authority, as well as the individualism pushed forward by the Reformation and Neo-Thomism, but also the great navigations and the initial phase of colonialism: ‘early modernity’. Others point instead, as most sociologists – such as Karl Marx, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, but also others like Georg Simmel and Alexis de Tocqueville – classically did, to the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution as the decisive and emblematic breakthroughs, to technological innovations and capitalist economic relations as well as rationalised law, the bureaucratic state and formal citizenship that decisively reshaped human societies at scale. Whether one foregrounds ideas or infrastructure, beliefs or machines, the debate reflects different emphases rather than mutually exclusive interpretations. Furthermore, it may even be said, as Anthony Giddens (1971: xi–xii) did in his paradigmatic initial book, ‘…that the conjunction of events linking the political climate of the French Revolution and the economic changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution provided the context from within which sociology was formed’. Yet, from a position that underpinned the decolonial perspective, this debate is often reframed altogether. As Enrique Dussel (1995: 12) argued, ‘the birthdate of modernity is 1492, even though its gestation, like that of the foetus, required a period of intrauterine growth’. Al- though the foundations of modernity were laid within medieval European cities, for him it only truly came into being through Europe’s violent encounter with the non-European Other. For Dussel, and other thinkers of the Global South, modernity’s true origin lies not in Europe’s internal transformation but in its vio- lent expansion outwards. Colonialism, slavery and the epistemic construction of alterity are not peripheral to modernity; they are constitutive of it, they argue. It is also possible – perhaps even necessary – to see these moments as suc- cessive phases within a broader modernising arc, even though it also seems clear that by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a new sort of imaginary and institutional formation coalesced. From the 1870s onwards this new formation became even more consistent. This was the era of mature indus- trial capitalism, urbanisation, imperial expansion and the consolidation of the nation-state as well as of a new impulse to colonialism and imperialism. It was also the period in which the idea of progress – scientific, social, moral – was most strongly institutionalised. The belief that history was moving forward, and that this forward movement could be steered rationally, was central to the politi- cal imagination of this period. Despite changes in different aspects of modernity 4 Political Modernity and Beyond in the twentieth century, these elements were to a large extent reaffirmed, with more or less strong inflexions. It is this configuration of assumptions and practices that the chapters in this volume take as their primary analytical terrain in their pursuit to understand the present. As Jameson astutely observes, modernity is not only a historical epoch – it is also a retrospective construct. Viewed from the standpoint of post- modernity, modernity becomes the mythic origin of the present, the conceptual birthplace of the ‘now’. This mythic dimension is important: it shows how mo- dernity functions not just as an analytical tool but also as a narrative, shaping how societies understand their past and future trajectories, as well as entailing infinite – but on the hand necessary – debates among social scientists. These speak to our experiences and expectations, as Reinhart Koselleck ([1988] 2004) puts it, in another bid to understand the symbolic configuration of modernity. Recognising this layered, contested and recursive nature of modernity is es- sential if we are to understand the multiple and uneven transformations currently underway. Among the various dimensions of modernity – economic, technologi- cal, cultural – this volume focuses on political modernity as a potentially fruitful framework. Political modernity is not merely one dimension among others but the axis through which both economic and cultural modernities are made intel- ligible, organised and contested. Political modernity offers both a conceptual anchor and a critical springboard. For some of the contributors to the book, it provides a general theory of societal transformation; for others, it serves as a point of departure from which alternative frames of reference can be explored. Either way, the tension between continuity and rupture – between reproduction and change – remains a central analytic concern. Several chapters also take up the challenge of periodising modernity anew, offering fresh insights into its in- ternal phases and historical dynamics. Today But why, can we ask, beyond mandatory critical vigilance and conceptual as well as specifically substantive discussions, such as carried out here, is such a reflection on political modernity necessary in the mid-2020s? A short but very relevant answer is that because we face now a monumental backlash. A po- litical backlash, of course, but also an economic and cultural one. A backlash against what, though? What we are witnessing today is not just a response to isolated crises or temporary discontent, but rather a profound societal reaction to the slow unravelling – and increasingly open challenge – of the project of ‘high’ modernity that emerged in the post-war period. This project took suc- cessive incarnations: initially grounded in state-led planning and welfare provi- sion, later reconfigured under the aegis of neoliberalism. Across its phases, high modernity was marked by a strong belief in rational governance, scientific and technological progress, and the normative authority of liberal democracy and 5 Introduction capitalist globalisation. While ‘real socialism’ offered a competing ideological and institutional model throughout much of the twentieth century, the consoli- dation of neoliberalism and the deepening of economic globalisation from the 1980s onwards shifted the emphasis decisively towards market logics and the retrenchment of state functions. To some extent, the latest stages of neoliberal period restated imaginary and institutional elements of earlier stages of moder- nity, albeit in a radicalised form. This process included an intensification of indi- vidual utilitarianism and market competition, as well as an even more repressive state, with a fuller implementation of liberal internationalism, under aegis of the United States. At the same time, novel processes emerged that were the subject of various critical diagnoses – postmodernity, reflexive modernity, liquid mo- dernity, multiple modernities – all of which pointed to a condition marked by uncertainty, fragmentation and an ongoing reconfiguration. In 2025, we face a full-blown backlash against many of the core tenets of the latter period, but including issues present already in former moments of modernity, along with serious social mutations. That backlash developed against technocratic governance, economic deregulation, multiculturalism and transna- tional integration, complaints, with different signs, about state welfare, and with a questioning of democracy, accompanied by the emergence of more authori- tarian forms of politics and the state. While early signs of this backlash could be seen in the revolts of the 2010s, its roots run deeper and its effects are now more visible and acute. At the same time, capitalism is once again undergoing a mutation – adopting more flexible forms and giving rise to platform-based models – while paradoxically increasing its reliance on state support. This shift is exemplified by the resurgence of industrial policy, protectionist measures and tariff conflicts such as the United States-China trade war, which mark a signifi- cant departure from the principles of neoliberal globalisation and signal a reas- sertion of state-led economic nationalism. This reconfiguration is driven, in part, by China’s growing challenge to U.S. geopolitical and economic hegemony. Scholars have sought to chart the course of this process across a range of areas: from the crisis of liberal democratic institutions and the erosion of middle-class security and social welfare to the rise of identity-based polarisation, the growing crisis of legitimacy of expert knowledge – which played out in different ways and faces challenges once again regarding climate change and the environmen- tal collapse that has profoundly defied the logic of perpetual growth and the use of fossil fuels. The backlash we are living through is not only a reaction to present-day failures – it is also, or so it seems, a reckoning with the legacies, contradictions, impasses and unmet promises of modernity itself. More specifically, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic – a crisis that may not qualify as a critical juncture in the technical sense of path-dependence theory, but that has undoubtedly acted as an accelerator of pre-existing trends – major shifts have taken shape. The pandemic revealed and amplified a se- ries of nascent developments, particularly in the role of the state. While this 6 Political Modernity and Beyond reconfiguration had already begun after the 2008 global financial crisis, the pan- demic intensified and legitimised a more assertive state presence, especially in public health, economic coordination and crisis management. This turn has brought renewed attention to industrial policy, strategic planning and social protection mechanisms. Although these developments are still in flux – embodied in partial and uneven measures such as ‘Bidenomics’ in the United States and, more turbulently, in the re-emergence of ‘Trumpnomics’ – they signal a potential departure from the laissez-faire orthodoxy of previous decades. The state’s entanglement with finance and capital is also being re-examined, in both the core and, with more difficulty, semi-peripheral and peripheral regions. In some contexts, these changes are actively embraced and institutionalised; in others, es- pecially in parts of Europe, they face political resistance and ideological inertia. Climate change has emerged as an inescapable emergency, identities have under- gone transformation and politicisation, whereas liberal democracy itself is being tested. Meanwhile, the international order is increasingly shaped by geopolitical realignment, escalating power competition, and the renewed prominence of war. No social transition unfolds all at once. And this is true of the current mo- ment. Can we say that we are living through a transition? If so, is this the begin- ning of a new phase of modernity, or merely a recalibration within its existing framework? Perhaps we are still in an in-between moment – an inflexion-point where the institutions and imaginaries of the pre-pandemic world retain much of their strength, even as cracks appear and alternatives emerge. What new ho- rizons are becoming visible? What remains buried? The Chapters By bringing together diverse but converging perspectives, Political Modernity and Beyond aims to offer not only a critical interpretation of the present but also a constructive rethinking of our collective political possibilities. Through the lens of political modernity – understood not as a monolith but as a con- tested and evolving field – we hope to illuminate the stakes of our current cross- roads. In doing so, we seek to make an innovative and, we hope, path-breaking contribution – analytically rigorous, empirically grounded and attuned to the manifold realities of our times. To structure this collective enquiry, the volume unpacks and interweaves three main themes: Crises, Struggles and Reconfigurations. The first four chap- ters examine the fractures within the institutional and normative structures of political modernity, highlighting the multiple and overlapping crises that charac- terise the current historical context. As such, this first section describes and ex- plores a moment of growing disillusionment in which the foundational promises of modernity – such as democratic legitimacy, social cohesion, state capacity and ecological stewardship – are becoming increasingly strained and destabi- lised. The opening chapter by Wolfgang Knöbl offers a critical reassessment of 7 Introduction the concept of ‘crisis’. Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s historical semantics, Knöbl argues in Chapter 1 that the contemporary use of ‘crisis’ – particularly during the pandemic and amidst growing geopolitical tensions – has become both pervasive and analytically diluted. Rather than indicating real rupture or transformation, the discourse of crisis now frequently serves to legitimise ex- ceptional political measures and reinforce state retrenchment, thereby revealing the deeper contradictions embedded in modern democratic governance. Kathya Araujo, in Chapter 2, continues to examine democratic fragility through a sociological study of Chilean society. Focusing on the everyday experience of authority and moral obligation, Araujo argues that the democratic crisis is not merely institutional but is also rooted in deeper transformations of the social bond. Neoliberal individualisation, weakened forms of legitimacy and shifting expectations regarding interpersonal authority have eroded the emotional and normative foundations on which democratic life depends. This chapter provides a precise analysis of the current malaise of democracy as a loss of intersubjec- tive anchoring, raising broader questions about the viability of modern political imaginaries. In Chapter 3, Lars Döpking turns to the fiscal foundations of political mo- dernity, focusing on the transformation of taxation and public finance in Europe since 2020. Döpking introduces the concept of ‘fiscal rule’ to explore how taxa- tion mediates state legitimacy and democratic accountability. While the pan- demic crises prompted renewed calls for state intervention, they also intensified conflicts over legitimacy regarding who should pay for collective resilience. Döpking outlines three possible future trajectories for fiscal democracy: redis- tribution based on solidarity, an authoritarian libertarian backlash or an extended and uneven struggle between fiscal classes. Ultimately, the chapter presents a sobering diagnosis of a system under strain, where the crisis lies not only in economic management but also in the political foundations of taxation itself. Finally, in Chapter 4, Manuel Arias-Maldonado addresses what may be the most far-reaching crisis facing political modernity: the ecological collapse sym- bolised by the Anthropocene. Rather than treating environmental catastrophe as a strictly scientific or policy issue, he approaches it as a conceptual and histori- cal problem, probing whether it represents a radical departure from the logic of modernity’s mastery over nature, or more provocatively, its ultimate realisation. The chapter traverses competing narratives of the Anthropocene – from dysto- pian collapse to techno-utopian adaptation – and argues that the crisis forces us to reimagine the temporal grammar of modernity itself, including its notions of progress, futurity and irreversible transformation. Together, these chapters depict a world in which the frameworks and expectations of modern political life remain formally in place yet are increasingly unable to meet the systemic challenges they face. The present emerges not as a moment of abrupt rupture, but as a prolonged unravelling, a crisis not only of modernity’s institutions but also of its capacity for renewal. 8 Political Modernity and Beyond As we journey onwards, the book engages with a series of chapters that ex- plore the tensions, exclusions and confrontations which characterise political modernity as a contested landscape. Rather than treating modernity as a stable or completed project, they analyse how its core categories – sovereignty, ter- ritoriality, legitimacy, security, care and identity – are being reworked through struggle. From inter-imperial rivalries in global capitalism to the mobilisation of the far right and the commodification of life, political modernity is revealed to be sustained, undone and reinvented through conflict. The section opens with Chapter 5 by Ho-fung Hung, who takes a long-term view to analyse the evolving structure of global hegemony through the lens of inter-imperial rivalry. Using a historical materialist framework, he shows that the rivalry between the United States and China is not a clash of civilisations, as is often claimed, but a battle over capital accumulation, market access and geopolitical influence, based on different models of state-capitalist develop- ment. Hung reinterprets the liberal-conservative opposition in global politics as a geo-ideological contest shaped by overaccumulation and the spatial reordering of capitalist imperatives. Therefore, the so-called decline of the West is less a rupture than a reconfiguration of the core logics of imperial modernity. In Chapter 6, Sofia Aboim argues that imperialism is not a legacy of the past but rather a resurgent force embedded in today’s global governance. By analys- ing border regimes, both territorial and digital, Aboim demonstrates how mod- ern sovereignty is exercised through legal, technological and racialised forms of exclusion. Borders serve as pivotal locations where these regimes of exclusion are implemented. In her view, empire remains a constitutive logic of political modernity, materialised through biometric control, migration policy and finan- cial extraction. Aboim calls for imperialism to be conceptualised as a dispersed and structurally adaptive power that continues to shape inequality, citizenship, and political belonging across multiple domains. Moving on to electoral politics in Chapter 7, Sérgio Costa examines how disputes over recognition, inequality and social status drive the mobilisation of the far right in Brazil and Germany. Rejecting simplistic explanations of the populist response, Costa introduces the concept of ‘intersectional situations’ to explain how social actors navigate changing hierarchies relating to race, class and gender. Costa argues that far-right voters respond not only to material inse- curity but also to perceived symbolic displacements within relational fields of power. By focusing on how people perceive status, anxiety and marginalisation, Costa shows how the rise of illiberal politics is a fight over meaning, memory and belonging. Premilla Nadasen concludes this segment by shifting her focus to the most personal aspect of political modernity: the realm of care and reproductive la- bour. Chapter 8 thus reveals how care work, which is often racialised, feminised and precarious, has become a key frontier of capitalist profit-making. Drawing upon the concept of racial capitalism, she examines the role of state institutions 9 Introduction and non-profit organisations in exploiting vulnerability for profit. However, this is not solely a story of dispossession. Nadasen also highlights how acts of soli- darity, collective organising and political refusal constitute a form of resistance that challenges the logic of commodification. In her account, care becomes a battleground for redefining value, power and political agency. Together, these chapters trace a set of overlapping struggles that embody the contradictions of political modernity. From empire to household and from inter-imperial rivalry to grassroots resistance, each chapter reveals how power is exercised and con- tested, and how political modernity is shaped by its fractures. The final part of this volume considers reconfigurations – conceptual, institu- tional and epistemological shifts that indicate new trends in political modernity. Rather than assuming a teleological break with the past, these chapters seek to understand how changes in knowledge and the imaginary, authority and insti- tutional practices are being reworked in response to contemporary transforma- tions. This is not the end of modernity, but rather its rearticulation in the context of new constraints and possibilities. José Maurício Domingues introduces this section by offering a global so- ciological perspective that re-evaluates the longue durée of political moder- nity in light of recent global shifts. Drawing upon a rich theoretical tradition, in Chapter 9, Domingues thus traces the succession of modernity’s phases and contends that we are entering a fourth phase characterised by the return of strong state intervention, intensified geopolitical rivalry and environmental breakdown on an unprecedented scale as well as reflexively defensive identities. He consid- ers whether these developments represent a continuation of the modern trajectory or a transformative threshold. Rather than announcing a rupture, the chapter em- phasises the need to confront modernity’s ambivalence – its capacity to generate both emancipatory projects and violent exclusions. Domingues challenges read- ers to consider new political ideas for today, and whether a new modernity can still support global fairness, democracy and environmental protection. In Chapter 10, Paolo Gerbaudo introduces the concept of ‘re-modernity’ to explain the revival of modernist structures following the ‘postmodern’ era. He argues that recent years have witnessed a revival of centralised state action, technological megaprojects and digital platform governance – forces that con- trast with the horizontality and fluidity championed by so-called reflexive mo- dernity. Gerbaudo interprets these trends not as a break from modernity but as rather its redirection through intensified verticalism, control and disciplinary rationality. By critically engaging with the interplay between digital infrastruc- ture and statecraft, he illuminates how political modernity is being recalibrated through renewed (albeit ambiguous) institutional ambitions. Filipe Carreira da Silva turns to epistemology and the future of the social sci- ences amidst the erosion of disciplinary boundaries and the declining authority of the nation-state. Chapter 11 thus offers a metatheoretical intervention based on ‘dialogical pluralism’, a framework that aims to overcome the polarities of 10 Political Modernity and Beyond foundationalism and historicism by encouraging a reflective, intersubjective ap- proach to theory building. Instead of retreating into civilisation relativism or reviving universalist modernity, Silva advocates a context-sensitive, relational approach that honours the contingency of knowledge and the need for dialogue. Ultimately, his chapter reframes political modernity as a deeply contested epis- temic project where the stakes of knowledge are inseparable from the struggle for democratic pluralism and intellectual responsibility. Elena Grasso concludes the volume with a comparative legal analysis of digital health governance during the pandemic. Focusing on the implementa- tion of e-health measures and digital surveillance across EU countries, Grasso examines the tensions between technological innovation, legal harmonisation and democratic accountability. Chapter 12 thereby illustrates how national legal systems absorbed global pressures unevenly, resulting in both convergence and fragmentation in health governance. Grasso’s analysis of the digital divide, es- pecially in relation to vulnerable populations, offers a grounded perspective on how modernity’s promises of rational governance and inclusion are being realised unevenly. Concluding the volume with this empirically and legally informed chapter reinforces the broader argument that political modernity not only is an abstract concept but is experienced and contested through everyday infrastructures, legal frameworks and inequalities. This volume does not claim to offer a unified theory of political modernity, nor does it signal the beginning of a new era. Instead, it brings together a series of theoretically grounded and empirically informed contributions that address the ongoing contradictions, adaptive capabilities and uncertain trajectories of modern political life. Organised around three aforementioned and interrelated themes – Crises, Struggles and Reconfigurations – the book explores a world characterised by institutional decline, social conflict and epistemic disloca- tion, while also identifying the spaces in which alternative visions and political structures are emerging. The book invites readers to think critically and com- paratively about the conditions under which modernity is reassembled in state institutions, global orders, digital infrastructures and everyday relations of care and knowledge. The chapters span a wide range of world geographies, reflect- ing the uneven yet interconnected dynamics of political modernity in different contexts. Taken together, the chapters do not reveal a singular path forward, but rather a landscape shaped by entangled crises, contested struggles and ongoing reconfigurations. As this volume argues, political modernity is not over; it is be- ing remade, and the terms of its remaking remain profoundly contested. Acknowledgements This book is the result of a collaborative journey that began, as already men- tioned, with the Lisbon conference held at the ICS in 2024. We are deeply grate- ful to all the colleagues who took part in that event, whose intellectual generosity Introduction 11 helped shape many of the questions and perspectives explored in this volume. Our sincere thanks go to the Director of the ICS, Professor Marina Costa Lobo, and to the staff of the Events and Communications Offices at the ICS, in par- ticular Margarida Bernardo and Pedro Rodrigues, for their assistance in making the conference possible. The event was funded by the Anneliese Maier Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation by José Maurício Domingues in 2018. We would also like to thank the AvH for its support and for funding the open access edition of this book. Frau Marcela Osses, of the Freie Universität Berlin, where the AvH project is based, also deserves our thanks for her administrative support. The list of colleagues who have stood by us in the last few years is enormous and it would certainly result in injustices were we to try to list them all. They may rest assured that we are very happy for having been able to count on them. References Dussel E (1995) The Invention of the Americas: The Eclipse of ‘the Other’ and the Myth of Modernity. New York: Continuum. Giddens A (1971) Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of Marx, Dur- kheim and Max Weber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jameson F (2002) A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present. London: Verso. Koselleck R ([1988] 2004) Future Past: On the Semantics of Historical Past. New York: Columbia University Press. https://taylorandfrancis.com Part I Crisis https://taylorandfrancis.com 1 Democracy and Statehood Varieties of (Pandemic) Crises and Their Consequences Wolfgang Knöbl Introduction Peter Wagner, certainly one of the outstanding social theorists, argued in his most recent book in which he tries to give hope with regard to the problem-solving capacities of societies concerning the climate crisis, in the following way: The reactions to the recent Covid-19 pandemic and to the Russian in- vasion of Ukraine show that there still is a capacity for action in cases defined as emergencies. The lockdowns have demonstrated that govern- ment action is possible against vested economic interests and engrained social habits. Both the pandemic and the war have shown that dogmas of fiscal stability and government limitation can be dropped when urgencies require doing so. (Wagner, 2024: 261) Wagner certainly knows that there are differences between the climate crisis and the crises surrounding Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic, because the fight against a foreign power and a virus has to be conducted in the short term, whereas the fight against climate change is and must be a long-term endeavor, as it is about a profound ecological transformation (Wagner, 2024: 261). Even if I agree with much of what Wagner has said here, I would like to express some doubts as to whether solutions to one ‘emergency’ or crisis also foreshadow or anticipate solutions to other ones. Can we seriously expect (or hope) that the comparatively successful governmental fight against the pandemic will lead to equally consistent action with regard to stabilizing or even improving the climate situation or with regard to military mobilization on the side of West- European states in order to support Ukraine and to deter Russia from further aggression? This chapter will address these questions mainly from a processual perspective and will consider in a sketchy way how the state and democracy work under conditions of crisis. In the conclusion it will be asked how one might proceed in order to theorize different types of crises. DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-3 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-3 16 Political Modernity and Beyond The Meaning of Crisis First of all, it should be noted that the term ‘crisis’, as it is used in the humanities and the social sciences, does not necessarily mean a rapid or sudden upheaval. It is also often used to refer to long-lasting degenerative processes, for example when historians analyze the decline of the Roman Republic or the decline of mercenary armies in the 18th and 19th centuries. However, we also talk about crisis when we are not so much (and certainly not in the first place) address- ing temporality, but the overlapping and superimposition of political, economic or cultural conflicts. ‘Crisis’ then points not to a comprehensible and traceable chain of events, but to the simultaneous accumulation of difficulties and prob- lems. In both cases, we speak of a ‘crisis’. So far, so good. But if this is so, then we must realize that ‘crisis’ is always and everywhere. The historians of 19th-century Europe, for example, obviously had to write about nothing other than crises: in that century, there was the crisis of the bourgeois individual, of the monarchy and the old regime, of craftsmanship, of traditional gender constructions and so on (Mergel, 2012: 9–12, especially 11). The term, which originally was coined and used within theology, jurisprudence and – above all – medicine (Koselleck, 1982: 617–19), seems to have lost its rather precise meaning when transferred to other contexts and thus being defined in a rather loose or colloquial way (if at all!). But one must not look into the distant past. The much more recent phenomena of the second half of the 20th century are often also analyzed and framed with the term ‘crisis’ when laypersons and journalists, historians and sociologists talk about the crisis of the nation state, about the different crises of party-systems, about the crisis of capitalism, about the crisis of masculinity and/or binary gender constructions, about the crises of healthcare and educational systems, about the oil crisis of the early 1970s, about the crisis of a society based on labor (die Krise der Arbeitsgesellschaft) etc. – crises that almost all led to some form of intervention, usually by politi- cally legitimated experts, in order to bring about an improvement or a solution (Geyer, 2012: 257, 70). In medicine, one of the original contexts in which the term ‘crisis’ was used, this very term designated that particular phase of an illness of the human body in which it was decided whether and how the sick organism would continue, i.e. whether it would recover or die. In principle one could and can easily diagnose such a ‘crisis’ because the human body can somehow be understood as a func- tional whole whose health is based on the various partial functionalities of the organs and of blood circulation. If there is a failure in those functions, a crisis can then be diagnosed, and it depends on the judgment of the physician whether one can hope for recovery or expect the worst, i.e. death. Such functionalities quickly to be diagnosed can rarely be observed in so- cial life so that there are good reasons to feel uncomfortable about the use of this particular term in social contexts. This insight was one of the reasons Democracy and Statehood 17 why – following some ideas of Carl Schmitt – one of the outstanding German historians of the 20th century felt compelled to turn the causal arrow around, so to speak: while it has been conventionally suggested, and continues to be sug- gested, that the crisis of a social system gave and gives rise to its critique as a precondition for problem-solving, would it not be more fruitful, asked Reinhart Koselleck, to understand ‘crisis’ as a ‘daughter of critique’ (Tochter der Kritik) (Geyer, 2012: 12)? This metaphor might be difficult to grasp, but its meaning is indeed straightforward. Koselleck made the following argument: the constant talk of ‘crisis’ in the singular and ‘crises’ in the plural arose in the epoch of the European Enlightenment when philosophers began to criticize absolutist rule: scholars of the Enlightenment moralized politics (Koselleck, [1959] 1973), po- litical action was measured against the yardstick of a rather strict (bourgeois) morality. This Enlightenment critique might have helped to solve problems – no doubt about that! But, and this is more important to Koselleck, this very morali- zation of politics led above all to the perpetuation of an atmosphere of (political) crisis because no political constellation, no political act can and could be char- acterized as normatively impeccable or absolutely virtuous (Mergel, 2012: 12): criticism thus became endemic in the (political) system, precisely because poli- tics, like any institutional/social arrangement, could always be accused of im- morality or normative inappropriateness. This is precisely the reason why the concept of crisis could be used always and everywhere. Crisis always was and always is – at least since 1780 (Koselleck, 1982: 627)! If one finds Koselleck’s historical reconstruction convincing, then – according to his interpreters – at least two conclusions can and must be drawn from it: (1) Objectivist approaches to crises fail in view of the lack of clear functionali- ties in social life, which is why the talk of structural crises only makes sense if these crises are perceived by the actors involved, perceived in the sense of a loss of trust, in the sense of a diagnosis of a highly problematic situation, in the sense of the temptation for an urgently needed action etc.: a crisis is when actors are under pressure to act – despite the fact that the future is uncertain, despite the fact that it is impossible to predict what exactly will happen after the diagnosed crisis (Mergel, 2012: 13). (2) The constant discourse on crisis is also strange, however, because – and this is something to keep in mind – ‘crisis’ within a medical context refers, to repeat it once more, to the transition between two normal conditions (between the healthy condition before and after the crisis) or the condition between health and death! Leaving the latter aside, although it would be interesting to also talk about the death of social arrangements and institutions, it remains the case that in the modern world, a world that almost by definition is constantly in flux (that is somehow the condition of modernity), it should actually be rather unclear what a normal condition is: is the nuclear family normal, the nation state, binary gender coding etc.? If this cannot be said, then everything is always in a condition of flux, then order is never given and therefore never normal. If we take this seriously, then the suspicion arises that 18 Political Modernity and Beyond talk about crisis only in retrospect creates those nostalgically viewed phases of order and stability (Mergel, 2012: 13ff). It is the ‘crisis’ that invents order in the first place, which not only sounds paradoxical but also causes considerable problems for sociology, at least when it constantly talks about crises in the con- text of diagnoses of the times, for example, and overlooks the fact that crises- talk might also help those in power to plan creative destruction, to make risky decisions or those that are associated with considerable losses for certain popu- lation groups according to the motto: ‘The existence of the crisis (unfortunately) makes the following measures necessary’ (Hasse, 2012: 29–45, especially 36ff). Crisis-talk creates (its own) need for action, and sociology plays its part in this. In the following sections, I will first take a look at the Covid-19 pandemic and then ask what kind of crisis rhetoric was at work there and what threat and conflict situation we were dealing with during the pandemic. This should then provide the starting point for looking at two further ‘crises’, the climate cri- sis and the Ukraine crisis, as already mentioned above in the quote from Peter Wagner. The Pandemic: What Sort of Rhetoric? First, it should perhaps be noted that although the Covid-19 pandemic was not foreseeable, it did not come as much of a surprise. To a certain extent, we were forewarned by a similar virus that had ‘struck’ almost two decades earlier, the severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, which probably origi- nated in Hong Kong and spread very quickly, which is precisely why SARS has been described as the ‘first jet-set-disease of the millennium’ (Honigsbaum, 2021: 287). In the spring of 2003, almost 30 countries were affected, almost 8,100 people worldwide were infected with SARS and 774 died from the dis- ease. The outbreak was brought under control relatively quickly, with infection rates falling rapidly by 2004. SARS was caused by a coronavirus and – as al- ready mentioned – originated in East Asia and China through zoonoses. A very similar phenomenon was registered ten years later in Saudi Arabia under the name Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), again caused by a coronavi- rus, again a zoonosis: the World Health Organization (WHO) registered around 2,500 MERS infections, most of them in Saudi Arabia itself, with a total of 866 deaths, again the vast majority in this particular state on the Arabian Peninsula (Roth, 2022: 27). After the SARS outbreak, the WHO had already quite suc- cessfully established a reporting system that screened the incidence of infections worldwide, which then also led to the rapid detection of MERS and then finally also the Covid-19 outbreak.1 The WHO, of course, had and has its own features and peculiarities, which, among other things, steered the way how recent pandemics in general and the Covid-19 pandemic in particular were combated in a certain way – despite na- tional varieties and exceptionalisms! Karl Heinz Roth points out that the WHO, Democracy and Statehood 19 the UN sub-organization founded in 1948, had become unstable in the course of its history in that it was increasingly financed by private donors, especially since the 1970s, when pharmaceutical companies were appearing as donors and when foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were also involved. There is perhaps little to criticize about this at first, but it led to a change in the focus of the WHO’s work, away from public health that was closely con- nected with the welfare idea of promoting and supporting basic medical care, of implementing hygiene measures, of providing hospital beds, of making masks available etc., and toward anti-viral vaccination strategies, because this of course – not coincidentally – generated considerable profits for certain compa- nies. The WHO therefore increasingly focused on the prevention and treatment of viral outbreaks with medication, rather than on measures in advance that could have much more easily prevented the rapid spread of viruses and thus the emergence of pandemics. When the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in 2019/2020 and the virus, which was incidentally much more infectious than SARS and could also be transmit- ted by people who were unable to develop symptoms of the disease, spread very quickly to almost all parts and countries of the world, the usual means of combating pandemics were simply not available in many parts of the world – disinfectants, masks, sufficient hospital beds etc. This meant that even in the highly industrialized countries of the so-called West, which had previously shut down or restructured their public health systems as part of certain ‘neoliberal’ policies, there was no choice but to develop drugs and, ideally, vaccines against the virus as quickly as possible. Everything else was subordinated to this, so that the countries that could afford it and had their own pharmaceutical indus- try did everything they could to achieve a medical-technical breakthrough, which in concrete terms meant providing the relevant pharmaceutical compa- nies with generous financial resources to promote research and innovation, and also leaving the relevant research strategies to them. The focus was primarily on virus detection and vaccination strategies, which automatically brought the bio-medical experts to the fore and made their expertise politically decisive, whereby social science expertise played an extremely minor role (probably not only) in Germany, for example, as it would have been possible to get closer to data concerning the incidence of infection not only via the health authorities but also via mass surveys, i.e. social surveys (Schularick, 2021: 75), which was not done, however! But this is perhaps less important than the fact that a (not very democratic and transparent) expert regime was established in Germany and also in many other countries, which was somehow unavoidable given the specific strategy chosen to combat the pandemic. It should be added that the success of the strategy was very different in different countries of the world, that Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, for example, were comparatively successful in contrast to many of the European countries (Roth, 2022: 234), who also played an inglorious role in the evil game of vaccination nationalism and were hardly, if 20 Political Modernity and Beyond at all, prepared to make the vaccines developed in their home states available to Third World countries, for example. According to Roth, the success of countries such as Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan was also due to the fact that they relied and were able to rely much more on voluntary measures than Europe, not least because they already had more experience with pandemics, not least with SARS, which is precisely why citizens of these aforementioned states often wore masks, avoided shaking hands etc.! This was unheard of in Europe, which is why drastic measures, hard lockdowns and, above all, further coercive meas- ures were used there, which then also provoked resistance, sometimes of a fun- damental nature, because these measures were perceived as restricting freedom and jeopardizing democracy. These hard lockdowns also had a whole series of health-related side effects and consequences, insofar as they partially paralyzed the rest of the healthcare system and restricted the usual healthcare provisions, and a huge number of areas such as retirement and nursing homes were simply forgotten (Roth, 2022: 292), where the social (and then often biological) death of those left alone by all their relatives and loved-ones was accepted. None of this was intentional, nor was it probably malicious, but the path to combating the pandemic, as it then took place, was predetermined: a strong in- fluence of experts, many coercive measures that were often highly problematic in terms of constitutional law and/or democratic theory. And all this happened in addition to some grave side effects of the combat against the virus – the impov- erishment of the population in those countries that were not as rich as Germany, where the loss of income of some large professional groups (and companies) was compensated for by the state with enormous financial aid. If we now try to outline the Covid-19 pandemic as a crisis in the sense of a processual sequence, we can say, based on arguments developed in Tulia Falletti and James Mahoney’s (2015: 211–39, especially 216) attempt to clarify process theory, that the disease at the viral infection level certainly was a continuous and, due to the high infectivity of Covid-19, accelerating self-producing pro- cess, which quickly spread around the world, but which was also recognized very quickly by the WHO-experts, for example, which sent out corresponding warnings of an emerging pandemic, to which national governments reacted and which they were able to perceive as a ‘crisis’. However, these reactions then followed their own logic, or at least not the same processual logic as the spread of the virus. In any case, it is debatable whether the state reactions to this rep- resented an orderly process. It is worth pointing out that the reactions to the pandemic were probably fractal in nature, meaning that several processes were parts of larger processes, i.e. that the measures for the rapid vaccination cam- paign, for example, were always embedded in certain constellations of political and scientific negotiation processes of which they were a part. Did the political measures and the scientific recommendations implemented by politicians follow a self-reproducing and then causal logic? Here I would answer with a rather hesitant ‘no’; there was little self-reproduction because Democracy and Statehood 21 there were too many actors with partly different interests involved, so that the ‘outcome’ was not causally predetermined, as the different national strate- gies make clear. However, there was a development that could be described as path-dependent, because the WHO’s focus on vaccination strategies and medical high technology provided a kind of framework within which the different fractal processes took place. In this respect, the measures that restricted or jeopardized democracy were not predetermined but were not entirely surprising either. To put it differently, the restriction of democratic rights and procedures was not so much fostered by evil elites in the first place but was more an unintended out- come of a global healthcare system which was based on ‘neo-liberal’ premises and which, challenged by the virus, began to react in a path-dependent way. The Climate Crisis It is probably not too bold to state that there has recently been a growing number of scientific, and above all social science, voices that believe that the climate targets formulated in Paris in 2015 can no longer be achieved, that the Earth will ultimately soon warm by more than the 2 degrees Celsius that has been agreed and that – perhaps contrary to Peter Wagner’s optimism – we will have to resign ourselves to a significantly hotter Earth. One of the most important voices here is Jens Beckert, who published a book in 2024 entitled Verkaufte Zukunft. Warum der Kampf gegen den Klimawandel zu scheitern droht (in English something like: Future Sold. Why the Fight against Climate Change Threatens to Fail). Beckert offers a whole battery of arguments as to why he believes that this fight against global warming will indeed not make much progress, arguments that cannot all be presented here. However, he makes two things clear right at the beginning of his book: (1) There is no lack of knowledge that this climate change is human-made and also how it could be stopped, namely by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, (2) The climate crisis is not a crisis of capitalism; capitalism will ‘survive’ the climate crisis, just as it has already survived many other crises: even with a warming of more than 2 degrees, the capitalist valoriza- tion process will continue, differently perhaps and with different profiteers and losers, but it will continue (Beckert, 2024: 19). In other words, as there are cur- rently hardly any strong anti-capitalist movements in sight, especially not those that operate globally, we will have to ask ourselves what part capitalism plays in climate change. More on this later. In terms of process theory, if we look at the first point, we see something to be obvious also within the Covid-19 pandemic: similar to the spread of the virus, the case of global warming is a linear process; it has occurred due to the further increase in CO2 consumption, which may even accelerate in the very next future. An objective linear process is therefore underway, which is also rec- ognized by the vast majority of scientists and, in some regions of the world, by many ordinary citizens on the basis of various signs (from ever warmer winters 22 Political Modernity and Beyond to the melting of the poles and glaciers, from changes in vegetation to increas- ing flooding, from increasing droughts to the extinction of animal and plant species). In this respect, there is also a subjective factor, so that one can speak of climate change actually being experienced as a crisis. However, it is much less clear how different the people affected by this crisis are and will be compared to the Covid-19 crisis! In principle, everyone was affected by Covid-19 due to the rapid spread of this virus; potentially everyone had to expect to be infected and potentially fall ill, even if this was not the case for everyone, because many infected people did not develop any symptoms of the disease. But there was no way of knowing this from the outset! In this respect, there was a need for ac- tion that could hardly be denied: even if there were of course so-called corona deniers, all governments around the world took anti-corona measures, however different they actually looked. The climate crisis seems to be quite different: although everyone is currently affected by global warming, it is by no means the case that everyone experiences these temperature increases as an immediate threat. What’s more, the climate crisis is a much stronger call for global action than a pandemic is: of course, it is true that combating a pandemic cannot be done well on a national scale alone, but that a global approach is much more promising. However, national measures alone can have a significant impact on the pandemic, which also explains – as we have seen – the different successes in containing the pandemic, which makes it understandable why – to repeat it again – Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan have done better here than European countries. The situation is different when it comes to climate change: the pressure to act is much greater on a Pacific island than in Germany or Switzerland, for example, because the survival of the local population is already at stake in the Pacific, whereas in Central Europe the consequences of global warming will probably have to be endured for some time to come. However, another point is even more important, namely that little can actually be done nationally or re- gionally to combat climate change as long as carbon dioxide emissions continue to grow globally. The fact, that the Federal Republic of Germany, for example, takes strict and exemplary measures against climate change may (perhaps!) lead to imitation effects in other countries and thus may also improve the climate situation: but whether imitation takes place is highly uncertain, and the German measures in themselves change little about the warming global climate! In this respect, the problem of free-riding in the fight against the climate crisis is of course a much more explosive one than with Covid-19. But even this – according to Beckert – may not be the biggest obstacle to curb- ing climate change. Perhaps more important is the fact that the inherent logic of capitalism and its entanglement with state institutions is making itself felt, which means that the climate crisis must be described as an ‘insidious problem’ (ein tückisches Problem) (Beckert, 2024: 20) that cannot actually be solved. Why is that the case? Beckert (2024: 25) states with good reason that a cultural Democracy and Statehood 23 web has spun around this link between the state and capitalism, which he calls ‘capitalist modernity’ with characteristics such as an instrumental relationship to nature, a still pervasive subordination to progress and a spread of individualistic norms of behavior, a web that makes the link between capitalism and the state one that can hardly be dissolved! Here are just a few keywords and thoughts from Beckert’s book to illustrate his argument: the instrumental relationship to nature has been established for centuries and is in a fatal way still linked to the fact that the exploitation of fossil fuels has become one of the most profitable endeavors in world history. This is still true today: Big Oil still has much higher profits than the decarbonized energy industry, for example, and Beckert notes somewhat smugly that he would like to see a highly profitable industry shut down, especially as the respective oil-producing state also profits enormously from it through tax revenues. And so it is not surprising that coal/gas and oil consumption (and thus their production) is still rising at present, despite the very recognizable expansion of renewable energies (Beckert, 2024: 54). What’s more, this expansion is mainly taking place in Europe and North America and now also increasingly in parts of Asia, meaning, however, that large parts of the world have not yet made a real attempt to switch away from fossil fuels, while at the same time global warming itself is leading to ever-increasing electricity consumption, which can often only be covered by fossil fuels. It should also be noted that even a successful energy transformation can only be bought on the basis of increased environmental pollution and destruc- tion, as non-fossil energy sources require metals, ores etc. that can only be ex- tracted from the Earth or utilized at great cost (Beckert, 2024: 170ff). One could conclude that Green Growth is the only way out of all these constraints and predicaments, but here too Beckert is skeptic, as he can show with convincing arguments that it is not the case that the majority of people in the Global North are really prepared to do without consumption, and that people in the Global South cannot be expected to do so for normative reasons, so that a post-growth economy appears to be more of a utopian possibility. The upper classes and elites of the Global North in particular, who behave in an extremely climate- damaging way, are the last to be prepared to forgo consumption – and social movements that could or would seriously dictate this to the elites are currently nowhere to be seen. According to Beckert, the state seems overwhelmed by all of this, it cannot solve this insidious problem of limiting global warming, which is why the term ‘state failure’ seems appropriate to him with regard to the climate crisis. Not that the state is doing nothing to protect the climate, but the maxim for action is usually to agree on the lowest common denominator when it comes to measures to protect the climate, as can be seen in Germany, for example, where even a governing coalition in which the ecological Party of the Greens (Bündnis 90/ Die Grünen) is strongly represented has not succeeded to introduce a speed limit on cars on motorways (Autobahnen), that this aforementioned party also has no 24 Political Modernity and Beyond problem negotiating a fossil fuel deal with the highly problematic human rights state of Qatar in order to make Germany’s energy supply independent of Putin and his will in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Taking all of this together and abstracting from Beckert’s statements, it is perhaps possible to claim that the state responses to the climate crisis should probably be theorized differently than those with regard to the Covid-19 crisis. Governments can (and sometimes do) react to the climate crisis by doing noth- ing and may then have to reckon with sanctions and the disapproval of the other countries in the UN, but failing to meet climate targets will not be penalized too much! The penalty of immediate demise currently only applies to island states and countries; everyone else can sit out the crisis, delay action, engage in sym- bolic politics etc. The objective crisis of climate change, the causal process of global warming that can be observed there, which is also recognized by elites, scientists and the majority of the population, is not necessarily followed by a reaction from states that could be meaningfully described in processual categories. This is because the responses and results of state action are often only incremental and highly inconsistent, following the least resistance and the lowest common denomina- tor, ultimately creating the situation that Beckert (2024: 14) describes as fol- lows: ‘Who is us when it comes to action’? A self-reproducing process is therefore certainly not taking place in the po- litical fight against climate change; at best, reactive processes can be observed that do not causally link events with each other, but at best can be described as a purely temporal sequence – the strategies of politics and the voters who sup- port them are too different and inconsistent. This even applies to the field of democracy: Pierre Charbonnier (2021) emphasized in his study Affluence and Freedom: An Environmental History of Political Ideas that the entire discourse on democracy and the democratic state (of the West) was based on the assump- tion of unlimited natural resources. This discourse is now in crisis in view of the knowledge of the actual ecological limits to growth. But how under these new conditions the process of democratization will then continue (in and outside of the ‘West’), or even how democracy might survive, is quite unclear! At best, one would say that a brilliant age of democracy is unlikely to be imminent. But can we expect the opposite, a degenerative, long-lasting trend toward the disman- tling of democracy, i.e. de-democratization? Maybe, but the contours of such a process are also not so easily to be described by clear-cut processual terms. In other words, we currently seem to be entering a period in which we will have to talk about long-lasting unstable and difficult conditions for the democratic pro- ject rather than an environment in which democracy will flourish, particularly not in times when the outcome of the fight against climate change appears to be anything but clear. This sounds pessimistic, and perhaps it is not just that, but there is at least one more reason to think this way, as there is one aspect that has not yet been Democracy and Statehood 25 addressed and which perhaps brings the two crises analyzed so far quite close together: in the whole debate about global warming, climate is – no wonder? – the main topic! All too rarely is a completely different environmental issue ad- dressed, which is perhaps just as important but is not currently the focus of the scientific community because it is only marginally intertwined with climate change – the loss of species and the decline in biodiversity! The ecological impact of this decline is still highly controversial. Less con- troversial, however, is the fact that the decline of species is linked to the ever- increasing encroachment of humans into previously unknown settlement areas (Glaubrecht, 2019), which is also likely to massively increase the chance of zoonoses. Remember that from SARS to MERS to Covid-19, we have always had to deal with zoonoses, with viruses that jump from animals to humans and are therefore also the triggers of serious pandemics (Glaubrecht, 2022). We have already seen the impact of government responses to crises that may occur at the same time, as the fight against Covid-19 has temporarily pushed climate change into the background. It can be assumed that this could also be the case with the next pandemic, which is more likely to occur, and that clear processes in gov- ernment responses to this overlap of crises will then be even less discernible: although the crises are likely to be manifest and their perception undisputed, there are good reasons to assume that the responses to them will be very incon- sistent again. The Russian-Ukrainian Crisis This brings me to the last crisis to be briefly discussed here, the one triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, first of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and then of the rest of the country in February 2022. There is no doubt that the Russian attack caused quite a shock among Germany’s political elites, that the definitive end to the period of détente fol- lowing the collapse of the Soviet Union has also changed many things mentally, that it is therefore quite possible to speak of a ‘crisis’ (although some politicians prefer to speak of a Zeitenwende) since this very word has also been used in public and certainly in broader sections of the population. Nevertheless, it is striking that the reactions of the state and political elites to this crisis have again been very different, not least because the objective situation is one that differs significantly from that of the pandemic and global warming. Even if Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was perceived as threatening, it is ini- tially unclear what this means for Germany at a national level. After all, only Ukraine is under immediate threat, not Germany, and whether Russia will at- tack other countries is not certain from the outset! We are therefore dealing with a crisis that may be objectively recognizable, but at this objective level we cannot speak of a process, but rather of a singular (threatening) event: Russia might attack – somewhere, sometimes. In this respect, it is not surprising that the 26 Political Modernity and Beyond political reactions to it were rather inconsistent and hesitant, even though there was obviously pressure to act among the political elites which were convinced that new military-related measures were indeed necessary. In reality, however, it turned out that even decisions in favor of such measures were extremely difficult to take, as was demonstrated by the debates on the reinstatement of compulsory military service in Germany. In a debate published in the weekly magazine Die Zeit in March 2022, shortly after the Russian attack, former Green Party MP Hans-Christian Ströbele, ex- US General Ben Hodges, former Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Ruprecht Polenz (CDU) and Dunja Neukam, staff sergeant in the reserves, dis- cussed the future role of the German Army (Bundeswehr) and also the issue of reinstating compulsory military service to strengthen Germany’s defense readi- ness, which had been suspended in 2011. What was this compulsory military service, which was abandoned around 13 years ago, all about? As a very rough reminder, during the Cold War, there was hardly a country in Europe that did not have some form of compulsory military service, albeit in very different forms. One exception to the rule was Great Britain, which had already abolished conscription in the early 1960s. But almost all other countries in Europe took a different path, and the Federal Republic of Germany, which had introduced compulsory military service in 1956 as part of its rearmament program, was to a certain extent just a follower in a group of other countries that naturally opted for compulsory military service. Of course, there were also expert debates in the 1960s to 1980s about the sense and nonsense of conscrip- tion, but the issue was only seriously addressed when the Cold War came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This was followed by a tremendously rapid institutional reorganization across Europe in almost all European nation states, which, with a few exceptions, abolished or suspended their compulsory military service or retained only very rudimentary forms of conscription, so that only countries such as Greece or Turkey, Russia or Ukraine kept compulsory military service for all young men due to their specific geopolitical situation or their respective interests. Around 2010, only four of the 28 NATO states (and this does not only include European countries) did not have a purely profes- sional or volunteer army. So, what were the reasons and causes for the rapid and extensive aban- donment of compulsory military service? (1) Due to the spread of nuclear weapons and high military technology, the mass mobilization of the popula- tion by means of general conscription is no longer as compelling or as func- tional as it was before 1945: a capital-intensive army became more important than a numerically strong one. (2) Decolonization, which intensified after 1945, reduced the scope of the military actions of the former colonial powers, which also contributed to a reduction in military strength and thus made it no longer necessary to maintain large conscript armies. (3) The socio-political Democracy and Statehood 27 changes in Western industrialized societies that accompanied increasing edu- cation and growing material prosperity (keyword: ‘post-materialism’!) made conscription, that coercive instrument of the nation state, appear increasingly obsolete: the decline of mass armies was also – according to the argument of military sociologists of the 1960s and 1970s – due to an erosion of citizens’ ties to their respective nation states, which made it increasingly difficult to rally an entire population behind a national military task.2 A clear indication of these socio-political changes is also the enormous increase in the num- ber of conscientious objectors in many Western European countries since the 1970s, although their numbers varied greatly from society to society (Moskos and Whiteclay Chambers II, 1993; cf. also Ajangiz, 2002). (4) Of course, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which put an end to armament and thus the need for large armed forces, are also particularly significant. (5) Closely linked to the end of the Cold War, the great and mid- dle powers finally had the opportunity to intervene militarily in various parts of the world, sometimes on behalf of the UN, whether for humanitarian or other reasons. Obviously, however, it is relatively difficult for nations with conscript armies to take part in such interventions, because such missions are either technically extremely complex and therefore often impossible to carry out with conscripts who have only undergone brief training, or they can- not be implemented politically: for France with its large conscript army, for example, it was much more difficult for constitutional reasons to send large contingents of troops in the Gulf War of 1990/1991 than it was for the UK with its comparatively small professional army: The weakness of a mixed force were revealed during the Gulf War, when Britain’s all volunteer force was able to deploy over 30,000 soldiers in Saudi Arabia whereas France, with a military establishment nearly twice as large, could field only 13,000; Navy ships had to disembark their drafted sailors before sailing full steam to the Gulf; all volunteer Army units had to be fleshed out by borrowing volunteer or professional personnel from over 50 mixed battalions, thus disorganizing 40% of the service at a time when it least needed it. (Boene and Danet, 2001: 235, fn 5)3 The impetus for the end of compulsory military service in France came pre- cisely against the background of this situation. Taking these five factors into account, the Swiss military sociologist Karl W. Haltiner formulated the following plausible hypothesis on the different speeds of military reorganization around 25 years ago: the more a country is integrated into a military alliance that promises security, the more geographically distant it is from crisis regions and the more actively it is involved in international 28 Political Modernity and Beyond missions, the faster it will move away from the mass army, i.e. compulsory con- scription (Haltiner, 1998: 7). Strategic and military goal-bound factors such as the end of the Cold War and new missions for the armed forces (peacekeeping, peace enforce- ment) seem to be more important for recent changes in force structures in Western Europe. It is well known that all European forces do not send compulsory military personnel into such missions. Furthermore, the fact that all of those countries that have abolished conscription recently or in- tend to abolish it soon are NATO members. On the other hand, we find among the hard-core forces only those who are not integrated in an al- liance (Finland, Switzerland) or forces that are involved in nationally bound territorial conflicts (Greece, Turkey). It may therefore be concluded that the combination of being a member of a defence alliance and being far from a direct national military threat and participating frequently in international missions facilitates the abolishment of conscription and the change of army format into a force with no or a low degree of compulsory military personnel. (Haltiner, 1998: 7) If one refers to this last point by Haltiner, it should actually be expected that the reinstatement of compulsory military service in the face of the crisis, i.e. the war in Ukraine, which could potentially also pose a threat to Germany, should have led to a quick reaction from the political and military elites in Germany. However, there was no question of speed; instead, it became ap- parent that the compulsory military service project encountered unexpected difficulties, not necessarily only due to resistance from the population, but be- cause a whole series of legal, party-political and bureaucratic hurdles stood in the way. What then came from the German defense minister Pistorius two years after the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022 was merely a proposal to be decided in parliament in 2025, a proposal that does not mean the reinstatement of compulsory military service, but – if you want to put it loosely – merely a ‘screening’ of young men and women to make them eligible for voluntary service in the Bundeswehr. At the very moment, when this chapter is written, within German political elites new debates arise whether these plans suggested by Pistorius will be sufficient in order to react in an appropriate way to the po- litical instability of NATO (after Donald Trumps’ erratic behavior in matters of foreign policy) and to the ongoing war of Russia against Ukraine. How these new plans concerning conscription will look like is not clear yet, but my guess would be that an implementation of these plans will take a rather long time and will probably meet quite a bit of resistance so that the end-result of this process is difficult to predict. Democracy and Statehood 29 Once again, it becomes clear that the crisis and the perception of the crisis by no means trigger state-political reactions that can be analyzed in terms of a clearly structured processual logic. Conclusion If one summarizes the previous remarks, then statements about changed (politi- cal) logics in our post-pandemic age should definitely be treated with caution; diagnoses of the times in this regard that come with strong theses could all too easily – and rightly – be suspected of being frivolous. And whether the crisis discourse is particularly suitable for describing and analyzing the situation of the present also seems to be somewhat questionable; at the very least, however, one should also reflect on the fact that ‘crises-talk’ immediately raises two ques- tions: (1) Who is talking about crises and who is calculating what consequences by this talk? and (2) Which type of crisis are we actually talking about when we talk about crises? Now, these questions are sometimes difficult to answer – and sometimes the audience of sociological books or papers – in a rather objectivist way – want to know what a ‘crisis’ really is! That, as I emphasized at the very beginning, is difficult or even impossible to say within the field of the social sciences. But if we are pressed to do so, if we are pressed to define what a crisis is, we could fall back to a position which was brilliantly articulated some decades by French political sociologist Michel Dobry (2009) in his classic book Sociologie des Crises Politique (see also Dobry, 1983). Here Dobry hesitates – probably due to the reasons mentioned at the beginning – to define ‘crises’; he deliberately leaves it an open question what a crisis ‘really is’. He is much more interested in extremely fluid social processes that seem to overwhelm the expectations of the actors involved – such as the famous events in May 1968 in Paris – and which he therefore only loosely calls ‘political crises’, i.e. situations which are character- ized by ‘multi-sectoral mobilizations’, by mobilization processes of actors and movements in different parts of the political system. Dobry’s central observation here is that although mobilizations in indi- vidual sectors (e.g. the emergence of social movements in the public sphere or the formation of new parties in the political system) do not necessarily lead to crises, they almost always lead to a reduction in the autonomy and supposed unity of the sectors, because the mobilizing actors appropriate re- sources from other areas or exert influence on other sectors in order to find support for their interests. Desectoralization processes are therefore taking place, as well as partial sectoralization processes, because the mobilizing ac- tors are encapsulating themselves, isolating themselves and undertaking stra- tegic closure processes in the respective sector in order to gain control over the respective sectoral space. However, this creates new arenas of conflict 30 Political Modernity and Beyond in the respective sector that were not there in the first place, which can have the consequence that the institutional or sectoral logic begins to dissolve, or at least that its objective validity and legitimacy becomes increasingly questionable. In certain cases, this then leads to a dedifferentiating unifica- tion or homogenization of the social space compared to the previous state, in which the actors become increasingly insecure with regard to the resources available to them: in any case, their definitions of the situation are no longer as predictable as they were in times of sectoral stability, coalitions between actors become possible that were previously unthinkable due to the existence of different sectoral logics and that lead to a previously unknown rhythmiza- tion of processes in different sectors, which now no longer (can no longer) follow their own logic. However, this does not mean that there are no more structures, that in such a case – as is often argued in the literature – we have to talk about entropy. Rather, in such a situation, Dobry assumes that the actors respond to the simplification and restructuring of the social space with certain patterns of action. The pres- ence of structural uncertainty often leads to the formation of one-dimensional identities, so that what he calls the ‘regression to habitus’ can occur. This is perhaps Dobry’s most surprising and controversial argumentative turn, as he emphasizes that it is precisely in times of crisis, in times of the revaluation of all values, in times of an often-seemingly revolutionary collective effervescence (to use Durkheim’s expression) that actors seek stability in forms of habitus that seem familiar and simple to them. So, there is definitely an intrusion of the past into the presentistically analyzed (crisis-like) situation, because familiar forms of action are invoked, which then have little to do with the usual forms of habitus in stable, differentiated conditions. Paradoxically, it is precisely this, the intrusion of the past into the situation, that enables the social scientist to reflect on which old and new structures emerge in moments of crisis, to think about emergence beyond an analysis that would proceed in a purely ‘creationist’ manner, so to speak. Dobry’s arguments do not in themselves help to solve theoretical problems concerning the analyses of situation of crises. But they can at least help us to ask the right kind of questions, among them two rather important ones, first, whether one has to face a single crisis or a mixture of different types of crises and second, whether an overlap of different crises requires a completely different theoretical framework than the one suggested by Dobry. Notes 1 The following paragraphs are all based on Roth (2022: especially 42–59). 2 ‘The decline of the mass army may be regarded as a diminution of the power of political elites to command the uncritical support of the population when anything in the nature of a collective effort is to be made. This implies a lessening of the possibil- ity of commanding popular support for a political course of collective militancy and Democracy and Statehood 31 naive patriotism. The armed forces seem to be reassuming the role of a functional instrument of force, after a century of being a major channel for mass hysteria and mass politics’ (Doorn, 1975). Critical toward the thesis of hedonism (Burk, 1989). 3 See also Bloch (2000). References Ajangiz R (2002) The European farewell to conscription? Comparative Social Research 20: 307–33. Beckert J (2024) Verkaufte Zukunft. Warum der Kampf gegen den Klimawandel zu scheit- ern droht. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Bloch GA (2000) French military reform: Lessons for America’s army? Parameters 30: 33–45. Boene B, Danet D (2001) France: Farewell to the draft and all that. In Kuhlmann J, Callaghan J (eds.) Military and Society in 21st Century Europe: A Comparative Analy- sis. New York: Transaction. Burk J (1989) National attachments and the decline of the mass armed force. Journal of Political and Military Sociology 17(1): 65–81. Charbonnier P (2021) Affluence and Freedom: An Environmental History of Political Ideas. Cambridge: Polity. Dobry M (1983) Mobilisations multisectorielles et dynamique des crises politiques: un point de vue heuristique. Revue Francaise de Sociologie 24(3): 395–418. Dobry M (2009) Sociologie des crises politiques. 3e édition revue et augmentée d’une préface inédite. Paris: Presses de SciencesPo. Doorn J (1975) The decline of the mass army in the West: General reflexions. Armed Forces & Society 1(2): 147–157. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/ 0095327X7500100201 Falletti TG, Mahoney J (2015) The comparative sequential method. In Mahoney J, Thelen K (eds.) Advances in Comparative-Historical Analysis. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. Geyer M (2012) Kritik und Krise. Politische Sprachkritik und Krisendiskurse in den 1970er Jahren. In Mergel T (ed.) Krisen verstehen. Historische und kulturwissen- schaftliche Annäherungen. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. Glaubrecht M (2019) Das Ende der Evolution: Der Mensch und die Vernichtung der Arten. Munich: C. Bertelsmann. Glaubrecht M (2022) Die Rache des Pangolin: Wild gewordene Pandemien und der Schutz der Artenvielfalt. Berlin: Ullstein. Haltiner KW (1998) The definite end of the mass army in Western Europe? Armed Forces & Society 25(1): 7–36. Hasse R (2012) Bausteine eines soziologischen Krisenverständnisses. Rückblick und Neubetrachtung. In Mergel T (ed.) Krisen verstehen. Historische und kulturwissen- schaftliche Annäherungen. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. Honigsbaum M (2021) Das Jahrhundert der Pandemien. Eine Geschichte der Ansteck- ung von der Spanischen Grippe bis Covid-19. Munich: Piper. Koselleck R ([1959] 1973) Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerli- chen Welt. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Koselleck R (1982) Krise. In Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland. B 3, H-Me. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Mergel T (2012) Einleitung: Krisen als Wahrnehmungsphänomene. In Mergel T (ed.) Krisen verstehen. Historische und kulturwissenschaftliche Annäherungen. Frankfurt am Main and New York: Campus. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0095327X7500100201 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0095327X7500100201 32 Political Modernity and Beyond Moskos C, Whiteclay Chambers II J (eds.) (1993) The New Conscientious Objection: From Sacred to Secular Resistance. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Roth KH (2022) Blinde Passagiere. Die Coronakrise und die Folgen. Munich: Antje Kunstmann. Schularick M (2021) Der Entzauberte Staat. Was Deutschland aus der Pandemie lernen muss. Munich: C.H. Beck. Wagner P (2024) Carbon Societies: The Social Logic of Fossil Fuels. Cambridge: Polity. 2 The Fate of Democracy and the Weakening of Its Moral and Socio-Cultural Supports in Contemporary Societies The Case of Chile Kathya Araujo Introduction Current concerns about the fate of democracy in the world are increasing. Wor- ries regarding liberal democracy are mainly related to several troubling trends. We are witnessing the emergence and expansion of authoritarian regimes and populist governments (Pappas, 2019) as well as the rise of radical right-wing parties that pose a threat to normative principles of democratic contemporary societies, such as human rights, the separation of powers, and the rule of law (Mudde, 2016). Democratic backsliding is characterized by the erosion of civil liberties, the weakening of institutions, and the emergence of authoritarian ten- dencies within previously democratic societies (Haggard and Kaufman, 2021). What is particularly troubling is that this decline is not limited to traditional coups d’état; it often begins at the ballot box, making it more insidious and dangerous (Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2018). Examples include electoral autocra- cies, electoral democracies (Lührmann et al., 2018), and illiberal democracies (Zakaria, 1997). An additional significant concern arises from the increasing influence of the super-rich and the expansion of plutocracy (Piketty, 2014), con- tributing to a dangerous entrenchment of governance by a few over the many. These concerns are further underscored by evidence that warning signs are appearing even in established democracies, as shown in academic and public de- bates regarding Germany, Japan, or the United States (Hansen and Olsen, 2022; Mounk, 2018; Schmidt and Kleinfeld, 2020; Snyder, 2017). As Domingues has underscored, what we are currently facing is the expan- sion of what he refers to as ‘de-democratising trends’. The author argues that, rather than experiencing democracy in its purest form, what we have encoun- tered in political modernity is more accurately characterized as a process of ‘democratisation’. Throughout history, the mobilization of people has driven the democratization of liberalism and republicanism. However, this democratizing trend has always been accompanied by a countertrend—‘de-democratisation’— propelled by demophobic currents. Today, these de-democratizing trends are DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-4 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-4 34 Political Modernity and Beyond increasingly gaining ground and pose a significant threat to the preservation of democratic gains (Domingues, 2024: 188). Latin America is often described as diverging from global trends by becom- ing increasingly democratic. However, the majority of the population in Latin America lives under electoral democracies (86%) or in ‘gray zones’ that do not fully conform to definitions of democracy or autocracy, leaving only 4% resid- ing in liberal democracies (specifically, Chile and Uruguay) (Lankes, 2008). The prevalence of dictatorships has risen, affecting four countries: Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the more unstable case of Haiti. Moreover, there is a notable dissatisfaction with democratic performance, with 69% of the popu- lation expressing concern in 2023 (Corporación Latinobarómetro, 2023), al- though this does not necessarily indicate a fundamental rejection of the regime type itself. Substantial evidence suggests that many Latin American democra- cies are exhibiting signs of weakened citizen support for their foundational principles. Increasingly, individuals are willing to tolerate military coups; for instance, support for such actions rose from 14% in 2010 to 30% in 2021. In many countries in this region, the majority now prefers a system that guaran- tees basic income and services, even if it means sacrificing electoral processes (Lankes, 2008; Lupu et al., 2021). Furthermore, Latin America is character- ized as the region with the highest levels of distrust in the world (Haerpfer et al., 2022), trust being a fundamental element for the effective functioning of democracy. Democracy is thus caught in a crossfire. Given this situation, it is crucial to identify, study, and intervene in the factors that undermine democracy. In this chapter, I will address this question from a sociological perspec- tive. Unlike traditional approaches that concentrate on the composition of political actors (such as the rise of the radical right), the dynamics of political conflict (such as polarization), or institutional analysis (including political parties and electoral systems), I will focus on the relationship between social bonds and the strengthening or erosion of democracy as a political model. I would like to emphasize a key factor that influences the fate of democracy: the significant transformations of the social bonds that have led to a decline in the moral and socio-cultural supports that not only contributed to the le- gitimization of democracy but also established its foundation for effective functioning. I will rely mainly on the results of qualitative empirical research that I have developed for the case of Chile from 2003 onward.1 Chile is an especially interesting case for analyzing this phenomenon because two of the most significant currents of structural transformation in the West over the last few decades (neoliberalism and the push for the democratization of social relations) have occurred here with particular strength and continuity. This has made the changes in individuals and social bonds and their weakening effect on the moral and socio-cultural supports for the democratic model particu- larly transparent. Fate of Democracy and the Weakening of Its Moral and Socio-Cultural 35 Democracy and the Social Bond Explanations for the erosion of democracy have often highlighted distrust and disenchantment with democratic institutions, viewing the performance of the political class and ruling groups as key factors contributing to this outcome. According to these contributions, these actors have failed to fulfill promises of economic well-being and to meet expectations for a better future, while also engaging in corruption, among other issues. As a result, widespread disillusion- ment has emerged among individuals. This disillusionment is manifested in various ways, including a distancing between the ruling classes and the public, increasing distrust, and, more profoundly, a questioning of not only the institu- tions but also the foundational principles of democracy itself (Mounk, 2018; Rosanvallon, 2008). Certainly, as Rosanvallon (2008) notes, we have never ex- perienced fully democratic regimes, and discontent has always coexisted with hope. However, the magnitude of this discontent and the legitimacy it has gained have profoundly impacted individuals’ relationships with democracy. Empirical findings in the case of Chile corroborate that the failure to fulfill democratic promises adversely affects adherence to and engagement with de- mocracy, its actors, and institutions. People’s disenchantment is linked to the individual costs associated with achieving well-being (both material and non- material) in a neoliberal society, where market relations are often deregulated or employ successful and accepted strategies to circumvent regulation. Addi- tionally, it is associated with the perception of the weakness of state support necessary to provide this welfare, notably in the realms of social rights, the effectiveness of social services (Araujo and Martuccelli, 2012), and, more re- cently, the public security that the state is expected to ensure for individual pro- tection (Centro de Estudios Públicos, 2024). Furthermore, this disenchantment reflects the difficulties faced by the political system in upholding principles of individuals’ autonomy due to elite closure and paternalistic relationships with the populace. It also highlights issues of inequality stemming from the perpetu- ation of privileges and a lack of commitment to maintaining equitable condi- tions (Araujo, 2022a). By virtue of this disenchantment, as recent work shows, individuals tend to consider themselves morally superior to political actors and institutions (corrupt congressmen, parties guided by private interests, etc.). In- dividuals also develop ways of relating to political actors and judging and treat- ing them with irritation (aggressions to militants at election campaign times or violent conversations on social networks, just to mention a couple) (Araujo, 2024). In many different ways, individuals express their discontent with the performances of democracy and establish a skeptical distance with it. Thus, the weight of the disillusionment with democracy is undoubtedly an important insight; however, it is insufficient for a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon. Democracy depends not only on the relative fulfillment of its promises but also on its principles resonating with the prevailing values, 36 Political Modernity and Beyond customs, practices, and relational dynamics within a society. Democracy plays a role in defining normative principles, concepts, practices, and institutions; however, it also requires moral and socio-cultural support for its functioning, efficacy, and processes of legitimization within the specific contexts of society. Supports include elements such as the acceptance of hierarchies in social rela- tions, the social importance of mediation, and the value placed on society as a whole. In essence, democracy and its future are intrinsically linked to the spe- cific forms that social bonds take within societies. By social bond, I refer to the forms that relationships take between individu- als, between individuals and institutions, and between individuals and society as a whole. There are two facets of the social bond. One is situated within the perspective of social adherence (Bouvier, 2005; Paugam, 2017), which has been significantly influenced by Durkheim’s work. This facet emphasizes the ele- ments that contribute to the valuation of the social world, such as shared identi- fication referents (e.g., civic values, traditions) and linking practices. The other is related to the task of giving concrete form to social relations and interactions (Goffman, 1959). It entails the perspective of social performance and empha- sizes practices, ‘ways of doing’, ‘know-how’, and codes that provide consist- ency to the social world, enabling its functioning and regularity. These two perspectives of the social bond—social adherence and social performance—represent fundamental dimensions that shape the social world and define its boundaries. They determine, among other things, the scope of what is considered accepted or forbidden, desirable or undesirable, and also define the ‘way of doing’ in a specific society. The social bond is intricately intertwined with moral and socio-cultural views, as reflected in social imagi- naries (Castoriadis, 1987: especially 149–82; Taylor, 2004), behavioral codes (Anderson, 1999; Collins, 2004), and values (Joas, 2000). These moral and so- cio-cultural views, as discussed from the various perspectives mentioned, serve as social supports for both institutions and individuals. Additionally, as social bonds experience historical transformations, the elements that once served as institutional supports for individuals in specific socio-historical contexts also change, leading to a diminished capacity for support. I will argue this point by analyzing the case of Chile. My focus will be on two of the most significant, though not the only, elements of the social bond whose trans- formations have contributed to the decline of support for democracy and demo- cratic institutions. First, I will examine the processes of individualization. Second, I will discuss the reconfiguration of the exercise of authority. Before delving into these two processes, I will take a moment to briefly outline the socio-historical context and structural currents that underlie these transformations in Chile. Chile’s Socio-Historical Condition Today The historical condition in Chile today is characterized by a significant dual structural impact: the establishment of neoliberalism and the push for the Fate of Democracy and the Weakening of Its Moral and Socio-Cultural 37 democratization of social relations. This dual impact has profoundly shaped the current socio-political landscape, particularly since the 1990s. This dual structural impact is not exclusive to Chile; similar traits can be found in many Western societies. However, in Chile, both factors are widely recognized as the primary challenges individuals must confront in their everyday lives. Further- more, what makes the Chilean case particularly interesting is that these eco- nomic and normative structural factors were implemented with great intensity and speed but also were unfolded in a context of long continuity. Neoliberalism was implemented with remarkable intensity in Chile, earning it recognition as the first laboratory for neoliberal policies. The radical adop- tion of these principles occurred under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990), which set the stage for understanding the subsequent effects of these changes. Furthermore, although some transformations occurred, the model has persisted (Garretón, 2012; Ruiz and Boccardo, 2015), particularly maintain- ing the principles and ideals on which it is based (such as consumption as a fac- tor of integration and status, the idea of the individual without collectivity, and the emphasis on individual effort). The push for the democratization of social relations, which gained mo- mentum with the return to democracy in 1990, is reflected in the widespread adoption of a rights-based paradigm by the state and other social actors. It is also characterized by efforts to transform the allocation of power among social groups (such as between women and men and adults and children) which have resulted in significant institutional changes (Araujo, 2009). These dynamics have demonstrated notable continuity, particularly given the prolonged govern- ance of the center-left Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia, which lasted for 20 uninterrupted years after the return to democracy in 1990, followed by a power alternation that has seen center-left and leftist actors in power for half of the years elapsed since then. These complex transformations have introduced new structural demands on individuals. As a result, expectations regarding social relationships have been fundamentally altered. Individuals have had to learn how to adapt to new rules governing their roles as economic participants. They have de- veloped a revised understanding of what it means to be socially valuable, increasingly identifying themselves as consumers or property owners. Fur- thermore, they have embraced new ideals of autonomy and redefined their minimum expectations of what society should provide. The expansion of nor- mative ideals, such as equality, autonomy, and diversity, into various spheres of social interaction has profoundly shifted individuals’ perceptions, expecta- tions, and moral judgments regarding themselves and their relationship with society. These ideals have generated new expectations about how individu- als ought to be treated by institutions and others. In particular, they have cultivated legitimate ‘expectations of horizontality’ (Araujo and Martuccelli, 2012) in a society historically characterized by hierarchical and vertical so- cial relationships. 38 Political Modernity and Beyond Empirical studies show that due to the impact of these material and normative structural changes that have been taking place in this society, the basic elements that shape the social bond have been destabilized: normative principles, rules, codes and relational logics, value structures, mechanisms for managing power asymmetries, among others. The traditional ways of managing hierarchies and power asymmetries have been put under tension (Araujo, 2022b). The forms of ordinary treatment between members of the different classes are organized from accentuated horizontality expectations, putting in check traditional verticalized forms of organization of inter-class social relations and interactions in all so- cial spheres (see, for example, Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD), 2017) generating multiple forms of irritations in social interactions in environments such as schools (Neut, 2019), workplaces (Soto et al., 2021), health institutions (Ansoleaga and Ahumada, 2024). The management of respect in popular sectors moves from the notion of decency (Martínez and Palacios, 1996) to the notion of dignity (Angelcos and Rodríguez, 2023), restructuring the statutory conditions of these sectors. The historically predominant role of reli- gion and the Catholic Church in shaping moral guidance and individual behav- ior has given way to an increase in more individualized, hybrid, and autonomous forms of organizing spiritual life and cultural orientations (Bravo, 2024). This shift occurs within the context of a significant and rapid rise in the population identifying as non-religious in the country. According to the Encuesta Nacional Bicentenario, the percentage of people who do not identify with any religion was 12% in 2006, rising to 33% in 2023 (UC and GfK Adimark, 2024). In short, the modalities of the social bond are being reconfigured. These changes and their consequences, as I have previously argued, signifi- cantly impact democracy and its institutions by undermining the foundational supports on which they have historically relied. In doing so, they create space for de-democratizing trends to emerge. According to my findings and the analy- sis of the available evidence, there are several major dimensions of social trans- formation that contribute to the reconfiguration of the social bond while shaping the erosion of democracy by altering its historical foundations. In this chapter, I will focus on two of the most salient dimensions in the case of Chile: the con- sequences of the pronounced processes of individualization that this society has undergone and the transformations in the conditions for the exercise of authority. Democracy and the Effects of Neoliberal-Citizenized Individualization The concept of individualization has been used to denote both a specific model of individuation (the social production of empirical social units) and a historical process. This historical trend is characterized by institutions increasingly find- ing modes of organization where individuals serve as the central axes. Concur- rently, empirical agents are compelled to accentuate the construction of their individuality. Individualization provides insight into how empirical agents are Fate of Democracy and the Weakening of Its Moral and Socio-Cultural 39 historically shaped in modern societies, highlighting the core characteristics they are encouraged to adopt. Individualization is a form of individuation that has been identified since the foundational texts of sociology and remains a core element of contemporary societies (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). Classic sociology described the emergence of the individual in Western civilization as associated with various structural factors, such as social differentiation, secularization, urbanization, rationalism, and industrialization. However, it must be acknowledged that ulti- mately, all these features were subordinated to the model of institutional individ- ualism (Bourricaud, 1977; Parsons, 1951, 1964). According to this model, the most important institutions in modern societies (work, education, politics, fam- ily, etc.) are specifically and explicitly oriented toward the individual, compel- ling each person to develop and define themselves according to pre-established institutional models. Individuals are interpellated to constitute themselves through the representations and supports offered by these institutions. The pri- macy of this thesis has never been questioned in sociology. Empirical evidence gathered from a study on contemporary Chilean society challenges the established connection that social theory has made between pro- cesses of individuation and institutional individualism (Araujo and Martuccelli, 2014). In Chile while the influence of institutions is both active and apparent across various areas of social life, individuals are not primarily shaped by insti- tutional prescriptions. Rather, they are formed through their engagement with the complexities of social existence, utilizing their abilities and skills, which encompass the mobilization of interpersonal relationships and a unique array of strategies and competencies. In this context, individuals can be viewed as rela- tional hyper-actors. Institutions become merely one of many resources that can be pragmatically and specifically employed. They do not serve as the primary support for individuals nor are they the central point of reference. Moreover, individuals believe that they should protect themselves from institutions. Here, individual agency takes precedence over institutional agendas. The essential ele- ment is the self-sustainability of individuals as social actors who rely on their own skills and competencies. The everyday experience of navigating social life, rather than adhering to institutional guidelines, serves as the fundamental source for processes of individuation. This is not a new phenomenon. In his extensive work on individualism in Latin America, Martuccelli (2024) highlights the existence of social subjects who exceed and do not conform to social institutions, a trend observed since the 19th century. However, the author emphasizes that there is a notable de- velopment. In a context like Latin America, historically characterized by a complex and often adversarial relationship with individualism, the processes of individualization—defined as a result of institutions making individuals the axis of their policies or strategies and a cultural push for individuals to emphasize their individualities—began to take on an accentuated shape only in the last two 40 Political Modernity and Beyond decades of the 20th century. This development coincides with the implementa- tion of neoliberalism. The specific structural architecture accompanying the processes of individu- alization in the region, particularly in Chile, raises a fundamental question: the relationship of the individual with the collective appears relatively absent and/or of limited significance. This observation can be generalized to several Western countries, as demonstrated in scholarly debates. A neoliberal model promotes depoliticization by prioritizing an economic and moral vision of society, which legitimizes a perspective that centers the individual rather than collective struc- tures. This framework fosters a close connection between increasing individual- ization and the emergence of neoliberal subject ideals, such as competitiveness, self-effort, and self-entrepreneurship (Amable, 2011; Bröckling, 2015; Davies, 2014). However, this dynamic is particularly pronounced in societies like Chile, where efficient processes of individualization and the subsequent significance of the individual have only recently begun to take shape and gain consistency, as has been noted. The direct link between neoliberalism and individualization in Chile has led to a significant consequence: the concept of the individualized individual is not associated with duties to the community, as was the case of the early stages of individualization in the United States, as discussed by Tocqueville in the 19th century. In this case, the processes of individualization at the end of the 20th century lacked substantial social discourse regarding the nature of the individual’s relationship with the collective or the community, as has been noted in relation to various public policies, such as those on poverty (Rojas, 2019). However, neoliberalism is not the only factor that explains this outcome. The nature of individualization must be understood in the context of the interaction between neoliberal economic principles and constraints, as well as the ways in which individual identities and responsibilities are framed within civil society. In this latter process, an imbalanced emphasis has been placed on individual rights in Chile, within the framework of the post-dictatorship strong develop- ment of citizenship (Domingues, 2008) the Latin American region beginning in the 1980s and 1990s. This situation is evidenced by the way individuals interpret and apply the notion of rights, using it primarily as a tool for personal empower- ment linked to a pragmatic moral stance (Araujo, 2009). What we find in Chile is a neoliberal-citizenized individualization. This absence of discursivity, normativity, and social practices regarding the relationship between the individual and the collective or the community affect societies in different ways, yet its effects can be observed in most of them. It leads to a weakening of the very idea of the collective and of the awareness of interdependence with institutions and strangers, both in how individuals per- ceive themselves and in the broader context of their social experiences. Thus, we confront a social world that operates within the framework of individualities, yet these individualities are increasingly influenced by an imaginary of autarky. Fate of Democracy and the Weakening of Its Moral and Socio-Cultural 41 In Chile, this phenomenon is associated with tendencies toward withdrawal into intimate and familial circles, resulting in a society that resembles archipelagos, along with acute processes of detachment from the broader community, as I have discussed in various works (among others, Araujo, 2022a). These tendencies and processes are not solely the effects of the specific neoliberal-citizenized processes of individualization manifested in this soci- ety. They have also been produced by the overwhelming effects of structural constraints and the frustrations of everyday life experienced by the population. This explains the paradoxical coexistence of neoliberal ideals alongside a harsh critique of neoliberalism as a ‘system’ that shapes people’s everyday lives. In this perspective, individuals’ distance from society and their retreat into inti- mate worlds can also be understood as a protective strategy against the exces- sive demands of society and the moral tensions these demands create. However, detachment, withdrawal, and the archipelago model of society are intimately linked to the processes of individualization. Together, these elements contrib- ute to the diminishing visibility of the idea of society as a whole. The idea of a common good, which serves as an anchor for democracy, is overshadowed by the belief—stemming from individuals’ social experiences—that actions should be guided by self-interest or, at best, by considerations related to the immediate relationships surrounding each individual. The processes of individualization ultimately modify the social bond by transforming the conditions and quality of social adherence to society in general, and to democracy in particular. As the notions of the collective, the common, and the common good recede, they create tension with the principles of democracy and weaken its conventional historical moral supports. Moreover, to the extent that the vast array of social relations, collective phenomena, interdependencies, and conflicts that shape society begin to fade from people’s perceptions, the importance of politics—particularly institutional politics—diminishes. As empirical results indicate, the growing emphasis on self-orientation and self-regulation among individuals weakens the perception that actors such as politicians are necessary to fulfill mediation roles, provide guiding ideas, and translate these into actionable lines in daily life (Araujo, 2024). In Chilean society, there has indeed been a significant decline over the last 50 years in the percentage of people who consider political parties indispen- sable for governing the country, dropping from 67% to 39% (Centro de Políticas Públicas UC, 2021). This trend aligns with highly selective forms of participa- tion, which tend to be specific, rarely institutionalized, and driven by evalua- tions of how situations impact the individual, even when the justifying rhetoric refers to collective issues (Araujo, 2022a). Consequently, the value of mediation is diminished, putting the institutional architecture of democracy under strain. In summary, the rise of neoliberal-citizenized individualization processes in Chile undermines vital moral and socio-cultural supports for democracy. On one hand, these processes impact the moral strength of the notions of the collective, 42 Political Modernity and Beyond the common, and the common good. On the other hand, they diminish the per- ceived value of political mediation as an essential component of social life. Democracy and the Exercise of Authority: Shifts in the Management of Power Asymmetries The social currents permeating societies are driving a reorganization of the rela- tional principles that have traditionally governed interactions between individu- als and between people and institutions. In this context, the reconfiguration of authority has become a critical issue. Relationships of authority are increasingly under pressure, Challenges regarding the acceptance and effectiveness of author- ity have emerged as significant concerns. This is evident among authority fig- ures in various contexts, including schools (Buzzelli and Johnston, 2001; Greco, 2020; McLeod et al., 2012), families (Omer, 2018), politics (Ansolega et al., 2018; Lankes, 2008; Norris and Inglehart, 2019; Sanahuja and Stefanoni, 2023; Weyland and Madrid, 2019), and police (Lister and Rowe, 2016; Simonson, 2021; Tyler, 2012). While this phenomenon is observable in many Western so- cieties, it is also a primary concern in Chile. The destabilization of traditional forms of exercising authority, as noted early by Arendt (1961), coincides with the questioning of hierarchies. Several factors contribute to explaining the growing challenge to these hierarchies. In Chile, empirical research has shown (Araujo, 2021, 2022b) that this challenge is pri- marily due to the deepening processes of detraditionalization and the increas- ing modification of attributions concerning the status of various societal actors, the most notable of which is likely related to women. By virtue of these two processes, the structure of hierarchies and their inherent solidity have been af- fected. Additionally, these hierarchies have been substantially challenged by the emergence and expansion of normative principles fueled by modern imaginar- ies that emphasize values of equality and diversity, which have prompted the emergence of expectations for horizontality. They have also been influenced by the growing processes of individualization and their effects in underscoring the importance of autonomy. These last two currents have facilitated a practice of constant questioning regarding the acceptability of social hierarchies, challeng- ing the formerly dominant perception of them as monolithic and self-justifying. Finally, as international scholarly debates have underscored, these hierar- chies have been strongly challenged by technological advancements and their ambivalent democratizing effects on information and communication (Lankes, 2008; Mansell, 2016; McIntyre, 2018, 2019). This shift raises critical questions regarding the traditional justifications for hierarchies, particularly concerning the role of mediation, as seen in the relationship between expert knowledge and the general public (Leiter, 2024; Nichols, 2017). The paradox is, however, that the questioning in Chile of the traditional model of exercising authority (a strong authority with little attention to people’s Fate of Democracy and the Weakening of Its Moral and Socio-Cultural 43 reconciled consent) which was propel by the just-mentioned social trends coex- ists today with the stark conviction that only such a strong authority can be an efficient authority (Araujo, 2016). Studies in several social domains in Chile show the coexistence of these two trends. Let’s consider the authority of doctors. In healthcare institutions, efforts have been made to develop more horizontal cultures and to recognize other health professionals (Bravo et al., 2017). Nev- ertheless, reliance on physicians’ roles and vertical authority remains deeply ingrained (Ansoleaga et al., 2012), and there has been a concerning rise in vio- lence in interactions within healthcare institutions (Montenegro et al., 2021). These dynamics can also be observed in the realm of politics. There is a re- jection of authoritarian and tutelary forms of exercising political authority; how- ever, under special circumstances, these forms can also be seen as effective and may even be considered important for democracy itself (Becerra and Rovira, 2021). People tend not to recognize true authorities among political actors and are often very critical of them; nevertheless, they are expected to be relevant figures from whom they expect to fulfill their duties by exercising firm authority (Araujo, 2024; NUMAAP, 2022). Additionally, individuals tend to prioritize moral arguments and emotional re- sponses (Segovia, 2022), which, as has been pointed out, are expressively pow- erful but not necessarily effective in politically structuring conflict (Urbinati, 2020). To that extent, affects tend to replace or undermine political language, logics, and patterns of reasoning, altering the traditional components of political authority legitimacy. This situation has significant consequences: it generates a decrease in the authority endowment of the political system (essential for enforcement and governance), which is reflected, for example, in the very low trust in politi- cal parties and Congress—far below both the OECD average and that of the Latin American region (Irarrázaval and Cruz, 2024). However, it simultaneously triggers a receptive sensitivity to figures who embody authority and are per- ceived as capable of guaranteeing protection or efficiency. In the 2021 National Authority Survey, the second most frequently mentioned traits considered at- tributes of authority were associated with characteristics related to power and domination (e.g., strength, violence, imposition) (NUMAAP, 2022). A possible interpretation of this phenomenon is that in a society deeply influenced by neo- liberal principles, individuals face a growing need to counteract the high levels of complexity in the world, along with existential insecurity and social posi- tional instability. This need can manifest as a search for assurances that lead to a reliance—albeit transitory—on the perceived superiority (in skills, vision, or strength) of certain actors (Araujo, 2024). Thus, the conventional political modalities of exercising authority are in strong tension. A solid socio-cultural support for democracy has been destabi- lized by current social trends that traverse societies and question hierarchies, as well as by the emergence of restorative authoritarian models of authority. 44 Political Modernity and Beyond This oscillation opens the space for positions ranging from the most anarchic convictions to the most restorative forms of authoritarian exercises of authority. Amid this confusion, there is room for the emergence of tendencies toward the abdication of political authority under the influence of a simplistic conception of egalitarianism, which implies a dangerous denial of the legitimate power asym- metries that indeed exist among all members of society and serve as the founda- tion of democracy. In turn, dispositions toward a rigid authoritarian conception of the exercise of political authority threaten basic democratic principles such as electoral processes and respect for civil rights. Both the questioning of political authority and the demand for strong authoritarian figures place pressure on the sources of legitimization for democracy and on the procedures and mechanisms that sustain it. Conclusions In conclusion, this chapter underscores the importance of examining the fac- tors that contribute to the destabilization of democracy today. It emphasizes the role of the traits of the social bond for the sustainment of democracy. Based on outcomes of empirical research, I highlight that disillusionment with unful- filled promises is a significant factor eroding adherence to democratic princi- ples, though it is not the only one. Another critical factor is the weakening of the moral and socio-cultural supports necessary for the functioning, efficacy, and legitimacy of democracy. This weakening results from ongoing processes of reconfiguration within the social bond. I concentrated on two specific factors contributing to this decline: the increasing processes of individualization and the reconfiguration of relational principles and mechanisms, with the issue of authority serving as an illustrative example. First, I argue that in the case of Chile, we are witnessing neoliberal-citizenized individualization processes. This phenomenon arises from several factors: the articulation of individualization with neoliberal ideals (such as self-effort, self- entrepreneurship, and competitiveness) and social experiences shaped by neo- liberal pressures; the imbalanced emphasis placed on individual rights without an equivalent focus on duties toward the community or society as a whole; and the perceived need for individuals to protect themselves from institutions and the excesses of what they refer to as ‘the model’ in their daily lives. These processes alter the social bond by transforming the conditions for so- cial adherence. A withdrawal into private realms and detachment from society accompanies a diminishing moral relevance in individuals’ conduct and evalu- ations of concepts such as the collective, the common, and the common good. This shift entails the decline of three main components of the moral structure that underpins the idea of democracy, as well as the legitimacy of democratic institutions. Moreover, these individualization processes have also contributed to the weakening of socio-cultural supports for democracy in another significant Fate of Democracy and the Weakening of Its Moral and Socio-Cultural 45 way. They diminish the value of mediation, thereby reducing the importance of the actors and institutions that fulfill this role, particularly politicians. Second, I have discussed how the performance aspect of the social bond is being transformed, impacting the socio-cultural supports of democracy. The customary mechanisms used to manage power asymmetries and enable the ex- ercise of authority have lost acceptance among the population, which is linked to expectations for an exercise of authority that respects the principles and val- ues fostered by the democratization of social relations. However, the rejection of more rigid and vertical forms of authority coexists with the belief that only an authoritarian exercise of authority could be successful. This situation diminishes the authority endowed to politics while opening up space for the valuation of strong or authoritarian figures. All of this contributes to putting pressure on the basic architecture of democracy. Before concluding, I would like to briefly emphasize that success in con- fronting the threats to democracy, from the perspective I have presented in this chapter, will depend on the decision and ability to fulfill two key objectives. The first objective is ensuring that the orientations of action align with the promises that sustain democracy. The future of democracy will depend on how effectively it addresses disenchantment, irritation, distrust, and the social pro- cesses of disaffection. This will entail, for example, providing meaningful care experiences for the population and reformulating models of citizen involvement in politics, among other measures. The second objective involves confronting the consequences of social and cultural currents that undermine the moral and socio-cultural supports of de- mocracy. This may be the more challenging goal to achieve concretely. Never- theless, it is crucial to address the importance of mediation in social and political life, the virtuous reconfiguration of power dynamics, the ethical dimension of everyday behavior, and the conception of the commons and the common good, to name just a few. Socio-cultural processes are notoriously difficult to reverse or intervene, and even when changes occur, they take considerable time. How- ever, it is vital to at least initiate these efforts. This urgency stems from my argument that the modalities through which the social bond is structured are fundamental to the character of the political bond. Democracy does not solely depend on political actors or adjustments to politi- cal mechanisms and procedures; it also relies on the commitment and adherence of individuals and the support found in the modalities that the social bond acquires. Note 1 To the extent that this discussion is based on the outcomes of various research pro- jects, references will not be made to the analyzed material within each project, but rather to the publications that report the findings of each of these projects. 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Foreign Affairs 76 (November– December): 22–43. https://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/web/content/uploads/2024/04/Bicentenario-2023-final-1.pdf https://politicaspublicas.uc.cl/web/content/uploads/2024/04/Bicentenario-2023-final-1.pdf 3 Taxing Political Modernity Fiscal Relations in Europe Since 2020 Lars Döpking Introduction: The Expanse of Fiscal Rule in Political Modernity ‘Political Modernity’ (Domingues, 2024) is a social formation that is ‘structured’ (Giddens, 1984) by fiscal rule. Its typical tax state constitutes and enforces du- rable fiscal relations with its citizens, thereby obligating them to one another (Martin, 2020) and shaping their social interactions (Makovicky and Smith, 2020). The extent of these obligations is set by the tax order, whose laws and normative principles determine the share one ought to contribute to public ex- penditure. But this contribution is not merely voluntary; rather, it is enforced (Bergman, 2009). Tax identification numbers, withholding tax procedures, au- tomatic bank data exchange, and digital payments ensure that the income and consumption of natural persons in particular is meticulously recorded and taxed. Those who do not or cannot incorporate themselves thus become entangled in a network of fiscal rule. Today, only a steadily shrinking proportion of the population is able to dis- obey its constitutive fiscal ‘command’ (Weber, 2019: 135) and to evade their tax liability. Such an expanse of fiscal rule is without historical precedent. Contrary to popular social-scientific assumptions (Streeck, 2014; Thompson, 2022: 199–223), even during the so-called Trente Glorieuses, tax states were social entities with limited ‘infrastructural power’ (Mann, 2008; Soifer and vom Hau, 2008). Tax administrations’ capacity to enforce their respec- tive tax order with any degree of reliability was highly contingent on social structure, resulting in the de facto tolerance of elevated levels of tax evasion (Buggeln, 2022; Döpking, 2023). High income and inheritance tax rates of up to 90%, which have been the subject of repeated discussion in comparative research (Piketty, 2014; Scheve and Stasavage, 2016), were illusory in the sense that they politically concealed the underlying reality of fiscal relations. Whether individuals were paying these rates was, at best, a moral question. This changed with the expansion of the fiscal rule since the end of Bretton Woods, which particularly affected the middle and working classes of West- ern Europe. Consequently, the era of ‘political modernity’ is characterized by DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-5 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-5 Taxing Political Modernity 51 the predominance of powerful tax states, which fiscally structure the social dynamics on their territories. The advent of ‘fiscal structuration’ had at least three lasting effects. First, the fiscal institutions of Western European states turned into the primary instrument of economic and biopolitical intervention. For example, tax breaks became the tool of choice for encouraging investment in production plants; tobacco taxes were increased with the objective of reducing smoking; and the switch to elec- tromobility was and still is fiscally incentivized. Second, in ‘political moder- nity’, populations are fiscally stratified. Land and property ownership—the primary form of wealth for broad sections of modern societies—is treated dif- ferently from the ownership of stock market shares, works of art, or jewelry. In addition to that, those who offer their services independently on the market have better chances to evade taxation than employees or workers, not to speak of mi- grant farm workers, who suffer from miserable working conditions in the fields of Southern Europe precisely because they are not regarded as taxpayers. Ulti- mately, the annual adoption of the budget has become the central area of conflict in democratic societies. Because taxes are the only source of state revenue in the context of a common currency—alternatives such as money printing, debt or state-owned industries, respectively monopolies, are politically far less fea- sible in the European Union—these disputes tend to correspond to a zero-sum game between fiscal classes that seek to pass on the operating and consequential costs of capitalist accumulation to one another. A central element of the systemic ‘crisis of politics’ (Domingues, 2024: 1) in political modernity must therefore be sought in this fiscal structuration of economics, culture, and politics. The ex- panse of fiscal rule radically reveals that ‘the sociologist’s society’ is no longer the ‘nation-state’ (Giddens, 1987b: 172), but has become the tax state. If this description holds true, we have to analyze the patterns and dynamics of public finance to understand what kind of social conflicts await us at the crossroads of political modernity. However, to complicate matters further, this state of affairs collided with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, rapidly rising prices as a result of the war in Ukraine in 2022, and finally, the rearming of European states in the face of geopolitical aggression. All three events broke with the estab- lished interaction patterns of ‘political modernity’, but specifically affected its fiscal sociological foundations, insofar as they forced a change in policy paths: Economic sectors with an affinity for evasion had to be supported with public funds, while state interventions on an unimagined scale became necessary in order to save capitalism from collapse and to finance military armament. The subsequent rise in government debt and prices was in turn met first with an investment program at the European level and then with higher general interest rates by the European Central Bank. Both factors further restricted the scope for annual budget planning and pushed for a broader expansion of fiscal rules both nationally and transnationally. As a result, in the winter of 2024/2025, we find 52 Political Modernity and Beyond ourselves in a situation in which fiscal conflicts are coming to a head and the fiscal structuration of Western European societies is becoming more and more contentious—as shown, for example, by the debates on the German debt brake and budget. Insofar as we set ourselves the task of assessing the ‘new lines of conflict’ of a ‘political modernity at a crossroads’, the role of fiscal relations seems even more crucial. In order to identify such emerging lines of conflict, my chapter builds up a certain theoretical height to fall off. Because it tries to sketch out future de- velopments, it leaves the ‘comfort zone’ of its author and attempts to engage in ‘anticipatory theory’ in order to track down ‘social tendencies of the future’ (Lenhard, 2019: 11). Starting from some theoretical observations on the central role of fiscal rule in political modernity already outlined above, the chapter’s third part attempts to explore empirically the direction in which the dynam- ics of tax states are moving as a result of the recent upheavals. However, such trends can only be observed, interpreted, and classified against their historical background. In order to reflect a certain variance, I will focus on five selected European Union countries—Italy, Spain, Belgium, France, and Germany—that already chose different responses to the crises of 2007. In the fourth part of this chapter, “Recent Developments, 2020–2024”, I use these cases to explore the extent to which new trends are emerging in the areas of taxation, government spending, and public debt since 2020. I conclude with some speculations on the conflicts in ‘political modernity’ are likely to develop because of their fiscal structuration. Political Capitalism and the Tax State Within macro-sociological theory, there have been various attempts to under- stand and to conceptualize the fiscal interpenetration of economics and politics. Marx already identified in his analysis of Louis Bonaparte’s coup d’état how a state could use its public finances to create loyal classes of public servants who would henceforth stabilize its rule (Marx and Engels, 2020: 183–84). At the beginning of the 20th century, none other than Max Weber conceptualized the casual entanglement between the prevailing form of public finance and the types of legitimate rule (Swedberg, 2000). In the Chinese cultural area in par- ticular, the ‘prebendalism’ installed via tax farmers blocked the development of a specifically occidental rationalism, which, according to Weber, decisively promoted the development of modern capitalism in the Western Hemisphere (Weber, 1968). Elsewhere, the entanglement of the tax authorities and economic action tended to be dysfunctional to the longstanding accumulation of capital. Although Weber relegated the formation of ‘politically oriented capitalism’ to the past or the colonial periphery—where ‘the prospect of commercial market opportunities’ was suppressed by ‘fiscal measures that are, from the viewpoint of market relations, irrational’ (Weber, 2019: 326)—and stated that such forms Taxing Political Modernity 53 of political capitalism (Geyer, 2018) therefore historically belonged to types of rule that had been overcome in Europe for quite some time, he stated that they still lurked into present time in form of socialist ambitions or revolutions. In American exile, Friedrich Pollock, a student of Weber from his Munich days and the central organizer of the intellectual context which later became known as the Frankfurt School, took a fundamentally different view (Lenhard, 2019). According to him, capitalism had reached a new historical stage. An ‘integral etatism’ or ‘state capitalism’ had established itself in the first half of the 20th century and replaced the era of ‘private capitalism’ in its Soviet, Na- tional Socialist, or American variants—he saw the latter emerging in the form of the New Deal. In it, the working class, precisely because it was organized as a racket and thus bridged the capitalist mode of value creation, no longer formed a revolutionary subject, with which Pollock and the New York exiles of the ‘Cafè Marx’ (Lenhard, 2024) bid farewell to any trust in a teleological progress of history (Buchstein, 2019; Gangl, 2016). According to them, the only thing to be explored was whether and how this entity could be democratically controlled (Pollock, 1941: 217)—a perspective that other exiles, like Franz Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer, strictly rejected: According to their analyses, politics con- tinued to have sufficient impact, it would hardly subordinate itself to a state- orchestrated ‘overall capitalist interest’—which did not even exist in National Socialist Germany anyway (Neumann, 1942: 359) and, as one could add, had to be organized by the instruments of public finance (Banken, 2018; Bräu, 2022). After the end of the Second World War and the high times of economic pros- perity in Western Europe, James O’Connor (1973) continued these analyses. In view of the progressive expansion of tax revenue, he interpreted the entangle- ment of capitalism and the state as unstable and thus as a crisis phenomenon: The state was now caught between the demands of maintaining capital accumu- lation through investment on the one hand, and ensuring its legitimacy through welfare state interventions on the other (Offe, 2006). Both tasks taken together would necessarily exceed its capacities and lead the democratic welfare state into a fundamental fiscal crisis. It would thereby systematically run up criti- cal levels of debt and, as debts had to be serviced, would have to and in fact already did exploit the working classes. In O’Connor’s view, the tax state had thus become a vehicle of class rule in late capitalism, which had to be overcome. However, this approach, which updated Rudolf Goldscheid’s (1976) diagnoses and was most recently taken up by Wolfgang Streeck (2014), ignored the redis- tributive effects of fiscal stratification and overdramatized the crisis dynamics of public finances, as Michael Krätke (1984), for example, has pointed out early: As this chapter also argues, the state in ‘political modernity’ is hardly going to ruin because of its debts. The most recent twist in this theoretical discourse is based on the writings of Antonio Gramsci, whose theorizations of social blocs have sparked a broad debate in international and comparative political economy (May et al., 2024). 54 Political Modernity and Beyond Proponents of the ‘growth model approach’ (Baccaro and Pontusson, 2016; Baccaro et al., 2022) have emphasized the role of states in the fiscally orches- trated generation of economic growth, the occurrence of which in their view alone guarantees the social stability of political modernity. Comprising the sec- toral alliances of trade unions, entrepreneurs, firms and political parties, these social blocs determine a ‘national interest’—e.g., strong domestic demand for goods and services—which is then pursued with fiscal means: Investments in bridges, ports and freeways; tax incentives for home ownership as a basis for privatized Keynesianism (Crouch, 2009); or higher indirect taxes instead of tax- ing corporations to keep industrial production costs low (Haffert and Mertens, 2021). In this perspective, economic growth does not occur automatically via the market mechanism, but is dependent on the intervening tax state, which collects, similar to O’Connor’s view, the necessary resources from its popula- tion. But, if the social bloc fails in its task—i.e., the economy does not grow sufficiently despite fiscal intervention—it will threaten to disintegrate, heralding massive power struggles between its different elements. These struggles only end when a new social bloc achieves hegemony and once again, thanks to its fiscal relations, brings ‘political modernity’ back on a growth track. However, regardless of how one conceptualizes the social formation that cul- minates in the widely ramified fiscal relations of the contemporary tax state— ‘politically oriented capitalism’, ‘integral statism’, ‘state capitalism’ or ‘growth model’ are just four exemplary variants—one cannot avoid acknowledging the comprehensive entanglement of politics and economics in ‘political modernity’. This may certainly indicate that we have possibly left behind the classical era of liberal capitalism, in which Max Horkheimer once saw the condition of the pos- sibility of emancipation (Horkheimer, 1997). Yet, it is not necessary to deduce his political and normative consequences from this state of affairs. In light of current developments, the expansion of fiscal rule may have changed the quali- ties and patterns of social conflicts in our ‘partial totalities’ in ways that have not yet been recognized: Fiscal and tax policy represent the primary instruments through which bio- and economic politics are conducted; our societies are pre- dominantly fiscally stratified; and the annual budget law serves as the pivotal nexus of all social conflicts we face in (democratic) modernity. Assuming the plausibility of this diagnosis, the historical examination of public finances could provide a valuable lens through which to elucidate the shift in the balance of power and to ascertain the political position of the state in the present time. Ob- serving the trajectories of public finances may indeed facilitate a more nuanced understanding of emergent conflict lines. The Continuous Expansion of Fiscal Rule, 2007–2019 The period between the 1980s and the ‘decade of financial crisis’ (Tooze, 2019), which started in 2007, is generally treated as an epoch in which tax states got Taxing Political Modernity 55 into difficult waters, became massively indebted, and ultimately eroded into less powerful social entities. Helen Thompson (2022: 199), for example, has explic- itly identified a ‘decline of the tax state’. In a similar vein, Wolfgang Streeck (2017) has analyzed its transition into a debt and finally a consolidation state, which signifies a regime that disregards rising unemployment while it prior- itizes debt servicing. But these characterizations are both rather misleading in- sofar as they neglect the continuous expansion of fiscal rule during the same period. While public debt undoubtedly increased and capital taxation withered (Alstadsæter et al., 2019), tax states simultaneously tightened their grip on the personal income and consumer spending of their citizens. Revenue from VAT and income taxes increased sharply and was more than able to offset the rev- enue shortfalls caused by tax competition and capital flight. As a result, the tax-to-GDP ratio, (even) after excluding social security contributions, increased massively between 1980 and 2007. In Spain—where it more than doubled from 11.4% to 24.6% of GDP—and in Italy—where the ratio rose from 17.2% to 29% of GDP—the trend was particularly evident, but we can also observe similar de- velopments in France or Belgium. And as Figure 3.1 shows, although Germany bucked this trend, the average tax ratios in the OECD stagnated rather than col- lapsed following the so-called ‘neoliberal turn’ (Maier, 2023: 276). Figure 3.1 Tax-to-GDP ratio in Western Europe, 1980–2022, selected countries. Source: OECD [adjusted for social security contributions]. 56 Political Modernity and Beyond The crisis of 2007 was therefore neither caused by exhausted tax states (Streeck, 2014) nor did it hit political entities with eroded ‘economic power capacities’ (Centeno and Ferraro, 2013: 6). Instead, the aforementioned states were able to mobilize huge proportions of the value produced on their terri- tory to support the banking sector and to counteract the crisis—in Germany and Spain, for instance, the total resources mobilized during the hightide of emergency Keynesianism were equivalent to about a quarter of 2008 GDP, and in Belgium the rate even stood at even 50% (Tooze, 2019: 166). Of course, these maneuvers resulted in an absurd redistribution of wealth and income and had a political aftermath, still they do not suggest that the state’s position of power in ‘political modernity’ has inevitably declined. After the dust of the crisis had set- tled, three dynamics dominated the picture until the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic: First, although general government expenditure rapidly decreased once the financial crisis transformed itself into a sovereign debt crisis thanks to the pro- cyclical approach of European institutions, it remained above the levels of the early 2000s. As Figure 3.2 demonstrates, the German case, where politicians con- stitutionally tied themselves by implementing a rigorous debt brake, was rather an exception to the rule. In Belgium and France, expenditure excluding interest Figure 3.2 Total expenditure excluding interest, in % of GDP, 1995–2024. Source: AMECO (2025). Taxing Political Modernity 57 remained high, still accounting for 49.7% and 53.8% of GDP in 2019, respec- tively. Although the Italian and Spanish governments implemented harsh auster- ity measures as well as debt brakes, it wasnn’t quantitative easing and low interest rates, but political pressure, which led them soon to spend two or three percentage points of GDP more than in the year 2000. The state was not dismantled, but fi- nancially intervened into the economy and society on a historic level. Second, states used their economic power capacities and the leeway offered to them by the ECB’s monetary policy to reduce the accumulating debt burden. In particular, the developments in Germany and Spain stood out. In 2010, the German government’s debt had risen to 82%, a figure to which the conserva- tive public reacted with harsh criticism. Under the auspices of the ‘black zero’ (Haffert, 2016; Huhnholz, 2024), the Christian Democrat Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and his Social Democrat successor Olaf Scholz joined forces to push the debt ratio below the limit of 60% of GDP stipulated in the Maastricht Treaty until 2019. In Spain, the situation was more complicated, as total debt had almost tripled in just a few years and a poor economic outlook—basically, the previously hegemonic growth model collapsed during this period—thwarted such a development (Baccaro and Bulfone, 2022). Nevertheless, a downward trend can be seen after 2014: The debt ratio fell by a good seven percentage points to 98.2% of GDP by 2019. In Italy, the trend was more dramatic, which was also due to the fact that the state was already heavily indebted before the fi- nancial crisis—a legacy of the dysfunctional 1980s—and now set new peacetime records: In 2014, the debt ratio noted at 135.4%, only falling to 134.1% by 2019. If we view states as political associations whose primary concern is not the com- mon good but their own ‘economic power capacities’, it can be argued that they were still trying to restore precisely these by 2019—especially if one glimpses the dynamics in the Netherlands, reported in Figure 3.3. Third, the plausibility of a significant expansion of fiscal rule is further in- creased when tax policy in these countries is taken into consideration. For one thing, the financial crisis did not mark a turning point in the historical trend of rising tax-to-GDP ratios. Although it interrupted them briefly, especially the German, Dutch, and French tax states collected a significantly higher share of their economic output in 2019 than before 2007 (Bozio et al., 2015). Even in Spain, where corporate tax revenue collapsed thanks to a bursting real estate bubble, it subsequently recovered and rose by around five percentage points of GDP to 22.9%. These rising yields were, on the one hand, due to extensive tax reforms. For instance, Spain and France introduced new wealth taxes (Saez and Zucman, 2022). Additionally, the German and French governments raised their top marginal income tax rate in reaction to the crisis by three and four percentage points, respectively (Rixen, 2019). Moreover, the VAT standard rate was hiked in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. And while corporate tax rates remained stable or even were further reduced, this development was coun- teracted by the intensified taxation of their stockholders: All over the OECD, 58 Political Modernity and Beyond Figure 3.3 Gross public debt, in % of GDP, 2000–2024. Source: AMECO (2025). the average tax rates imposed on dividends increased after 2009 (Hakelberg and Rixen, 2020). The fact that these tax increases did not merely remain theo- retical but had real financial impacts was due to the states’ tightening up the practical enforcement of their tax laws. They managed to reduce the level of tax evasion, in some cases even significantly. For instance, the VAT gap—a metric that can also serve as an indicator of income tax evasion by small businesses and the self-employed—showed a substantial decline of approximately 25% in Germany between 2007 and 2019 (European Commission, 2024). In the after- math of the sovereign debt crisis and the ensuing bailout measures, a surge in value-added tax evasion was observed in Italy and Spain. They were, at the very least, contentious (Culpepper, 2014). In response, the populace in both coun- tries voted with their feet, causing the VAT-gap to rise to around 34% by 2009, which was three times the German figure, as shown in Figure 3.4. Subsequently, however, the indicator declined rapidly, with a 12-percentage-point fall in Italy and a 26-percentage-point fall in Spain, resulting in the rates falling below the German figure of 2019. Moreover, the proportion of non-taxable offshore assets has been subject to a sustained decline since the introduction of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) by the US government in 2010. Conse- quently, high-net-worth individuals have encountered considerable difficulties Taxing Political Modernity 59 Figure 3.4 Defense expenditure as % of GDP, 2014–2024, selected countries. Source: NATO (2024: 9). in concealing their wealth offshore (Alstadsæter et al., 2024; Hakelberg, 2020). In the aftermath of the Great Recession, states have been leveraging the power of their tax administrations to augment their ‘economic power capacities’. Rather than succumbing to a state of decline, ‘political modernity’ had allowed them to accumulate fiscal rule by the time the global pandemic emerged. Recent Developments, 2020–2024 ‘Political modernity’ is a ‘partial totality’. It confronts its observers with na- tional divergences that are difficult to summarize in abstract terms. This is par- ticularly true in the area of public finances. Nevertheless, it can be said that the typical fiscal relations of political modernity—which imply a widespread proliferation of fiscal rule—were by no means in an all-encompassing, terminal crisis in 2019. Instead, tax states in Western Europe were perhaps more power- ful than ever before and soon even demonstrated their capabilities to answer the overturning dynamics of the pandemic as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They thus underlined their central position as a nexus of economic, military, and political power (Giddens, 1987a; Mann, 2012a). For brevitiy, I henceforward limit myself to some general observations on their spending, tax- ing, and borrowing patterns. 60 Political Modernity and Beyond Spending: Fiscal Responses to Covid-19 and the Russian Aggression The complete standstill of public life caused by the pandemic left basically no alternative to massive state intervention. Generally speaking, it should be noted that the tax states of Western Europe intervened more extensively than ever before to control the effects of the pandemic on their populations and econo- mies (Agrawal and Bütikofer, 2022). But only two years after its outbreak, the Russian invasion of Ukraine put public finances to another test. The invasion made it clear that spending on one’s own military as well as on military aid also had to be increased in order to ensure security on the European continent. Both factors led to a sustained increase in government expenditure in all of the cases under consideration. When the pandemic spread across the European continent from Bavaria and Northern Italy, the European Commission temporarily suspended the European Fiscal Compact in March 2020. In addition, national governments suspended their self-imposed debt rules, insofar as they had them. Both steps allowed them to make use of their fiscal capacities without constitutional restrictions. They supported large companies—such as the German Lufthansa—, smaller service providers—such as bars or restaurants—and in Germany even the cultural sec- tor with loans, equity, and guarantees. Moreover, their administrations paid out money directly to their citizens, lowered value-added taxes, or introduced new deduction options to boost domestic demand. Finally, governments also invested in test stations, hospitals, and other elements of public services. In total, these expenditures amounted to 22% of GDP in Spain, 24.8% of GDP in France, and 46.2% of GDP in Italy by July 2021 (International Monetary Fund, 2021). Not all of this money was put to use, but in the German case it would have amounted to €1.5 trillion in total, and even in Belgium it summed up to €121 billion. The resources mobilized to combat the pandemic thereby far exceeded the sums allocated for the 2007 bailouts and countercyclical meas- ures. Because they reached incredible levels, Germany’s then Social Democrat Finance Minister Olaf Scholz illustrated them with the image of a bazooka, whose ‘oomph’ (Wumms) was supposed to lead out of the crisis. His actions underlined that states were by no means toothless tigers, but continued to have extensive economic capacities at their disposal. In 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put these capacities once again to the test. In addition to providing military aid to Ukraine and augmenting or restor- ing one’s own defense capabilities, the sharp rise in oil and gas prices imposed an additional financial strain on public budgets. Moreover, the resulting rise in consumer prices put governments under considerable political pressure: To stay in power and face new geopolitical challenges, they needed to mobilize large amounts of public money while simultaneously bringing inflation under control. Western European states were hesitant rather than decisive in facing up to this new reality, but they soon began to approach the 2% of GDP benchmark for Taxing Political Modernity 61 NATO member states (Tardy and Matelly, 2023). Overall military spending in Europe grew by 10% from 2022 to 2023, although a clear geographical pattern emerged: The closer a state was located to the Russian Federation, the more it began to spend on its military power capacities. This dynamic allowed Italy and Spain to maintain a low profile, which helped them to keep their budgets bal- anced, while especially Eastern European governments soon spent more than 2% of their GDP on defense. Germany, with its traditional dependence on Russian gas, was particularly affected by this double challenge, and the debate about additional spending was particularly controversial. Because the country had written an exceptionally strict debt brake into its constitution after the financial crisis and the constitu- tional court played the role of a powerful veto player in the country’s political system, only a deficit of 0.35% could be taken on without decisive political conflict. In order to exceed this deficit in a regular manner, without changing the constitution once more, a legally contestable government resolution was needed. However, the liberal FDP, which also provided the finance minister, did not want to agree to this. Nonetheless, 100 billion in additional funds for defense were written into the constitution with the approval of the CDU after Olaf Scholz’s Zeitenwende speech in 2022. When, in the winter of 2023, the Federal Consti- tutional Court, following a complaint by the Christian Democratic Opposition, ruled that the 2023 and 2024 budgets were unconstitutional, tensions within the social-liberal coalition increased (Huhnholz, 2024; Weber, 2024). It collapsed within a year, paving the way for new elections, which the Christian Democrats won. But even before signing a coalition agreement with the SPD, the CDU largely adopted the program of its predecessors. Together, they constitutionally allowed additional defense spending worth 500 billion euros, as well as further 500 billion euros for infrastructure measures. This approach was notable given that the CDU had mobilized against new debt in both the opposition and the election campaign. Furthermore, the electorate had punished the Greens and the SPD, who had demanded exactly these measures. But as Christian and Social Democrats needed the support of the Greens for this constitutional maneuver, 100 billion euros were earmarked for environmental protection projects. As a result, public spending in Germany increased at a slow pace but soon reached historic records. Yearly defense spending climbed from 43.2 billion euros (2019) to 72 billion euros (2024), overall public expenditure increased annually by 4% of GDP, and certainly will soon rise further—in light of announced all-time high investments of 115 billion euro in 2025. Despite the financial and coronavirus crisis, states were still able to trans- fer their economic resources into military power capacities. After 2019, both crisis dynamics significantly increased state expenditure. Adjusted for inter- est payments, it rose from 44.8% to 47.9% of GDP in Germany, while Spain saw an increase from 39.8% to 42.9% and France spent an additional 1.6% of GDP (AMECO, 2025). In comparison to the previous decade, European 62 Political Modernity and Beyond governments have increased their expenditure to a considerable extent. In the context of political modernity, states have established themselves as the primary centers of social power. Taxing: Closing Some Loopholes in Fiscal Relations It seems evident that such extensive interventions necessitated counter-financ- ing, resulting in elevated tax ratios post-2019 across all the examined cases, with some reaching unprecedented levels. The prevailing trends still persist, characterized by a further increase in income and wealth tax revenue, alongside notable outcomes in the battle against tax evasion in offshore financial centers and on domestic terrain. However, there has also been a concomitant rise in the taxation of companies. In Germany, the revenue from taxes on corporate profits grew by almost 50% since 2019, while in Spain and Italy, the increase was somewhat more restrained, but still amounted to a good 40%. Furthermore, the decline in tax evasion was particularly noteworthy. Although it was antici- pated that the implementation of lockdowns would result in a contraction of the VAT gap, as sectors such as bars, restaurants, and personal services are known to exhibit a propensity for evasion, Figure 3.5 demonstrates that the VAT gap Figure 3.5 VAT compliance gap, in % of VTTL, 2000–2022. Source: European Commission (2024). Taxing Political Modernity 63 was reduced by almost 50% across all five countries. While reliable data for the post-2022 period is currently not available, initial estimates suggest that this development was not a statistical anomaly, but rather indicates a new status quo. For instance, the Italian VAT gap for 2023 is forecasted at 14.7%, six percentage points below the figure before the outbreak of the pandemic. In addition, there has been an increase in efforts to introduce global minimum taxes for companies and to prevent profit shifting. While such transactions have since slowed down, they remain at a high level (Alstadsæter et al., 2024). Consequently, the financial burden of escalating defense, infrastructure, and health expenditures was pre- dominantly shouldered by the general population, which still cannot escape fis- cal rule and is therefore concurrently experiencing a decline in living standards (Schechtl, 2021; Schechtl and O’Brien, 2024). Borrowing: Increasing Debt, Buying (Even More) Time? Nevertheless, the financial resources these tax states acquired were nowhere near enough to cover the enormous sums needed to respond to the dual chal- lenge of pandemic and warfare. In 2020, the debt ratio spiked in all the cases examined, as Figure 3.3 demonstrates. The trend was particularly drastic in Italy, where government debt reached a historic high of 155% of GDP. But Spain’s and France’s ratio also increased by more than 17 percentage points, while even Germany and the Netherlands borrowed significant sums on the financial markets to intervene in their respective economies as described. Nev- ertheless, their debt ratios remained at such levels only for a short moment and soon fell rapidly. In 2024, they amounted—with the exception of France—only slightly above the 2019 level (AMECO, 2025). On the one hand, this was due to the upturn in economic growth, which statistically reduces the debt ratio. On the other hand, inflation also played a positive role from the government’s point of view, as the fixed interest rates on its bonds consolidated public finances. Despite all the countervailing causes, the economic power capacities of states expanded. Two factors further fueled this momentum. First, the ‘Recovery and Resilience Facility’ was set up at the European level in February 2021 (Bekker, 2021; Zeitlin et al., 2023). It allocates funds generated through common EU debt to member states and prioritizes those that were particularly affected by the pandemic. Italy and Spain will receive as grants, while Germany can draw down around 22.7 billion euros. Loans of roughly the same amount can also be applied for. For the total of 1 trillion euros mobilized by 2027, the EU, for the first time in history, is incurring debt as a legal and political entity. On the one hand, this enables in- vestments that potentially stimulate the economy and thus reduce the debt ratio, because grants do not appear in the aforementioned debt figures. The states’ eco- nomic capacities are further increased by their capability to now mobilize supra- national funds for which they do not have to provide anything in return—except 64 Political Modernity and Beyond perhaps political loyalty to the supranational entity. On the other hand, the ques- tion may arise at some point as to who will have to pay for the debts recorded in the EU’s balance sheets or who will at least pay the upcoming interest. As is well known, the EU does not have the right to levy taxes itself, even if it is financed by parts of its member states’ VAT Revenue, among other things. This brings us to the second factor: Although inflation relieved the pressure on the debt levels of European tax states, it made it necessary for the ECB to raise its interest rates. In July 2022, it hiked the general interest rate above 0.0% for the first time since March 2016, ending its long phase of unorthodox monetary policy. By Septem- ber 2023, it had risen in ten steps to a total of 4.5%. This rapid increase will have an impact on the budget planning of the affected countries in the medium term and will exacerbate the fiscal distribution struggles. If general interest rates remain higher than economic growth in the long term, governments’ room for maneuver will dwindle, leaving tax increases or spending cuts on the table as the only political options (Robinson, 2022). The Future of (Fiscal) Conflicts in ‘Political Modernity’ Public finances represent a pivotal category for the assessment of the state’s position within the network of social power relations (Mann, 2012a). The man- ner in which the state acquires economic resources, how it disposes of them, the purposes to which it allocates them, and the quantities it spends, all have mas- sive implications for the relations between economy and society. The above ob- servations have aimed to provide a rough overview of the development of fiscal relations in selected Western European countries as a pars pro toto in order to make statements about the possible future of conflicts in ‘political modernity’. In conclusion, the question remains as to which ‘social trends of the future’ we can anticipate in them and whether or how they are likely to continue. In general, it should be noted that neither the financial crises nor the coro- navirus pandemic nor the Russian invasion of Ukraine have initiated a decline of the tax state in Western Europe. On the contrary, the countries in question have proven that they are capable of impressive performance in crisis situa- tions. At the same time, such actions seem to have left hardly any traces on them. As a result, these tax states are more powerful today than they were in 2007 and even more so then in 1980, when their alleged neoliberalization be- gan. The question therefore seems to be much more about the purpose for which they use their massive economic capacities and what distributional effects this has. In short, there seems to be more than enough money for weapons—or the economic capacity of the modern tax state can easily be mobilized to acquire them—but this is by no means the case for environmental protection, postgradu- ate education, or programs to integrate migrants into national labor markets. Furthermore, it should be noted that strong shoulders only bear greater burdens to a limited extent in these democratic societies. Those who find themselves in Taxing Political Modernity 65 the ‘social cage’ (Mann, 2012b: 14) of the tax state have to pay—and this now increasingly applies to those segments of the population that were previously able to escape fiscal rule. Those who earn their money as companies, on the other hand, are (still) lucky and can largely avoid solidarity. This does not bode well for democratic societies in ‘political modernity’. Driven by the need to raise money for the rising interest burden and military spending, the tax states—and here I am beginning to speculate—will probably soon close the last refuges from fiscal domination in their societies, possibly even enforcing more effective taxation of companies worldwide. However, once this has been achieved, the question will arise in the fully fiscally structured societies as to who should actually foot the bill for the necessary additional ex- penditure. Basically, there are three alternatives: Either democratic societies, in a spirit of solidarity, deliberatively agree to redistribute burdens and thus wealth within their national cages and meanwhile perhaps are even able to generate economic growth. This is the most unrealistic scenario because, second, the sections of society newly affected by fiscal rule will mobilize against it (Döpk- ing, 2025). Companies and high-net-worth individuals are already pulling out all the stops in politics and the public sphere to prevent profound tax reforms, like taxes on wealth or carbon emissions. The resulting clashes between top and bottom could end extremely unpleasantly (Moore, 1996), especially because it is well known that authoritarian libertarians are particularly vehement in their fight over taxes (Slobodian, 2023). As a third option, however, it is more likely that it will not come to that, as a clear front position will probably not even emerge in the first place. Instead, in this variant, the fiscal groups will diversify in many different ways and fight with each other in the medium of budget ne- gotiations, which at the end of the day will resemble a zero-sum game (Krätke, 1984). This does not necessarily mean that a dystopia will prevail and democ- racies will disintegrate into a mess of gang fights, as Horkheimer (1997) and Neumann (1942), to a different extent, anticipated. 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Amsterdam: Amsterdam Centre for European Studies. https://doi.org/10.5771/0340-0425-2024-4-555 https://doi.org/10.5771/0340-0425-2024-4-555 4 Modernity and the Anthropocene Between Rupture and Fulfilment Manuel Arias-Maldonado Introduction Modernity is a set of assumptions and prescriptions, but also a project to be realised in history. It has transformed, and continues to transform, lives and environments across the world. Arguably, modernity seeks human emancipation through material and moral progress—its goal is a society in which material abundance allows individuals to exercise their personal autonomy and hence the need for market economies, welfare states, technological innovation, represent- ative democracies, and so forth. However, the normative core of modernity is not univocal and remains open to interpretation and contestation. In the realm of history, there have certainly been ‘multiple modernities’ (see Eisenstadt, 2017). Was the Soviet Union ‘modern’? Has not China modernised itself? The argu- ment that modernisation means ‘Westernisation’ has become a weak one. Furthermore, modernity has unfolded in an uneven manner. Still today, some societies claim to be post-industrial while others—such as China or India— are trying to industrialise themselves. Some countries and/or social groups may have grown tired of modernisation, but others are eagerly waiting for it or else have a positive view of what the latter has brought or may bring to them. Atti- tudes towards modernity and modernisation, therefore, differ widely. As Wagner puts it, The history of modernity is not a smooth unfolding of basic ideas and prin- ciples as they move towards concretisation in historical reality. Rather, it is a struggle over the interpretation of such ideas and principles, a struggle in the course of which central problems of human social life need to be addressed and in which any solution to these problems may engender new problems to be addressed in the future. (Wagner, 2012: xii) A minimal understanding of modernity is useful to avoid an endless discussion on this matter. If we see it as the project of improving societies in a self-reflective DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-6 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-6 Modernity and the Anthropocene 71 and rational way with the help of science and technology, it will be easier to identify what different societies have in common while also acknowledging that in which they diverge. If we do so, we will conclude that most human societies remain modern, even though they choose to be modern or find themselves expe- riencing modernity in contrasting ways. Theorising about modernity, then, is very different from implementing it in real societies. Changing the lives of real people leads to all kinds of undesired and unforeseen effects. Hence modernity’s need to legitimise itself, i.e. the need to persuade those affected by modernisation that the latter is worth it despite its costs. In this regard, the latter has always needed persuasive outcomes that can justify its inherent tendency to disruption. Indeed, modern societies can be described as constantly requiring a ‘dynamic stabilisation’ that results from their need of material growth, technological augmentation, and cultural innovation (Rosa et al., 2017). This means that their trajectory is bound to be troublesome and bumpy, delivering goods and inflicting harms to groups and individuals whose interests and viewpoints will inevitably enter into conflict. As catastrophes have been plentiful during the modern epoch, ranging from world wars to genocides, modernity has suffered several crises of legitimation. If we focus on the last global catastrophe, namely the COVID-19 pandemic, it should be remembered that it was seen at the outset as a major threat to Western- style modernity (see Lusardi and Tomelleri, 2020). However, the pandemic did not produce a viable alternative order—it just forced the temporary suspension of most economic and social activity, which was eagerly resumed after a while. But if the pandemic did not change the world, the Great Recession arguably did. It helped to push us into the impasse we find ourselves in, in which it remains unclear whether the Western version of the modern project still enjoys popular support or rather it has weakened in the face of relative deprivation and the fail- ure of modernist utopias. One of the reasons why the future has ceased to be a bright place is, of course, the threat of ecological collapse. Since the publication of The Limits to Growth back in the early 70s (see Meadows and Meadows, 1972), human societies have increased their concern for the environment, as the success of the green movement across democratic societies attests. To be sure, radical environ- mentalists claim that the ‘ecological crisis’ is a by-product of Western tradition, tracing its roots back to Ancient Greece and Christian thought (see Glacken, 1967; Plumwood, 1993). But it makes more sense to see it as a side-effect of modernisation—as human societies went both industrial and global, their envi- ronmental impacts multiplied. In this regard, Ulrich Beck (1986) conceptualised the ‘risk society’ as that in which humans are confronted with the unexpected effects of their own development, so that a new kind of risk was emerging that differed from purely ‘natural’ ones. Hence the idea that modernity enters into a ‘reflective’ stage, insofar as it confronts its own side-effects and thus is forced to reflect upon its own nature and history (see Beck et al., 1994; Giddens, 1991). 72 Political Modernity and Beyond Technological hazards, such as those resulting from nuclear energy, featured prominently in his theoretical framework. Yet ocean acidification, the loss of biodiversity, and climate change must also be counted among the new kind of risks produced by modernity—they all derive from human modernisation and are far from being purely ‘natural’. However, the difference between dangers and risks is often blurred. As Domingues (2023) has pointed out, while hazards can be identified objectively referring to material characteristics, risks are both objective and constructed, as they depend on the vulnerability presented by a given community. What remains clear, though, is that current environmental dangers cannot be explained without taking modern material development into account—they are socionatural risks rather than natural hazards. Furthermore, climate change and other environmen- tal hazards have created a new situation in which risks become planetary and the vulnerable community now comprises humanity writ large. And that is the departing point for this chapter. In particular, I will deal with the relation between modernity and the Anthro- pocene, a concept that aims to designate a historical/geological epoch in which human beings have become geophysical agents capable of disrupting the planet Earth, hence endangering the conditions upon which their welfare—and even- tually their survival—depends. The question is whether the material reality en- compassed by the Anthropocene hypothesis signals the breakdown of modernity, burdened by its own side-effects, or whether it means that modernity is deepened further once society and nature become irretrievably entangled. Either way, the concept seems to be useful to explain the ongoing mutation of modernity. Modernity and the Anthropocene The ecological aspect of social life has become increasingly prominent and meaningful in the last decades. Neither politics, capitalism, or globalisation can be analysed without considering the environmental impact of human activ- ity and the corresponding need to achieve some form of sustainability. So far, however, the so-called ecological crisis has been explained through analytical categories that either fall prey to catastrophism or lack the necessary range. Still, this has partly changed with the rise of the Anthropocene, a novel concept that is originated in the natural sciences and has been rapidly adopted as a new epistemic framework by the social sciences and the humanities. It makes a simple proposition: a ‘human planet’ is one in which the meas- ured imprint of our species has become widespread and significant enough to disrupt the Earth state (Crutzen, 2002; Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000; Ellis, 2011). Significant drivers of this process are population growth, economic activity, ex- traction of resources, creation of a global food production system, widespread movement of people, exchange of technology, increase of global trade, and the development of transport systems. They explain why the Earth system is changing—a disruption that in turn causes climate change, ocean acidification, Modernity and the Anthropocene 73 loss of biodiversity, relocation of animal species across the globe, increase in the amount of biomass pertaining to humans and the kind of animals human breed to feed themselves, proliferation of human-made minerals, accumulation of plastic debris, and so forth (see Folke et al., 2021; Steffen et al., 2011; Thomas et al., 2020; Zalasiewicz et al., 2021). But what does all this mean? And what is the meaning of the Anthropocene for modernity? It should be underlined that the impact of the concept is in- separable from the material reality that is behind it—as revealed by the natu- ral sciences and the natural sciences alone. In contrast to them, however, the humanities and the social sciences offer a more flexible understanding of the Anthropocene ‘as a human-influenced state of the Earth System and as a cultural threshold’ (Zalasiewicz et al., 2021). But while the findings of natural science can be summarised with the help of unequivocal data, neither the social sciences nor the humanities can expect to reach such level of agreement. Nobody knows what the Anthropocene exactly means, nor what should be done about it. The latter is thus better seen through the conceptual lens of a pluriverse, making room for a multiplicity of views that overlap with each other (Hafner, 2022). But is the Anthropocene a consequence of modernity? While it certainly runs parallel to it, there seems to be more than correlation at play. Saying that moder- nity causes the Anthropocene is saying that the former unleashes forces that are powerful enough to change planetary natural systems. However, this narrative is complicated by the fact that the Anthropocene has a geological dimension that links current events to deep time—the time of the planet. And deep time predates modernity, which occupies a tiny fraction of Earth’s long history. To make sense of the relation between modernity and the Anthropocene, then, we need to know when did the Anthropocene really begin. Tellingly, this is a moot point—there is no agreement on that. But the discussion itself is enlightening. Stratigraphical procedures require the material identification of a marker that operates as a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP), commonly known as ‘golden spike’, which must be isochronous and global for a new chronostratigraphic unit to be officially acknowledged (see Salvador, 1994). For the purposes of this chapter, though, stratigraphical proofs are irrelevant— what interests me here is the relation between the different ‘spikes’ put for- ward by natural scientists and modernity itself. Essentially, there is the ‘early Anthropocene’ that starts with the agricultural revolution; the ‘Age of Explo- ration Anthropocene’ that is caused by the global impacts of the human biota from the 15th to the 18th century; the ‘contemporary Anthropocene’ that begins with the Industrial Revolution; and the ‘Great Acceleration Anthropocene’ that is located around 1950 (see Baskin, 2015; Lewis and Maslin, 2017; Ruddiman, 2003; Toivanen et al., 2017). What does each of them mean? An early Anthropocene indicates that the human species is bound to disrupt its natural environment, no matter how it is economically organised, while the Columbian Exchange and the age of maritime exploration points to European colonisation, imperialism, and the subjugation of indigenous peoples as drivers 74 Political Modernity and Beyond of ecological transformation at a global level. A later date, namely that of the Industrial Revolution, links the Anthropocene to modern capitalism, while the Great Acceleration adds the impact of non-capitalistic industrial countries and in- corporates the consequences of consumption-based late modern societies. Those who believe that the Anthropocene is a consequence of capitalism, in fact, prefer to talk about the ‘Capitalocene’ (Moore, 2014); those who emphasise technology refer to it as ‘Technocene’ (Sloterdijk, 2017). But whereas capitalism may be closely tied to modernity, and most particularly to the widespread use of fossil fuels, humans have been employing technology to adapt to nature for thousands of years. The latter is a universal feature of the species, although different socie- ties use different technologies with different intensity in different times. If the early Anthropocene hypothesis is adopted, modernity looks like an af- terthought—human beings changed the global environment much before mod- erns were born. And while the Columbian Exchange is certainly located at the beginning of modernity, it is hard to see it as representative of the kind of mo- dernity we associate with climate change and ecological disruption. On the con- trary, both the Industrial Revolution and the Great Acceleration create a direct causal link between modernity and the Anthropocene, although the latter seems a better candidate as it signals the environmental outcome of modernity. In this reading, the Industrial Revolution is the historical episode that sets the modern machine in motion, leading eventually to a new state of the Earth system and thus pushes forward the transition away from the Holocene and into the Anthro- pocene. In other words, there would be no Anthropocene without modernity. Nevertheless, the chronology of the Anthropocene is more complex than it seems. As historian Dipesh Chakrabarty (2018: 29) has pointed out, although Earth history and world history involve different scales of time, they become intertwined in the Anthropocene. Five centuries of industrial capitalism have awakened telluric forces that link us to geological processes which usually last millions of years. Still, deep or geological time is often overlooked in social- sciences debates about the Anthropocene, which becomes just a story about humans. But the Anthropocene is also a story about the Earth. Depending on which aspects of that story are emphasised, the Anthropocene can be seen as a ‘planet-centered’ or as a ‘human-centered’ phenomenon (Zalasiewicz, 2019). If we adopt the former perspective, the claim that modernity causes the An- thropocene looks more doubtful—it asks for nuance. Because if human beings have always tried to transform their environments in order to gain safety and comfort while living in them, theirs have always been an ‘aggressive adapta- tion’ (see Arias-Maldonado, 2015). Admittedly, the latter has been more or less intense depending on factors such as population, technology, connectivity, and the like—but it has been aggressive nonetheless. What modernity certainly does is to accelerate and intensify the human im- pact on natural systems across the planet. In this sense, there would certainly be no Anthropocene without modernity. But modernity is not the reason why there Modernity and the Anthropocene 75 is an Anthropocene. In fact, it could be said that modernity is a historical ex- pression of the human trait that explains the Anthropocene—namely the human striving for achieving control of the natural environment. The difference lies in the accumulation of knowledge and practical experience that can be trans- mitted—along with technology—between social groups, as well as from one generation to the next. But if modernity puts an end to the Holocene, does modernity end with the Anthropocene? If it does, in which ‘times’ are we living know? Or perhaps mo- dernity will survive the Anthropocene? It all depends on how the latter is ap- praised. It was mentioned earlier that the Anthropocene has also been greeted with alarm, as evidence that the modern project—which includes the attempt to ‘control’ nature—has utterly failed. And while the Anthropocene does not have to spell extinction, it is widely considered as describing a dangerous transforma- tion. Whereas the Holocene is a ‘fairly unremarkable interglacial phase’ when viewed from the standpoint of planetary history, it is also the geological interval in which the human species has thrived (Clark and Szerszynski, 2021: 5). Hence Hamilton’s (2017: 4) view that the Anthropocene is not ‘a mere ecological cri- sis’, but rather an event that ‘heralds a new geological regime of existence for the Earth and a new human condition’. How should we then see the Anthropo- cene vis-a-vis modernity? In what follows, I will present two accounts of the relation between the An- thropocene and modernity. Predictably, neither of them can get it all right—the Anthropocene is too ambivalent for that. The Anthropocene as Catastrophic Rupture There is a view of the Anthropocene that dwells upon the radical green critique of modernity. The latter is presented as a Promethean project of domination, grounded upon a false dualism that recklessly separates humans from nature and then proceeds to turn the latter into a thing that can be manipulated, transformed, and destroyed (see Vetlesen, 2015). The main goal of the enlightened attempt to understand the world in scientific terms is thus to control, manipulate, and change natural processes to satisfy human interests (Katz, 1997: 52). Despite the different manners in which modernity has been realised in the course of the last three centuries, it is argued, the will to control has in fact been the ‘infrastruc- ture’ of the latter (see Stirling, 2025). Modern humans believed that they could master nature, but the Anthropocene confronts them with the delusion they have themselves embraced. Climate change, loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, waste accumulation—these and other phenomena can be seen as nature’s re- venge, as well as proof that the latter cannot be entirely dominated. Nature has not ‘ended’, since it cannot end. But we can. Interestingly, those who see the Anthropocene as a dangerous outcome of modernity reject also the view that the former has erased the distinction between 76 Political Modernity and Beyond humanity and nature, producing instead an increasingly hybridised socionatural entanglement in which it becomes increasingly difficult to set the boundaries be- tween humans and nature (see Pellizzoni, 2015). According to Fremaux (2019: 28), a hypermodern narrative of control is combined with a postmodern narra- tive of hybridity that in turn provides a view of nature not as a separate entity but as ‘a fluid techno-reality mixed with the products (and waste) of technology’. Saito concurs: ‘Recognition of the nonidentity of nature is key, lest one falls into the illusion of absolute control over the entire eco-system’ (Saito, 2022: 131). If we fail to recognise that we are a part of nature that depends on nature, then humans are not just destroying nature by turning it into a ‘hybrid’, but also de- stroying their own habitat. But whereas the destruction of nature could be seen until recently as a process that involved separated harms that could be regionally located, the Anthropocene refers to a larger, more threatening reality. On the one hand, there is climate change: some projections suggest that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere may have dire consequences for the hu- man species in the next century (see Kemp et al., 2022). On the other, there is the geological dimension of the Anthropocene, which is key for explaining its apocalyptic appeal: as the safe conditions of the Holocene are left behind and living humans enter the unpredictable Anthropocene, the fragility of our earthly condition becomes more conspicuous than ever. Leaving the stability of the An- thropocene behind thus spells trouble for humans: ‘We have reached a threshold’ (Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2016: xiii). What is beyond it? Danowski and Viveiros de Castro (2017: 22) are quite blunt: ‘The Anthropocene is the Apocalypse’. Small wonder that some observers feel that collapse is unavoidable. Warn- ings are less about the possibility of averting breakdown than about the need to prepare for it. Among such fatalists there are ‘collapsologues’ who aim to predict when is collapse bound to happen with the help of natural science (see Servigne and Stevens, 2015). Most collapsologists see no way to prevent ca- tastrophe: sooner or later tipping points will be passed and life on Earth will become much more troubled if not unfeasible. Modernity will end with a bang. The responses to this dismaying view of the future vary. Roy Scranton (2015) recommends to ‘learn to die in the Anthropocene’, abandoning hope and con- centrating on how to adapt to an inhospitable new world. Others believe that col- lapse offers the chance to reimagine human society, encouraging us to avoid the mistakes that have condemned civilisation this time around, while others simply assume that humans are living NTE—‘near-term human extinction’—and sug- gest that we pursue a ‘life of excellence’ as long as we can (see McPherson, 2019). So-called post-apocalyptic environmentalism (Cassegard and Thorn, 2018), on the other hand, argues that disaster is already happening: we are going through a slow-motion catastrophe. Not everyone is happy with the way in which the apocalyptic narrative of the Anthropocene is being deployed. If the Anthropocene is an apocalypse, whose apocalypse is it? That is the question formulated by decolonial thinkers for Modernity and the Anthropocene 77 whom ‘apocalyptic imaginings have often been framed through an exclusionary hierarchy of humanity’ (Gergan et al., 2020: 92). For them, the Anthropocene postulates a ‘fictitious human unity’ that overlooks how several minorities and peoples have been suffering the apocalypse for a long time. Hence only ‘subjects of white privilege’ can feel endangered now—they have not been affected by the unequal distribution of harms made possible by ‘global structures of environ- mental racism’ (Mitchell and Chaudhury, 2020: 314). This is a variation of the claim that the anthropos of the Anthropocene actually does not exist, the latter having been fabricated by those who wish to put the blame for ecological dis- ruption on the species rather than on capitalism or Western elites (see Malm and Hornborg, 2014; Moore, 2014). As to how should the Anthropocene be dealt with, those who see it as a dis- astrous consequence of modernity claim that only radical social change can pre- vent environmental catastrophe. This means rejecting political liberalism and dismantling the capitalistic organisation of the economy. The assumption is that modern ideologies, among them political liberalism, require abundance; climate change and the Anthropocene, on the contrary, suggest scarcity. Dobson asks, What happens if and when the conditions that made liberal thinking pos- sible no longer obtain? Are democracy, freedom, individualism, the liberal rule of law and so on, in some sense dependent on conditions of abun- dance? If these conditions disappear, can these liberal aspirations/achieve- ments survive? (Dobson, 2013: 246) For most environmentalists, in fact, the solution lies in embracing degrowth. The latter stands for a reduction of society’s throughput, so that the materials and energy extracted, processed, transported, distributed, consumed, and finally turned into waste by a society must be significantly reduced (Kallis, 2011: 874). It requires the downsizing of economies and societies, a project that cannot be accomplished without limiting production, trade, travelling, and consumption. In a post-growth society, life is to become more local and less mobile, as well as more equitable and sustainable, while supposedly remaining democratic (see Jackson, 2009). The resulting picture is not that different from the ‘classless society’ devised by Karl Marx, as post-growth society promises a new escape from the realm of necessity. Yet the ‘abundance’ envisioned by Marx must be reinterpreted: in a post-growth society, as Saito (2022) claims, abundance has less to with unlimited desires than with the fulfilment of human potentialities. What does this exactly mean, however, is not explained. Latour and Schultz also claim that emancipation—a typically modern ideal—must be liberated ‘from the narrow register of ideas of liberty explored by liberals and socialists alike, within the sole framework of production at the service of human beings’ (Latour and Schultz, 2022: 33). 78 Political Modernity and Beyond But how to achieve degrowth? Ophuls (1992) claimed long ago that a sus- tainable society cannot be achieved on the basis of the voluntary cooperation of the members of the human species at this point in history. If that is the case, is there room for a revolution, followed by an ecologically minded authoritar- ian regime? Or perhaps a technocratic authoritarianism will be imposed from above? It does not seem as if such scenarios are likely. Critics are convinced that the Anthropocene spells rupture, but the socio-political shape of the latter remains unclear. The Anthropocene as Deep Modernity There is, however, a modernist account of the Anthropocene. Bruno Latour (1993) famously declared that ‘we have never been modern’. Perhaps becoming modern or being modern at last means subjecting modernity to reflexive criti- cism in a way that assimilates the history of modernity and the different theories that account for it. On the theoretical level, there is the attempt by metamod- ernism to do just that—to correct the mistrust of universal narratives without denying the importance of particularism, thus turning the postmodern strategies on themselves in order to restore the possibility of knowledge and the pursuit of progress (see Josephson-Storm, 2021). We could call it late modern realism just as well. A modernist approach to the Anthropocene would be similar, in that it sees planetary disruption as an unavoidable consequence of modernity’s unfold- ing and as a problem to be managed with the help of modern tools. Instead of responding to the Anthropocene by running away from modernity, ecomodern- ists accept the responsibility to become ‘stewards of the Earth system’ (Steffen et al., 2007). Whereas the Holocene has been described as a benign period of stability in which the human species was able to thrive, the Anthropocene appears as its exact opposite, i.e. an uncertain epoch in which dangerous telluric forces might be awakened in unexpected ways. There is no such thing as a predictable interior space in which human beings can isolate themselves and live happily ever after (Grove and Chandler, 2017: 84). And yet this newly found planetary instability presents at least two different sides. On the one hand, the human species has been capable of pushing the Earth system past a point of no return, thus triggering a re- sponse that turns the planet into a threatening ‘otherness’ (Clark and Szerszynski, 2021: 22). But, on the other, the Earth has always been a changing entity in which formidable outbursts of telluric violence have occurred. In that regard, the An- thropocene is a reminder rather than a discovery—or a discovery that had been forgotten. In the Anthropocene, the planet demands attention and reminds us that it is ‘constitutive of our humanness (…) that we are inherently liable to being thrown off course by the eventualities of our planet’ (Clark, 2011: xiv). It follows that describing the Anthropocene as the aggregation of manufac- tured risks, as Beck (1986) would have it, is somewhat misplaced. Beck’s theory focuses on socially manufactured risks, describing a society that mobilises itself Modernity and the Anthropocene 79 when confronted with a future that is not defined any longer by religion, tradi- tion, or the superior power of nature (Beck, 2009: 4). In other words, he draws a line that separates premodern natural risks from modern manufactured risks. Yet there are as many modern threats that present natural elements, as there were premodern ones that exhibited social features (Mythen, 2004: 40). As a result, Beck’s model does not fully capture the condition of the Anthropocene: planetary disruptions in the Anthropocene are better described as socionatural threats, insofar as they result from a combination of human agency and natural processes that remain beyond human control. The ‘superior power of nature’ is now (partly) triggered by human themselves. In this regard, even though the separation between the human and the natu- ral realm had already been philosophically questioned, they have now become irretrievably entangled—even if we continue to tell them apart for analytical purposes. To see this as a refutation of the theoretical premises of modernity, however, is going too far. The modern attempt to penetrate nature in order to control it, or rather in order to control socionatural relations, has not failed. In some sense, nature has ended—it is not autonomous from human beings any- more. Admittedly, as the pandemic showed, there is a sense in which nature cannot end. But the modern project should not be normatively judged as if the total control of nature were ever feasible. Since modernity had to legitimise itself, the discourse of modernity revolved around such control. And modern so- cieties have actually provided a great deal of material well-being to several gen- erations of humans (see DeLong, 2022). That so many disasters have happened in the meantime—from wars to genocides—attests to the ambiguous nature of modernity and human history writ large. As for the anthropos of the Anthropocene, binary thinking should be avoided. In fact, humanity can be simultaneously contemplated as a unified biological species and as an internally differentiated social collectivity. This duality is re- quired to make sense of the Anthropocene: humanity is indeed an undifferenti- ated totality from the viewpoint of the planet as well as a socially heterogeneous collectivity from the viewpoint of the social observer. Despite the danger of being politically undifferentiated, the notion of a single human species is thus ‘a powerful normative regulative idea that has particular relevance to the chal- lenges of the Anthropocene’ (Delanty and Mota, 2017: 26). The Anthropocene might even help to reinvigorate a typically modern ideal whose attractiveness has been weakened in the last few decades, namely that of cosmopolitanism— the claim that individual human beings share a common humanity that stand above their ethnicity, nationality, race, culture, or religion. It should be noted that the attempt to identify modernity with some kind of global consciousness has been a defining feature of intellectual life since the 19th century (see Pemberton, 2001). But whereas modern cosmopolitan- ism has privileged the use of reason as the ground for our common humanity (see Nussbaum, 2019), the Anthropocene inspires a cosmopolitanism that looks elsewhere. It suggests that what lies behind our particular markers is a common 80 Political Modernity and Beyond biological condition: all humans are biological beings. From this standpoint, the anthropos of the Anthropocene designates a distinctive species whose actions transform its environment so much that the functioning of planetary systems becomes disrupted. A modernist reading of the Anthropocene also rejects the assumption that scarcity is destiny. On the contrary, modern-type emancipation is materially plausible and normatively useful, an argument implicit in the notion of ‘the good Anthropocene’ (see Arias-Maldonado, 2019), as well as in the ecomodern- ist view associated to it (see Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015). Ecomodernism is the natural evolution of a heterodox strand of environmentalism that can be found in contributions from Lewis (1992), Ausubel (1996), Nordhaus and Shellenberg (2007) or Brand (2009). The ‘good Anthropocene’ is that in which ‘humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilise the climate, and protect the natural world’ (see Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015). This is a vision for sustainability in which the human impact on natural systems is dramatically reduced by ways other than degrowth. While not ignorant of the dark side of modernity, ecomodernists believe that modernisation has benefited humanity even as it has damaged the natural world—that is why they imagine a future of global economic convergence in which people everywhere will be able to enjoy the fruits of modernity (Karlsson, 2018: 80; see also Symons, 2019). They do not share the view that modernisa- tion is an alienating machine that obstructs human flourishing. On the contrary, it makes such flourishing possible by providing safe environments, rising living standards, and personal liberties. What ecomodernists claim is that all human societies across the globe should benefit from that kind of progress, while at the same time stressing the need to take care of the natural world in new ways. In sum, ecomodernism presents an alternative liberal-humanist response to climate change and the Anthropocene that revolves around a strong state that facilitates the technological innovations required for providing freedom, equal- ity, and prosperity to billions of people across a warming planet (see Symons and Karlsson, 2018). Despite what the caricatures drawn by their critics suggest, ecomodernists do not propose to ‘control’ the planet nor ‘mastering’ nature as if we were back in early modernity. Irrespective of whether they are right or wrong, ecomodernists show that the Anthropocene does not necessarily spell the end of modernity. Towards a Conclusion In modernity, the present is perceived as a time of transition towards a better future—a Neuzeit that stands in contrast with an obscure past (Koselleck, 2004). Humans themselves make that future: modernity is the time in which reason takes control and seeks to create societies in which autonomous human beings can fulfil their life plans under conditions of material abundance. And even if the Modernity and the Anthropocene 81 promise of betterment formulated by liberalism is not false, social reality has proven fragile and that is why former expectations are now perceived as delu- sions (Reckwitz, 2019: 9–11). To say that there has been progress in the history of Western modernity is thus to say that ‘sociopolitical problems have been iden- tified and solved by recourse to action in line with modern normative commit- ments’, but also to admit that there is no guarantee that further long-term progress is going to happen (Wagner, 2012: 42). In short, modernity has not been devoured by itself, but the unlimited expectations created by the narrative that attempts to lend legitimacy to the former cannot be so easily fulfilled in the Anthropocene. Still, I have tried to show that the Anthropocene stands in an ambiguous rela- tion to modernity. After all, modernity itself is ambiguous. The Anthropocene both centres and decentres human beings: we are main characters of the plane- tary drama, because it is us who have disrupted the Earth state, and yet by doing so we have unleashed forces that are far larger than us. Therefore, humans are at the same time powerful actors and powerless victims—members of a species that both transform its environment and destroy it. As they go further and further in their dealings with the nonhuman world, in fact, humans end up developing an increasingly intimate relation with nature which however does not prevent their separation (to many it is actually an alienation) from it. This ambivalence also shows whenever the debates focus on the question of how should humans respond to the news that the Earth is shifting towards a new state in which its habitability might be compromised: there are those who bet on the ability of human technology and ingenuity to make the Anthropocene inhabit- able and sustainable, while others believe that social output should be dramatically reduced so that the Holocene conditions are restored (see Baskin, 2015). Whether the Anthropocene can be reversed, however, is doubtful. As Dryzek and Pickering (2019) have suggested, it seems rather ‘inescapable’. On the other hand, the Pro- methean approach is not only defended by so-called ecomodernist thinkers (see Asafu-Adjaye et al., 2015); global elites are actually trying to put it in practice. In the end, the Anthropocene is as ambivalent as modernity. 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Earth’s Future 9(3): e2020EF001896. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001896 https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276416657600 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:CLIM.0000004577.17928.fa#citeas https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:CLIM.0000004577.17928.fa#citeas https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2018.1508414 https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2018.1508414 https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019617738099 https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001896 Part II Struggles https://taylorandfrancis.com 5 From the Geopolitics of Inter-Imperial Rivalry to the Geo-Ideology of Inter-Civilizational Struggle Ho-fung Hung Introduction In the aftermath of the Cold War, some saw the world was heading toward a ‘clash of civilizations’ between established Western powers and rising economic and demographic powers in the Sino and Muslim worlds (Huntington, 1993). Some saw the world was moving toward great universal peace, unified under liberal democracy and the free market (Fukuyama, 1992). Others saw the rise of a universal global empire of capitalism in which major capitalist powers united to dominate and carve up the world, fomenting harmony between major powers (Hardt and Negri, 2001). This contemporary debate about the prospect of war and peace is not un- precedented. The history of capitalism has been full of wars and conflicts. Since the inception of capitalist modernity, there has been debate about whether this modernity ultimately leads us to perpetual peace or great wars among major capitalist powers. We see the same debate at the turn of the twentieth century when the world saw an established capitalist power (the UK) facing the inten- sifying challenges from rising latecomer powers (Germany and Japan). To Karl Kautsky (1914), the end of Pax Britannica and the rise of new capitalist powers toward the end of the nineteenth century did not necessarily lead to conflict. Kautsky put forward a theory of ‘ultra-imperialism,’ seeing that great capital- ist powers could well establish a joint cartel to divide and dominate the world together. The Scramble for Africa in the Berlin Congress in 1878 and the joint imperialist invasion of China among great powers in 1900 can be seen as such ultra-imperialism in action. Under this ultra-imperialist formation, great powers can be at peace with one another for a long time. In disagreement with this diagnosis, Lenin (1917), built on the analysis of British economist J. A. Hobson, argues in his Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism that great powers, when seeking to dominate the world through imperialist expansion, were destined to clash with one another. Any synergy among the great powers could be at most a temporary truce in between con- flicts. Given the uneven pace of capitalist development among great powers, DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-8 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-8 88 Political Modernity and Beyond the division of the world based on the balance of power among those powers at one given point would certainly become outdated when the balance changed. This changing balance of power inevitably urged some powers to seek a redis- tribution of the divisions. This led to conflicts. In the end, the two world wars vindicated Lenin’s theory about the inevitability of great power conflict over Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialist peace. Lenin’s Imperialism is a long-misunderstood work. For decades, many have used it to critique the ‘(neo-)imperialist’ relations between developed and de- veloping countries. But the book’s insight is much greater. Lenin looks at how inequality, lack of purchasing power of the working class, and overproduction urged advanced capitalist economies to export capital to underdeveloped re- gions of the world with a higher rate of return. Capital-exporting powers needed to carve out their empires or spheres of influence to protect their investments. Such acts fomented rivalry among capitalist powers, precipitating world war. Lenin paid particular attention to the urge of Germany, as a late imperial- ist power, to finance railroad construction projects in Latin America, Central- Eastern Europe, and the Middle East on the condition that the projects procured German equipment, train cars, and other materials. This put German banks, German industrialists, and German diplomatic-military apparatus into direct competition with established capitalist powers, above all Britain and France. I will show in this chapter that today’s intensifying US-China rivalry resem- bles more the inter-imperial rivalry a century ago driven by the overaccumula- tion of rising capitalist power – that is – China than the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. While the US and its allies tend to misleadingly frame the conflict as one between authoritarian and democratic powers, China and its allies tend to frame it as a conflict between a reviving Eastern, communal- ist civilization and a declining Western, individualist civilization. The different ideological representations of the conflict, however remote from reality, have their own materiality as they could shape the trajectory of the unfolding of the conflict. US-China Rivalry as Inter-Imperial Rivalry Today, there is a lot of talk about a ‘New Cold War’ between China and the US, a Cold War between liberal democracy and authoritarianism. But we all know that China did not become authoritarian just two years ago. The whole establish- ment of the US has been very happy about Chinese authoritarianism for a long time. Right two weeks after the massacre in Tiananmen in June 1989, on June 20, George W.H. Bush (1989) wrote a secret letter to Deng Xiaoping. The letter was saying that the US was not so mad about the Communist Party sending the army to shoot its people. Bush told Deng that the US was only a 200-year-old country, and China was a 5000-year-old country [sic] with great contributions to world civilization, so the Chinese leaders were wise and knew what was best for the Chinese people. Bush assured Deng that Tiananmen was not going to stand From the Geopolitics of Inter-Imperial Rivalry to the Geo-Ideology 89 in the way of the great commercial relationship between the US and China. If there had been an ideology-based Cold War between the US and China, it would have started 30 years ago. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, there was always a vocal voice in the US intelligence-diplomatic-military establishment to try framing China as the next major competitor of the US after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This talk about a new Cold War with China has never ceased ever since the end of the old Cold War. However, over the 1990s and the early 2000s, this kind of instinct in the intelligence-diplomatic-military establishment was checked by US corporate lob- bying against whatever policy was not friendly with China. For example, the Clinton administration was dominated by human rights idealists like Madeleine Albright, Christopher Warren, Winston Lord in its first year. These human rights idealists in the administration joined hands with anti-communist cold warriors on the right and anti-trade leftists like Bernie Sanders in Congress to support adding human rights conditions on Chinese goods’ low-tariff access to the US market in 1993, reversing a free trade with China policy supported by the two preceding Re- publican administrations and opposed fiercely by organized labor (Hung, 2020). Then in 1993–94, a power struggle emerged between the State Department and Wall Street over this US-China trade policy. In 1993, Clinton brought in Robert Rubin from Wall Street to become the first director of the newly cre- ated National Economic Council. And at some point, Robert Rubin and Winston Lord feuded openly through the media over China policy. Robert Rubin said adding human rights conditions to China’s low-tariff access to the US market was unwise, and Mr. Winston Lord said it was working and the US should keep the human rights conditions. In the end, the State Department lost the fight, and Wall Street took control of China’s policy. Wall Street would not have won this battle over US-China policy had it not been for the aggressive US corporate lobbying mobilized by the Chinese gov- ernment. Back in 1993, China was in an economic crisis. Its economy was over- heating, and there was a balance of payment crisis. The inflation rate hit 25%, and the foreign exchange reserve of China was evaporating. Zhu Rongji was the vice-premier of China at that time and was the person who ran the economy. In October 1993, Zhu talked at a high-level rural cadres conference in Beijing about the dire situation of the economy. The Soviet Union just collapsed not long ago, and the CCP was confronted with economic chaos created by Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour that invoked the overexpansion of debt-financed in- vestment, a credit crunch, and a fiscal crisis of the state. Zhu Rongji told the rural cadres at the conference that China needed to get out of the crisis by a reorientation to export-oriented development. He also reassured everybody that they would eventually overcome all these difficulties, as he had just met with the boss of Morgan Stanley, who guaranteed that it would fully back the Chinese economy (Hung, 2022b; see also Hung, 2015: chap. 3). In the 1990s, a lot of China’s state-owned enterprises were privatized and floated in overseas stock markets like Hong Kong and New York. They relied 90 Political Modernity and Beyond on Wall Street banks, accounting, and auditing firms for their IPO. It was a huge business for Wall Street firms. So, the privatization of Chinese SOEs over the 1990s was grounded on a CCP-Wall Street synergy. This explains why Wall Street has been the earliest and keenest advocate for the CCP’s interest in Washington after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989. However, besides Wall Street, not many other corporations were interested in expanding into China as of 1993. For example, Apple was busy expanding its manufacturing facilities in California and Colorado back then. Many labor- intensive manufacturers were looking at expansion into Mexico via the emerg- ing NAFTA and did not initially think of China as their new frontier. But in 1993–94, Beijing surgically targeted some of the most politically influential US corporations to promise them market access and drilling rights (in the case of energy companies) to turn them into ‘proxy lobbyists’ for China. One example is Caterpillar, which was offered huge market share in China, which saw a huge surge in demand for mining and construction equipment. Another example is AT&T. China enlisted AT&T to lobby for its trade interest by promising that AT&T was going to have a big role to play in China’s telecom- munication market. These corporations, motivated by the promises of Beijing, lobbied in earnest against the human rights conditions for Chinese goods’ low- tariff access to the US market. They successfully forced the Clinton adminis- tration and congressional Democrats to turn on themselves in 1994, revoking the human rights conditions on China trade that they enthusiastically supported just a year ago. From then on, Chinese exports enjoyed unconditional low-tariff access to the US market, paving the way for China’s eventual accession to the WTO in 2001. Up to 2000, many US corporations were motivated by the prom- ises and expectations Beijing offered them to become a huge countervailing force against any instinct of the intelligence-diplomatic-military establishment to cast China as an enemy and to start a new Cold War with China. After China got what it wanted in terms of US policy, China changed its pol- icy to make sure foreign companies like AT&T could not have majority stakes and leadership in China’s telecommunication sector. Beijing has also started to cultivate its state-owned telecommunication giants like China Mobile and China Telecom to dominate the market and marginalize foreign countries. This situa- tion became much more apparent in 2010 and thereafter. For example, there was one company that I was tracking that had been lob- bying against any Congress bill that accused China of currency manipulation in the early 2000s until 2009 and 2010. However, after 2010, it found itself the target of China’s mercantilist policy and a victim of China’s forced technology transfer policy. It suddenly changed its position in its Congress lobbying. The same company suddenly started to support the Congress bill that accused China of currency manipulation. There were a lot of examples of this. Many companies shifted their position around 2010. A legal scholar said there was an ‘anti-China corporate insurgency’ in the US. Even not actively From the Geopolitics of Inter-Imperial Rivalry to the Geo-Ideology 91 lobbying against China, many corporations used to be vocally lobbying against bills that were violating China’s interests now sit on their hand and are not do- ing anything for China anymore. This is why, in recent years, so many bills that irritated Beijing, like all the bills in support of Taiwan and denouncing hu- man rights abuses in Xinjiang, managed to pass in a polarizing Congress with a unanimous bipartisan vote. The databases I’m assembling contain many indicators that consistently show that 2010 is the turning point. The question that follows is, why 2010? In the end, it was the global financial crisis in 2008 and the stimulus in China in 2009 and 2010 that triggered the shift. For example, Caterpillar used to have a large share of the construction machines market in China. Then, the leading Chinese state-owned construction machine-making companies, which used to have joint venture relations with Caterpillar, copied the design of its products and became its competitor. After the 2008 global financial crisis, the Chinese economy tanked, and Beijing immediately rolled out a stimulus program. The financial stimulus was offered mostly to state-owned companies in the form of low-interest loans from state banks so that they could aggressively expand their production capacity and payrolls. Many Chinese state-owned construction machine makers obtained these credits to ramp up their production of knock-off versions of Caterpillar ma- chines and sold them at much lower prices. These Chinese companies, equipped with state banks’ bottomless credits and tech secrets they obtained from their for- mer US partner, squeezed out their American counterpart in the Chinese market in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. In 2011, when Hu Jintao visited the White House and had a joint press conference with Obama, Obama complained in Hu’s face for the first time about the unfair treatment that American companies faced in the Chinese market. It was the first time an American President raised the importance of a ‘level playing field’ in the Chinese market. Then things got worse after 2012. It got worse not because Xi Jinping came to power but because the rebound of the Chinese economy from the stimulus tapered off and China entered a long slowdown, showing symptoms of an over- accumulation crisis. Beijing used to resort to cheap credits from state banks to pump up the production capacity of all sectors, but now the Chinese market is saturated. The high-speed rail is a good example. The industry had a huge capacity to build a high-speed rail system, but by 2012, they simply ran out of new lines that made economic sense to build within China. Many state com- panies buoyed by the stimulus ran out of order. Revenue growth of Chinese state-owned companies tanked in 2011 and 2012. At the same time, Xi Jinping started the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In many senses, the BRI was an at- tempt to create an overseas market for state enterprises to export their excess capacity. This BRI was basically to lend money to other developing countries to make them buy Chinese products or hire Chinese companies. For example, the annual reports of China’s leading construction machine companies show that after 2012, they successfully climbed out of their profit crisis, and their revenue 92 Political Modernity and Beyond growth soared. In those reports, they explicitly thanked Xi Jinping and the BRI, as most of their orders now came from countries involved in the BRI. These Chinese state-owned companies were squeezing out American companies in the Chinese market, and now they were squeezing out American companies in the international market in the developing world (Hung, 2022b). As such, the new competition from Chinese corporations was the impetus behind the American corporations’ shift on China. Even in finance, US banks were facing competition from Chinese state banks, which started to be active in the developing world, while China did not open its financial sector to foreign banks as much as it promised when it joined the WTO. US corporations started to feel hurt by China. This is the underlying material force behind the US-China rivalry. The Trump administration did not begin the rivalry; it only continued it, which had already started in the Obama administration. In 2012, Washington began the Pivot to Asia policy, reorienting a large part of US military and diplomatic forces to Asia in response to China’s increasing aggressiveness in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Obama-Clinton also pushed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement. The pur- pose of the TPP was to isolate China economically and pressure China to change its economic policy if it wanted to join. When Trump got elected, many people in China, including the nationalist tabloids and official scholars, were excited and glad that it was not Hillary Clinton who was going to continue the Pivot to Asia policy and the TPP. They expected that Trump would reset the US-China policy and strike a deal with China that could relieve the US pressure on China. In the end, it was much worse. The underlying structural change in US-China re- lations remained the same, though the method is different. Obama was using the TPP as a carrot to lure China to change its economic policy for the sake of US corporate interests. Now, Trump used the stick of tariffs. But the goal was the same. Behind the increasing willingness of the US to counter China’s economic and geopolitical expansion from the Obama to Trump administration is the same structural condition confronting American corporations. The dynamics of the US-China rivalry is an inter-imperial rivalry driven by inter-capitalist competition. Competition for the world market could soon turn into intensifying clashes of spheres of influence and even war. It is not new. It resembles a lot of the dynamics as described in Lenin’s Imperialism, the High- est Stage of Capitalism. In the book, published in 1917, Lenin talked about the competition between German and British banks to lend to Latin American countries to build railroads and to ensure the projects would rely on German or British supplies. This is just like talking about the competition between China and the US to offer credits to Belt and Road countries to build infrastructure. In the early twentieth century, inter-capitalist competition led to inter-imperial rivalry, culminating in world wars. As such, the intensifying US-China rivalry today is not driven by the ideo- logical difference between the two countries but by the increasing competition From the Geopolitics of Inter-Imperial Rivalry to the Geo-Ideology 93 between Chinese capital and US capital worldwide after China started to aggres- sively export its overaccumulated capital to the rest of the world in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008. This intensifying US-China rivalry resembles the long UK-Germany conflict from the turn of the twentieth century to the WWII. In recent years, non-Marxist political economists, including a banker (Knox, 2019), a Wall Street Journal columnist (Stevens, 2018), and a US Treasury economist (Austin, 2011), have noticed Imperialism’s relevance to the under- standing of contemporary US-China relations. The political economy behind the UK-Germany antagonism in the early twentieth century resembles the dynamics underlying the US-China tension today in many ways. Rereading Lenin might offer us insights into whether and how to prevent an unavoidable inter-capitalist competition from escalating into an inter-imperial war. Historical Parallel Since the late nineteenth century, Germany had become a major capitalist power searching for overseas markets and outlets for its capital export. Without many formal colonies like the UK had, German capital export was led not by foreign direct investment but by loans of German banks that supported infrastructure projects, predominantly railroad construction, in Central and Southern Europe and Latin America, among other places. Borrowers of German loans were obliged to procure German products for their projects. German bankers com- peted with British and French banks in lending to Central Europe and Latin America. Paragraphs in Lenin’s work discussing this process are as if it is mak- ing references to China’s BRI today. For example, The capital-exporting countries are nearly always able to obtain certain ‘ad- vantages,’ the character of which throws light on the peculiarity of the epoch of finance capital and monopoly…. Finance capital has created the epoch of monopolies, and monopolies introduce everywhere monopolist principles: the utilization of ‘connections’ for profitable transactions takes the place of com- petition on the open market. The most usual thing is to stipulate that part of the loan granted shall be spent on purchases in the creditor country, particularly on orders for war materials, or for ships, etc. One such Germany-supported infrastructure project serving German busi- ness interests and German geopolitical ambition was the Berlin-Baghdad railroad proposed by Wilhelm II. The project connected Germany, the Austria- Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire and cut into the British and Russian spheres of influence in the Near East, which became an increasingly important energy source when the world was transforming from coal to oil power. The railroad also put Serbia at the epicenter of the inter-imperial rivalry, contributing significantly to the outbreak of WWI. After the WWI, Germany tried to internationalize the Reichsmark, its cur- rency, in Central and Southern Europe. It was to facilitate the export of German 94 Political Modernity and Beyond capital to those places by increasing the use of Reichsmarks and creating a Reichsmarks bloc among those countries at the expense of the British pound sterling (Milward, 1985). This intensified UK and German competitions, first in the financial-monetary sphere and then in the political and military sphere, over Central and Eastern Europe. This policy resembles Beijing’s attempt to internationalize the RMB and create an RMB economic bloc at the USD’s expense. The precedents of inter-capitalist competition turning into an inter-imperial rivalry between the UK and Germany suggest that rivalry between the US and China is more likely to escalate than not, maybe even leading to wars. Many observers have already noticed the comparability of China’s sovereignty claim over areas controlled by US allies (Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, South China Sea, Taiwan, etc.) to Germany’s irredentism in the early twentieth century (Roy, 2019). It is noteworthy that many influential official scholars in China have openly compared China’s foreign policy agenda of ‘great revival’ to Germany a century earlier. Works of German statist thinkers like the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt became a sensation among prominent scholar-officials in Beijing, having the ears of the party-state leaders. The clash between China, as a rising empire, and the US, as an established one, looks increasingly like the Germany-UK conflict in the early twentieth century. The parallel between US-China rivalry and the UK-Germany one a century apart does not stop at the political economies behind the rivalries. The public discourses on the rivalries in the two eras are strikingly similar, too. In mid- 1914, a British economist (Crammond, 1914: 806) spoke in great confidence that economic reciprocity and integration between the British and German Em- pires determined that the two countries would not be likely to go into conflict. So far as the existing economic relations of the two empires with each other are concerned, we may look to the immediate future with confidence. At the present time it may be affirmed that their true economic interests are reciprocal rather than antagonistic. It is ironic that the Great War broke out less than half a year after this state- ment was made. This statement disturbingly resembles today’s judgment that the economic integration between the US and China would eventually avoid conflict between the two. In the early twentieth century, an apologist of German foreign policy pointed to the unjust international system and the tyranny of established powers to jus- tify German aggressiveness as a merely rightful act to claim its rightful place in the world. For example, Richard von Kühlmann, a former German Minister of Foreign Affairs during WWI and defender of Hitler’s foreign policy on the eve of WWII, wrote in 1933 in a US journal to defend the increasing aggressive- ness of Germany, Italy, and Japan as ‘three latecomers in the world’ in terms of their unfair treatment by the UK and US as established powers. He pointed out that ‘[m]uch of the unrest abroad in the world is traced to the reluctance of old- established nations to share good things with newcomers’ (von Kühlmann, 1933). From the Geopolitics of Inter-Imperial Rivalry to the Geo-Ideology 95 In 1934, von Kühlmann (1934) further wrote in Foreign Affairs to blame France’s intransigence and injustice for the growing German-French territorial dispute over the Saar: Chancellor Hitler, passionately adhering to his program of promoting peace (which has found strong expression in the German-Polish decla- ration of January 26, 1934) has attempted in his conversations with the French Ambassador, M. François-Ponçet, to open a direct Franco-German discussion on the Saar question. But Paris opinion, almost morbidly dis- trustful, has not been favorable to such a course. von Kühlmann even blamed the ‘the intellectual (to a great extent Jewish) German emigrés’ in Paris for encouraging France’s antagonism toward Ger- many. This rhetoric resembles the view of Beijing’s apologists today that the Chinese regime is peace-loving. Any of its assertiveness over territorial disputes with its Asian neighbors (in the South China Sea, for example) stemmed from the unjust intransigence of the US and its allies and that the Chinese, Uyghurs, and Tibetan dissidents in exile were fanning antagonism against China and dam- aging US-China relation. The comparability between the US-China conflict today and the UK-Germany conflict a century earlier does not mean that war is inevitable. What is different in the twenty-first century is that now there are various global governing institu- tions over which the US, China, and their allies could struggle for influence and resolve their conflicts instead of settling scores through war. Such struggles have already started. US-China competition over influences in the UN, the WTO, the WHO, etc., has been growing over the last decade. Moreover, as Hobson points out, capitalist powers need to export capital to seek overseas profits because they failed to secure higher income and, hence, the purchasing power of the working class at home to absorb the excess produc- tive capacity in the domestic economies. If domestic redistribution advances, the capitalist powers would see a smaller urge to export capital, hence a smaller incentive to carve out their sphere of influence and collide with other powers. In China’s context, if Beijing’s attempt to rebalance the economy by boosting household income and household consumption succeeds, the Chinese political economy’s profitability crisis would be alleviated. Chinese enterprises would, hence, be less prone to overseas investment. The same applies to redistributive reform vs. capital export through the pursuit of neoliberal globalization in the US. To be sure, such a rebalancing act is easier said than done. Based on our theoretical understanding of China’s capitalist development and US political economy, combined with a comparison with historical prec- edent, we are certain that the US-China rivalry will only go up in the years to come (Hung, 2021). The mediation by legitimate global governing insti- tutions and the rebalancing of China’s and the US’s economy are two ap- proaches that could help alleviate the conflicts. Only time can tell whether 96 Political Modernity and Beyond such approaches would succeed and whether they could successfully avert more deadly conflict. One alarming trend is that while the political elite in the US and its allies are prone to portray the US-China rivalry as a conflict between democracy and au- tocracy, the Chinese state elite, from Xi Jinping to many establishment scholars, as well as the Russian elite, are framing the contest as an ultimate civilizational conflict between communalist East and individualist West. Such essentializing and polarizing representations of the conflict, though remote from the true ori- gins of the conflict, do foment a malicious influence on the unfolding of the con- flict by making it more irresolvable than it actually is. This influence increases the likelihood of militarization of the conflict. Civilizational Ideology of Asian Autocrats With the rapid economic growth of the so-called Confucianist circle, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and part of Southeast Asia in the 1960s onward, a social scientific literature emerged in the 1980s that tried to use these cases of ‘Asian Tigers’ to refute Weber’s thesis about the affinity be- tween capitalist growth and Protestantism and the lack of such affinity between capitalism and Confucianism. This literature asserts that Confucianism is a functional equivalent of Calvinism in creating a work ethic essential to capitalist takeoff. As such, Confucianism was the main reason for East Asia’s economic success. Such literature usually sees Confucianism as some omnipotent ether that embraces all of East Asia and is defined by some static, ahistorical cultural traits such as collectivism, family values, obedience to authority, discipline, hos- tility to individual enjoyment, etc. Some argue that while the Confucianist ethic of disciplined hard work was channeled toward seeking excellence in examina- tion in imperial times, it became redirected to entrepreneurial activities after global capitalism incorporated East Asian economies and conferred the Confu- cianist ethic a new goal to strive for. Some argue that the Confucianist emphasis on collective goods over individual enjoyment made East Asian capitalism more sustainable and superior to Western capitalism based on individualism (Bell, 2010; Berger, 1988; Poznanski, 2017; Redding, 1993). Reducing all societies of the East Asian region to a few fixed Confucian- ist tenets is problematic and emblematic of the orientalist epistemology. It is particularly so after all East Asian societies had undergone prolonged hybridi- zation of local cultures with global ones, including liberalism and Christian- ity. Whether Japan and South Korea, which both deliberately de-Sinicized and strived to establish their own cultural identities vis-à-vis Chinese Confucianism, is open to question. And this literature even takes Weber wrong. Weber discusses how Confucianist passivity generated a space for Taoist magics to fill in and pre- vail. It was the irrationality and superstition of Taoism, not Confucianism per se, which hindered capitalist growth in China. This late twentieth-century literature From the Geopolitics of Inter-Imperial Rivalry to the Geo-Ideology 97 on Confucianism and East Asian capitalism ignores other local cultural tradi- tions, let alone imported ones. While historically, there had been a branch of Confucianism in China since the sixteenth century that advocated individual reflexibility, horizontal alle- giance of free subjects, and constraint on autocratic power, the recent revival of interest in Confucianism in the People’s Republic of China and elsewhere in Asia reflected a renewed essentialization of Confucianism that converged with the anti-Western political project to legitimize perennial authoritarian rule in Asia. In the 1980s, Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia and Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, both authoritarian leaders, asserted that Asian values emphasizing communitarianism over individualism, obedience to authority over individual freedom, work ethic and thrift over consumption underline the authoritarian capitalism that made Asia thrive. They generalized that these cultural values were shared by all of Confucianism, Hinduism, and Islamism. At the same time, conservative scholars in China resisted the call for total Westernization and po- litical opening by the liberal intellectuals in the 1980s by borrowing the Asian values idea to argue that strengthening, not weakening, the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party would warrant social harmony and continuous economic growth. This school of thought was dubbed neo-authoritarianism at the time. It became the monopolistic position of all official intellectuals after the CCP crushed the 1989 democratic movement and the liberal intellectuals behind it (Chia, 2011; Sautman, 1992; Thompson, 2001). This justification of authoritarian rule by the self-orientalizing conception of a static and monolithic Asian or Chinese culture was a repetition of Chiang Kai-shek’s Confucian fascism advocating the necessity of authoritarian rule and the promotion of collectivist values in China in China’s Destiny in the 1940s, dubbed China’s Mein Kampf by liberals in both China and the West. Just as Chiang’s line of thoughts was aligned with the ideas of many Western schol- ars like Frank Goodnow, who believed liberal democracy did not suit Chinese culture and China needed to maintain authoritarian rule to warrant stability and economic growth, the late twentieth-century idea of Asian values was echoed by some leading thinkers in the West. For example, in Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), he predicted the end of the Cold War would not lead to the global triumph of Western liberalism as Francis Fukuyama (1992) claimed. Instead, it would pave the way for an inter- civilizational conflict grounded on irreconcilable differences among cultural values and political systems. Huntington argues that the ‘Sinic’ sphere, which valued collectivism and stat- ism, would never see the success of any liberal democratizing attempts. He pre- dicts that such a sphere, empowered by rapid economic growth, would become more assertive and join hands with the Islamic world, which also embraced col- lectivism and statism and enjoyed a demographic advantage, to topple Western hegemony. To Huntington, the democracy promotion agenda of the universalist 98 Political Modernity and Beyond liberals is destined to fail in the Sinic and Islamic worlds, and the West should accommodate a collectivist and statist Asia in international politics while purify- ing its domestic Christian identity. With the coming of the China boom and the increasing assertiveness of Beijing’s geopolitical posture vis-à-vis the US-led Western alliance, Chinese official scholars became ever more confident in claiming a Confucianist-civ- ilizational foundation of China’s authoritarian system. They emphasize the system’s superiority in delivering rapid economic growth to stifle internal and external advocacy for liberalization. They speak of not only a domestic Con- fucianist authoritarian order but also a Confucianist China-centered tributary system as the new foundation of China’s foreign policy. Most of such intellectu- als openly embrace and promote the anti-liberalism and statism of Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt (Chang, 2020; Chu, 2020; Hung, 2022a; Mana, 2023; Veg, 2020; Zheng, 2012). The strengthening of the Confucian-fascist self-conception of the Chinese state was most manifest during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020–22. Beijing resorted to the top-down imposition of a complete city lockdown to stop the spread of the virus. Such a measure, known as the dynamic zero COVID ap- proach, eventually led to widespread discontent, protests, and an unsustainable fiscal burden on local governments, so much so that Beijing hastily and disor- derly ended such an approach in the spring of 2023. However, in the middle of the pandemic, Beijing propaganda praised how such a policy was much superior to the liberal approach in Western countries, which experienced an explosion in case numbers and deaths. Government propaganda blatantly attributed the effi- ciency and success of the Chinese approach to China’s collectivist culture. Such collectivist culture and the political system built upon it explains the success of Communist China in all other aspects, as a leading author (Wang, 2020) in the CCP nationalist tabloid newspaper Global Times asserts, Western media has taken a satirical tone when reporting on the Chinese government’s mass mobilization capabilities. Many have failed to under- stand why the government mobilized millions of people in such a short period and why almost everyone cooperated. The underlying reason is that Chinese culture is collectivist, and such unity strengthens the abil- ity to collaborate and contribute to large-scale movements with greater efficiency. The concept is the polar opposite of what Western society has always been advocating – individualism. It is because of collectivism that the Chinese feel like they are part of something much bigger. In a rarely seen article, Bloomberg acknowl- edged that ‘the idea of sacrificing one’s self for a greater, national goal is deeply-embedded in Chinese culture.’ This culture emphasizes the needs and goals of people as a whole over the needs and desires of each and every individual. So, we see the Chinese public’s endurance during the From the Geopolitics of Inter-Imperial Rivalry to the Geo-Ideology 99 outbreak – they sacrifice their freedom of movement and suffer personal inconveniences in exchange for a quick end to the fight against the virus. Such sacrifices are not only good for an individual but also benefit oth- ers and the entire country. In the fight against the virus, the Chinese have instinctively placed social harmony above personal preferences. ……. For decades, mass mobilization has been a key advantage of the Chi- nese system. It has accompanied the Communist Party of China through revolution, state-building, as well as reforms and opening-up. As such, Beijing’s propaganda machine framed the competition and conflict between China and the US/the West as an East-West civilizational conflict be- tween collectivism and individualism. Such framing does have its audience out- side China. Martin Jacques (2009: 398–99), who blows the triumphalist horn of China becoming the new ruler of the world, sees the coming dominance of Confucianist collectivism over Western individualism: Confucian teachings underpinned the conduct of the state and the nature of Chinese statecraft during the dynastic period and are presently expe- riencing something of a revival. The continuing influence of Confucian culture is reflected in the highly moralistic tone that the Chinese govern- ment frequently adopts in its attitudes and pronouncements. The pro- found differences in the values of China… in contrast to those of Western societies – including a community-based collectivism rather than indi- vidualism, a far more family-orientated and family-rooted culture, and much less attachment to the rule of law and the use of law to resolve conflict – will remain pervasive and, with China’s growing influence, ac- quire a global significance. In Putin’s Russia, establishment intellectuals increasingly see the country’s fate hinges on its existential choice between the collectivist East and individ- ualist West. Aleksandr Dugin, dubbed Putin’s brain in finding the theoretical foundation of Putin’s imperial expansion, advocates Russia’s delinking from the decadent, liberal, and individualist West to reinstate its Asiatic roots originating from the Mongol conquest that allegedly laid the foundation of the Russian Em- pire as a Eurasian, Mongol-Turkic instead of a European Empire (Klump, n.d.; Shlapentokh, 2007). Many mainstream academics have echoed Dugin’s views in a more diluted form. For example, economist, mathematician, and Sinophile Vladamir Popov (2021) remarks during the Covid-19 pandemic that The main contradiction of the modern era, and indeed of all human history, is not between capitalism and socialism, and not even between authori- tarianism and democracy, but between individualism and collectivism….’ 100 Political Modernity and Beyond Asian values’ is the priority of the interests of the community (village, en- terprise, nation, world community) over the interests of the individual… [F]or the first time in modern history we are dealing with successful catch-up development based on illiberal, if not anti-liberal principles – on ‘Asian values’, collectivist in their essence institutions. After the collapse of the USSR, the Chinese, or rather, East Asian, development model is gaining more and more adherents in developing countries… Comparative economic and social dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-21 is another proof of the advantages of the collectivist model. Losing in the competition with the Chinese economic and social model in many ways, the West will probably try to create a united front of states, regardless of whether these states are liberal and democratic or not, to contain the rise of China and the proliferation of the collectivist model. The West will probably try to seduce Russia with the lifting of sanctions and even the possibility of joining the Western club of ‘civilized countries’…. If Russia and other countries that the West considers authoritarian agree to such a compromise, the rise of China and the spread of the East Asian model may be slowed down, but not stopped. But if Russia ties its fate to China and the new collectivist model, the decline of the West could happen faster than expected. It is remarkable that such contemporary orientalist projection of an epic East- West, collectivist-individualist showdown mirrors the orientalist projection of the coming showdown between the free Occident and the despotic Orient, as a reenactment of the ancient Greece-Persia war, as narrated by Hegel ([1822] 2001: 276): In the case before us, the interest of the World’s History hung trembling in the balance. Oriental despotism – a world united under one lord and sovereign – on the one side, and separate states – insignificant in extent and resources, but animated by free individuality – on the other side, stood front to front in array of battle. Never in History has the superiority of spiritual power over material bulk – and that of no contemptible amount – been made so gloriously manifest. The orientalist, essentialist conception of Chinese or Asian culture and the use of it to justify authoritarian rule vis-à-vis a liberal West is practically and conceptually problematic. In fact, every modern culture experienced a tug-of- war between individualism and collectivism. Notably, the center of twentieth- century fascism, as a form of collectivist, totalitarian system, was 1930s Germany, where liberal philosophers Kant and Hegel brought the worship of oc- cidental freedom and the critique of oriental despotism to a new height. Taiwan and South Korea, early poster children of Asian values and authoritarianism, From the Geopolitics of Inter-Imperial Rivalry to the Geo-Ideology 101 have swiftly and spontaneously transitioned to stable, functioning liberal de- mocracy. In the Freedom House global freedom index, these two liberal Asian countries often rank as high as or higher than many Western countries, including the US (Freedom House, 2023). 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In the United States, the Trump administration has advocated for border walls and toyed with the idea of annexing Greenland, whether for strategic military positioning in the Arctic or potential economic benefits. Canada is also being cast as the ‘51st state’, while aggressive tariff policies are disrupting traditional alliances. In the digi- tal world, territorial rebranding is a manifestation of current political disputes and neo-imperialist whims. Tech giants such as Google have caved in to US President Trump, ‘redrawing’ borders and renaming the Gulf of Mexico, now rebranded as the ‘Gulf of America’ to cater to US Google Map users. Across the Atlantic, Vladimir Putin’s manoeuvres in Ukraine suggest renewed imperialist ambitions, leading to territorial and border expansion. At the same time, Europe is coming to terms with its historical legacy as the geopolitical centre shifts to Asia (Mahbubani, 2018; see also Hung’s chapter in this book). Achille Mbembe (2017) warned that ‘Europe is no longer the centre of gravity of the world’, a re- orientation that creates both opportunities and daunting dangers. More recently, Slavoj Žižek (2025) has taken a similar view, diagnosing Europe as a continent torn by the conflicting pressures of humanitarian ideals, economic security and cultural anxieties. Advocating ‘principled pragmatism’, Žižek (2025) has pro- vocatively captured the tense climate in which border crises unfold. Indeed, contemporary border disruptions, whether caused by human dis- placement, war or environmental crises, generally interweave modern ideals of legitimate statehood with older imperial logics. Today, the previously unchal- lenged centres of the world may be undergoing change in response to new pres- sures. However, the ‘imperial frames’ inherited from past domination – which persist as racialised views of singularity/alterity (Hafiz, 2019) – are consistently reproduced. The European Union, usually referred to as ‘Fortress Europe’, has often been accused of prioritising security over humanitarian principles. The closing of borders, it is widely argued (Squire, 2020), is turning the Mediter- ranean into a graveyard for African migrants. DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-9 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-9 104 Political Modernity and Beyond Borders in the modern sense of political, fiscal and customs jurisdictions did not fully crystallise until the nineteenth century (Maier, 2016), when the rise of colonial empires and the transformation of labour led to the visible drawing of territorial lines. In 1893, the historian Frederick J. Turner wrote about the centrality of borders in American history, defining the frontier as ‘the line of the most rapid and effective Americanisation’. For Turner, the frontier was a meet- ing point between savagery and civilisation, a mobile place where the settler came face to face with nature. Far from being an archaic notion, the ultimate connection between frontiers and imperial dynamics (empires) remains useful for interpreting sovereignty, expansion and human movement (Walton, 2021). In this chapter, I pose the following central question: Are contemporary bor- der crises best understood through the lens of modernity, or does the concept of empire offer a more insightful approach to capturing the historical depth of the present? Modernity is often portrayed as a rationalising project, but decolonial scholars such as Aníbal Quijano (2007) critically reframe this concept by empha- sising the inseparability of modernity’s universal ideals from racial hierarchies and colonial domination. Julian Go (2016) further argues that imperial relation- ships were fundamental to the development of modernity itself – an insight that is often overlooked by mainstream social theory, which tends to depict moder- nity as a self-contained European phenomenon, thereby obscuring its imperial foundations. Conversely, the imperial perspective1 highlights a consistent power dynamic involving territory, finance, structure and technology that continues to define contemporary governance. Meanwhile, José Maurício Domingues (see his chapter in this volume) identifies a new phase of modernity that is chaotic and fractured, emerging from neoliberal contradictions. Rather than resolving previ- ous tensions, neoliberalism intensifies them amid the weakening of emancipatory possibilities. Nevertheless, the normative ideals of modernity – freedom, equality and solidarity – persist as critical resources, supported by discussions of alterna- tive modernities and emerging ‘post-empire’ frameworks (Walton, 2021). Building on these debates, this chapter argues that empire and imperialism should not be viewed as mere by-products of modernity, but rather as distinct, enduring logics of global power. While modernity presents itself as a rational- ising project characterised by universalism and legal order, empire functions through hierarchical, exclusionary, racialised and territorially embedded forms of governance, which are marked by dispossession and militarised enclosure (Mann, 2003). Although Hardt and Negri (2000, 2019) offer an influential con- ceptualisation of empire as deterritorialised and globally networked, this chap- ter emphasises the importance of imperialism as a material, spatially grounded logic of power. It highlights territorial sovereignty and state borders as central elements, rather than mere metaphors, of global governance. Integrating Harsha Walia’s (2013) concept of border imperialism, the chap- ter illustrates how contemporary exclusionary, dispossessive and militarised practices manifest explicitly at state borders (both physical and digital). Walia Empire Reloaded 105 positions borders as strategic sites where imperial governance operates materi- ally, racially and politically rather than as mere geographical demarcations. This argument is illustrated by examining two interconnected phenomena: firstly, ter- ritorial sovereignty under threat from revanchist wars, and secondly, the emer- gence of digital borders, biometric surveillance and digital control. These dual dimensions – territorial and digital – expose profound contradictions. Some scholars interpret current border crises as failures of ‘modern’ international law (e.g. Anghie, 2005). But others, including the present analysis, view them as contemporary manifestations of imperialist practices deeply embedded in his- torical patterns of conquest and subjugation. Therefore, the militarisation of bor- ders, the resurgence of ethnic nationalism or the rise of far-right populism are not anomalies. But quite the opposite: they are expressions of imperial logics deeply embedded within modern governance. The following sections elaborate on the promises and contradictions of mo- dernity, as well as the structural persistence of empire and imperialism. By re- visiting these theoretical debates, I examine territorial and digital borders as exemplary cases. Rethinking Modernity: From Universality to Imperial Entanglements Few ideas have had as much impact on sociological theory as the notion of modernity, which persists as a dual-edged concept that blends descriptive and normative claims (Chernilo, 2011: 10). It can either describe a historical epoch common to all contemporary societies, or it can refer to the specific institutional and organisational processes that define ‘modern’ social orders (Yack, 1997), often presented as a universalising project of progress, rights and rationality (Giddens, 1990; Mouzakitis, 2017). Classical theorists such as Marx, Durkheim and Weber – later systematised by Parsons – viewed modernity as a universal trajectory originating in Europe and spreading globally through processes such as industrialisation, bureaucratisation and secularisation (Giddens, 1990: 1). However, this teleological and Eurocentric narrative of modernisation has been strongly contested, particularly due to its disregard for the colonial entangle- ments and imperial exclusions that underpinned its development. In this regard, Yack (1997) cautions against fetishising modernity as a coherent entity. Societal and economic practices frequently evolve amidst tension rather than harmony. We are thus faced with a dilemma. A narrow definition of modernity risks Eurocentrism, while a broad definition risks analytical dilution. As Cooper (2005: 132) notes, the ghost of Talcott Parsons still hovers over much writing about modernity. Once the fixity of his pattern variables is dismantled and mo- dernity is approached as a set of multiple trajectories, the intuitive salience of the label becomes unstable: ‘modernity is everything that history made; moder- nity is everywhere the constructed relationship of the modern to the traditional’. 106 Political Modernity and Beyond Modernity is difficult to define, but for the purposes of this chapter, let us con- tinue to consider borders. Often traced back to the Peace of Westphalia (1648) and the emergence of nation-states, modernity is associated with the rationalisation of social and polit- ical life, the establishment of secular governance and the expansion of industrial capitalism. Regulated borders epitomise this expansion (Sassen, 2014). From the outset, however, modern sovereignty was not a purely European invention. Rather, as European powers extended their reach – in territory and rule – colonial empires took shape, superimposing border regimes on colonised regions. Un- der colonialism, indigenous governance structures and social arrangements were blatantly disregarded (Chakrabarty, 2000; Said, 1978). Thus, in the long nineteenth century (from 1789 to 1914, as suggested by Hobsbawm, 1962),2 European modernity was intimately linked to imperial structures and built on imperial foundations, with imperialism acting as a driving force for expansion. The extraction of resources, control of labour and strict regulation of mobility across vast colonial territories were part of the apparatus of modernity (Fanon, 1961; Quijano, 2000). Many of today’s borders were forged through this colonial process, with postcolonial states often inheriting the surveillance and contain- ment strategies of their colonial predecessors (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013). The core paradox of modernity is revealed through colonial history and its postcolonial ramifications. Although it espouses universal ideals of citizenship and governance, it simultaneously produces domination, exclusion and racism. Even after the formal end of colonial rule, many of the old methods of classi- fying and controlling labour and migration, which were originally used in ex- plicitly imperial contexts, have been repurposed by modern nation-states. For example, Balibar (2002) has observed that divisions rooted in race and class endure over time, with contemporary border politics often manifesting the insti- tutional embedding of colonial legacies. Various approaches to dealing with these tensions have been offered by dif- ferent scholars. Postcolonial and decolonial theorists argue that modernity’s universalist aspirations are inextricably linked to its colonial past. Fanon (1961) argued that modernity’s universal values rarely extend to the colonised or ra- cialised. Similarly, Quijano (2000, 2007) claimed that the core structures of modernity are still profoundly shaped by the racial and economic hierarchies established during colonialism. These racial exclusions influence border gov- ernance and demonstrate the ongoing presence of imperial necropolitical forces (Mbembe, 2017). These critiques emphasise the discrepancy between moder- nity’s proclaimed inclusivity and its entrenched patterns of discrimination. This paradox has led some to proclaim the end of modernity and the begin- ning of a postmodern era. However, Domingues (see his chapter in this vol- ume) challenges this perspective, offering an alternative approach. Modernity is presented as a global formation that unfolds through structured phases: the liberal-republican phase; the state-welfare phase; the neoliberal phase; and a Empire Reloaded 107 potential fourth phase characterised by fragmentation and intensified contradic- tions. This framework emphasises the adaptability of modernity and its ongoing ability to influence global hierarchies. Meanwhile, others assert that modernity has unfolded not as a homogeneous process, but rather as a series of distinct trajectories. Scholars such as Eisenstadt (2000) advocate the concept of ‘multiple modernities’, contending that societies in Asia, Africa and Latin America have developed localised variants of modern governance shaped by their unique histories and cultural dynamics. Although Western trajectories remain a central point of reference in this process, these approaches reject the conflation of modernity with Westernisation. Instead, they redefine modernity as an ongoing process of reinterpretation and social plural- ity (Kaya, 2004). Building on this, Appadurai (1996) emphasises the role of global flows of people, media and capital in producing overlapping ‘moderni- ties at large’. Another perspective views modernities as intertwined within and between societies, influenced by global interactions (Therborn, 2003). Conse- quently, while features of liberal modernity, such as capitalism, statehood and individualism, have become globally influential, other trajectories have emerged through postcolonial nation-building, such as socialist modernity. Still, the paradigm of multiple modernities has limitations. Its focus on Axial Age civilisations3 tends to exclude Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa (per- haps the region that suffered the most extensive and invasive forms of colo- nial domination, from the debate (Connell, 2009; Olaniyan, 1995). Mbembe (2001: 11ff.) critiques this exclusion, arguing that the conceptual frameworks used to understand African social and political life often reflect the very colo- nial logics that denied African historicity in the first place. These blind spots are particularly apparent when modernity is analysed in purely cultural terms, disregarding its territorial and imperial foundations. Furthermore, theories of multiple and entangled modernities often overlook a key aspect of the global order: the role of borders in perpetuating racialised and imperial forms of governance. Borders are not merely lines of demarcation; they are active sites where sovereignty, mobility and inequality are contested. The militarisation of the US-Mexico border, for example, and the outsourcing of border control to Mexico (Chacón, 2021), exemplify how mobility and ex- clusion are managed through imperial logics. Such practices echo Frederick Turner’s historical framing of borders as tools of expansion and assimilation (‘Americanisation’), demonstrating that the universalist promise of modernity continues to coexist with imperial exclusions. In this context, the aim of this chapter is not to trace the succession of im- perial formations or establish the chronology of imperial privilege. Instead, it highlights the adaptive redeployment of imperial authority to manage labour, territory and mobility across historical and contemporary contexts. The follow- ing section explores how these imperial logics are embedded in present-day regimes of global governance. 108 Political Modernity and Beyond Imperialism and Global Governance Imperialism remains one of the most enduring frameworks for understanding global power relations, particularly in relation to the governance of borders, migration and sovereignty. For Mignolo (2011: 78), the Treaties of Tordesillas (1494) and Saragossa (1529) – enacted under papal decree – laid the histori- cal foundations for global linear thinking, helped define the pillars of Western civilisation and promoted the imperial march of modernity and coloniality as its dark side. Sociological blindness to coloniality (Danner et al., 2017) paved the way for imperialism to be invoked at times as an alternative, if not ri- val, analytical framework, particularly because modern social theory has often ignored or downplayed the enduring influence of empire (Go, 2016: 13–14). After all, modernity itself is fundamentally the product of imperial relations (Go, 2016: 28). While modernity is often framed through narratives of institutional ration- alisation and normative progress, imperialism evokes a more visceral grammar of power, defined by domination, territorial expansion and exclusion. Although the terms ‘empire’ and ‘imperialism’ are often used interchangeably, they are not synonymous. Imperialism denotes a historical logic of coercive expansion rooted in capitalist accumulation, geopolitical rivalry and the violent subju- gation of peoples and territories. In contrast, the concept of empire has been theorised – most notably by Hardt and Negri – as a diffuse, post-territorial mode of global power operating through decentralised networks of governance. This chapter adopts these formulations as a critical point of departure. Rather than accepting the notion of a deterritorialised empire, it argues that imperialism, understood in its spatial, extractive and exclusionary dimensions, is resurging within the global order that was once imagined to be post-imperial. In order to examine this shift, I revisit foundational theories of imperialism and analyse borders as sites where the tension between the nation-state, imperialist spatiality and global governance is most evident. Some of the earliest influential perspectives on imperialism came from clas- sical economic theory, which argued that empire was driven primarily by capi- talism’s insatiable need for new markets, resources and forms of labour control. Vladimir Lenin (1917) famously insisted that imperialism was an inevitable cul- mination of monopoly capitalism, leading to increased rivalry between world powers. For example, Lenin interpreted border conflicts and wars as inevitable consequences of this structural capitalist expansion. Earlier, in 1902, the British social liberal and writer John Atkinson Hobson (1858–1940) published Impe- rialism: A Study. He argued that capitalist economies produce surplus capital that cannot be absorbed at home, leading states to expand abroad in search of new markets, raw materials and investment opportunities. Interestingly, Hob- son claimed that the decline of industry in the West would mean far more than the loss of economic resources: it would also mean the extinction of freedom, Empire Reloaded 109 democracy and progress in general; and Britain, like other Western nations, would become parasitic on the progress of Asia. Yet Hobson shared the colonis- ing view of his time. In Chapter IV of Imperialism, Hobson (1902) wrote: The policy of modern imperialism is not over, but only just begun, and that it is almost entirely concerned with the rival claims of empires to dominate ‘inferior races’ in tropical and subtropical countries, or in other countries inhabited by apparently unassimilable races. From the Atlantic slave trade to the forced labour systems of colonial planta- tions, slavery and colonial conquest were fundamental to imperial expansion and economic growth (see Beckert, 2014). Scholars of racial capitalism, most notably Cedric J. Robinson (1983), have argued that capitalist modernity was inextricably shaped by the dispossession, enslavement and subjugation of non- Europeans. The concept of racial capitalism emerged precisely from the anti- apartheid struggle in South Africa, where activists and intellectuals exposed the structural entanglements between racial domination and economic exploitation (Black Agenda Report, 2020). This political genealogy is central to understand- ing how contemporary border regimes reproduce imperial hierarchies through racialised exclusions. Historically and today, capitalist accumulation has de- pended on the extraction of bodies, land and resources. Hardt and Negri (2000) observe that the historical violence of slavery and colonialism foreshadowed many contemporary forms of control, resulting in enduring racial hierarchies, economic dependencies and legal systems that persist in what they term the ‘era of empire’ (Hardt and Negri, 2000, 2019).4 In their 2000 book Empire, Hardt and Negri argue from a post-Marxist stand- point that we now inhabit a diffuse global system that is no longer anchored in a single colonial centre. They contend that authority no longer emanates solely from nation-states, but increasingly flows through multinational institutions, corporate alliances and transnational military and technological networks. Their central thesis is that traditional imperialism – understood as domination by ter- ritorially bound powers – has been superseded by a new form of global sov- ereignty: Empire. Hardt and Negri emphasise the deterritorialised, networked nature of ‘Empire’. They write: In contrast to imperialism, Empire establishes no territorial center of power and does not rely on fixed boundaries or barriers. It is a decentered and de- territorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command. The distinct national colors of the imperialist map of the world have merged and blended in the imperial global rainbow. (Hardt and Negri, 2000: xii–xiii) 110 Political Modernity and Beyond This new form of governance blurs the boundaries between the economic and political spheres while reinforcing the hierarchies historically upheld by older imperial structures. Two decades after the book’s publication, Hardt and Negri (2019) argued that discerning the Empire had become increasingly difficult pre- cisely because of its fragmented and networked nature. Rather than operating through a singular sovereign power, it functions through dispersed and overlap- ping global systems of economic, cultural and legal command. Nation-states, corporations and supranational institutions co-produce this system, but no single actor commands it unilaterally. Hardt and Negri do not view the crises of recent years as marking the end of globalisation. Instead, they interpret them as symptomatic of the tensions between a global sphere of social production defined by precarious labour, dig- itised infrastructures and ecological breakdown and a political-legal sphere that has failed to adapt to these planetary conditions. In their view, even the rise of nationalist and unilateralist forces does not dismantle the Empire, but merely reorganises its modalities. They assert that ‘today’s various crises do not, para- doxically, prevent the continued domination of global structures.’ Instead of be- ing disintegrative, crises are a constituent of the logic of Empire, a system that thrives on disruption while absorbing and reconfiguring resistance. However, this interpretation has recently been subjected to increasing scru- tiny (Martínez, 2025). The resurgence of territorial wars, militarised borders and intensified state rivalries suggests not the dissolution of imperialism, but rather its reactivation under new conditions. Instead of witnessing imperial domination evaporate into a seamless global network, we may be observing its re-territorial- isation. In this context, Hardt and Negri’s interpretation of a structural departure from the age of imperialism may instead represent a transformation in its mo- dalities. Indeed, imperialism has not disappeared, but has adapted to contem- porary global governance structures, resurfacing in new, spatially fragmented yet deeply coercive forms, particularly at borders, which remain critical sites of imperial enforcement and exclusion. As Lim (2017) observes, the reinforcement of border infrastructure highlights the continued importance of territorial strate- gies. Migration policies, security apparatuses and the outsourcing of enforce- ment are concrete expressions of imperial power that complicate the notion of the empire having dissolved into a purely networked order. Michael Mann offers a distinct and insightful perspective. In Incoherent Empire (2003), he argues that contemporary empires – particularly that of the United States – are structurally incoherent, often failing to align their mili- tary, political, economic and ideological capacities into a cohesive imperial project. He claims that empires are not inherently integrative, but deeply di- visive, producing and sustaining competing ideologies such as imperialism, anti-imperialism and racism. Drawing on a fourfold model of social power (ide- ological, economic, military and political), Mann identifies the emergence of a ‘new militarism’ rooted in American unilateralism and ad hoc interventions. In a Empire Reloaded 111 subsequent article, Mann (2004: 650) characterises the United States as the first failed empire of the twenty-first century, driven less by coherent strategic plan- ning than by ideological fervour and fragmented military action. Rather than being based on a single, overarching logic, contemporary imperial projects are, by their very nature, intrinsically contradictory. While this is a useful corrective to accounts that oversimplify the coherence of US imperialism, Mann may have underestimated US territorial ambitions and the role of militarism in achieving global reach. Nevertheless, this framework provides a historically and institu- tionally grounded interpretation of empire within an increasingly conflict-ridden geopolitical context, suggesting that imperialism remains a pertinent analytical perspective. Notably, we view the empire as inherently unstable, encompassing contradictory logics of purpose, process and structure (see Griffiths, 2025). Building on this view, this chapter’s central argument is that the concepts of empire and imperialism should not be relegated to a residual category within modernity. After all, imperial logics did not disappear with formal decolonisa- tion (Go, 2016). Samir Amin (1973) emphasised that postcolonial economies remained subordinate to global structures benefiting wealthier nations. More re- cently, scholars of racial capitalism have demonstrated that global flows of peo- ple, labour and capital remain deeply racialised. In this respect, David Harvey’s (2003) concept of ‘new imperialism’ is particularly pertinent. He claims that, rather than direct political rule, capital accumulation by dispossession is a de- fining feature of contemporary imperial relations. The shift from formal colo- nisation to indirect domination via mechanisms such as debt, deregulation and privatisation lends weight to this view. Crucially, Harvey emphasises that this seemingly deterritorialised mode of domination is underpinned by a renewed reliance on state coercion and mili- tary aggression. This is evident in the case of the US, where ‘the surge towards militarism’ appears to be a ‘last desperate move to preserve global dominance at all costs’ (Harvey, 2003: 60). As coercive imperialism becomes more unstable, internal dissent and elite fragmentation in the US may intensify, with Harvey predicting that ‘the current difficulties within the neoliberal model and the threat it now poses to the United States itself may even provoke calls for an alternative logic of territorial power to be constructed’ (Harvey, 2003: 211). Rather than being purely deterritorialised, US neo-conservative imperialism combines the logic of capital with the force of geopolitical aggression. This mode of govern- ance complicates the more diffuse models of sovereignty proposed by Hardt and Negri (2000) by highlighting the tensions between the mobility of capital and the resurgence of territorial strategies and state violence. Consequently, imperial formations are not merely historical remnants; they continue to influence the development of modern states, economies and soci- eties in complex and ever-changing ways. Moving beyond traditional centre- periphery models, I invoke Walia’s (2013) notion of border imperialism to argue that contemporary global governance cannot be explained by the erosion of state 112 Political Modernity and Beyond sovereignty or the emergence of a non-territorial market order. Instead, states re- main active participants in the territorialisation of power, using physical barriers, militarised borders and surveillance technologies to delineate national space and reinscribe hierarchies of mobility and control that are rooted in imperial logics. Here, the distinction between borders and frontiers may become analytically productive. Borders are generally considered to be linear boundaries that de- fine state sovereignty, whereas frontiers are zones of diffuse and variable con- trol that have historically been associated with empires (Griffiths, 2025). Thus, contemporary bordering practices – from biometric surveillance to outsourced enforcement – reproduce imperial techniques under new guises. Rather than signalling conceptual incoherence, this multiplicity of forms enhances the ex- planatory power of the term ‘imperialism’. These practices serve as tangible manifestations of imperial governance, dictating who can move, under what conditions and where rights, protection and opportunities are granted or denied. The following sections explore this phenomenon further, linking contemporary border regimes to the enduring imperial logics that structure global inequalities in mobility, wealth and life chances. Border Wars and Territorial Disputes The claim that control over land remains a central source of power and eco- nomic advantage is not easy to refute. Rather, the contemporary relevance of territorial conquest is irrefutable. Contrary to Hardt and Negri’s (2000) sugges- tion that empires have become independent of defined territories, contemporary revanchist conflicts – from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (Dodds et al., 2023) and resource-driven border tensions in the South China Sea (Hayton, 2014) to Israel’s ongoing militarised occupation and blockade of Gaza – demonstrate an enduring emphasis on physical space as a foundation of imperial rule. The pro- liferation of militarised enclaves, border fortifications and ‘buffer zones’ dem- onstrates the ways in which historical – and emerging – imperial formations resort to territorial struggles to extend and legitimise their hegemonic influence (Weizman, 2007). From the war in Ukraine to partitioned territories in the Mid- dle East, contemporary conflicts thus display a distinctly imperial logic – one that adopts the language of modern governance (‘sovereignty’, ‘humanitarian intervention’, ‘counter-terrorism’) to mask underlying ambitions for territorial control, resource extraction and geopolitical hegemony. The border disputes examined are often extensions of entrenched imperialist practices. They highlight the ways in which nation-states – with their borders and frontier zones – are shaped and tested by imperial logics, rather than func- tioning as fully sovereign or discrete entities. Indeed, many border wars repre- sent the continuation of historical forms of expansionist control or new struggles for hegemonic power, as evidenced by Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. Michael Burawoy’s (1976) research on labour regimes in southern Africa shows how Empire Reloaded 113 control over land and labour outlasted formal decolonisation. Corporate powers, backed by states, maintained economic dominance and racially stratified work- forces, repackaging older dynamics of colonial exploitation under supposedly ‘modern’ frameworks. These ‘border wars’, both literal and economic, were in- strumental in ensuring a steady supply of cheap labour, while embedding com- panies and local elites firmly within the interconnected structures of imperial power. Consequently, border enforcement goes beyond its economic function and also serves to maintain privileges associated with racialised nationalisms (Walia, 2013), to securitise the movement of certain groups and to legitimise the hegemony of dominant actors. It is important to note that imperialism encompasses not only the extrac- tion of raw materials and cheap labour, but also political and symbolic forms of domination. While economic imperatives undoubtedly drive many territo- rial disputes, they do not exhaust the scope of contemporary imperialisms. Contemporary border conflicts often reveal how political and ideological di- mensions – such as national prestige, identity politics or attempts to project hegemonic influence – remain integral to modern imperial projects. Building on Michael Mann’s (2003) notion of imperial ventures as often incoherent, it is evi- dent in this context that competing agendas (economic gain, strategic security, ideological expansion) converge in complex and often contradictory formations. These constellations may include multinational corporations seeking to control resources, nation-states asserting their territorial dominance and far-right popu- list movements mobilising nationalist fervour. Despite their divergent interests, these actors often converge around the militarisation of borders and the polic- ing of mobility, processes that reinforce unequal power relations and perpetuate border imperialism (Walia, 2013). By leveraging borders as instruments of governance through legal frame- works, militarised enforcement or ideological campaigns, states and non-state actors perpetuate hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion. As we have seen, Hardt and Negri’s (2000) ‘deterritorialised’ empire offers a useful lens for understand- ing the diffusion of power through global networks. However, the continued prevalence of revanchist wars, territorial occupations and border walls under- scores the enduring importance of physical space and political sovereignty, re-articulating imperialism. The multiple conflicts currently unfolding around the world demonstrate how economic and political imperatives are intertwined within border regimes. From this perspective, current border crises and territorial disputes are not necessarily a sign of the failure of the modern state or of modernisation itself. Whether in Eastern Europe, Gaza or the South China Sea, conflict and war over borders is much more than a failure of the modern international legal or- der (Anghie, 2005). It is about the enduring nexus of political and economic forms of domination under the overarching logic of border imperialism. It is not that contemporary conflicts are merely expressions of outdated colonial or 114 Political Modernity and Beyond imperialist aspirations – such as the conquests of Tsarist Russia or the scramble for Africa (Pakenham, 1991). Rather, they exemplify new forms of the lasting logic of imperialism, reconstituted by modern geopolitical rivalries, technologi- cal innovations and global power contests. These are mostly incoherent empires (in the words of Mann, 2003), where political imperatives may be as important as economic profit and extraction. In this sense, material borders are an enduring sign of power and a site of paradoxical developments. Digital Borders and Virtual Empires Just as territorial borders have become the subject of contentious politics and attacks, global social media platforms and data-driven industries have prolifer- ated, paving the way for a new form of imperialism to emerge. This new style of imperialism forges empires that transcend geographical boundaries, yet still reproduces the same exclusionary logics as more conventional border regimes. Just consider Facebook. With 3.07 billion monthly active users in 2025, it would represent 40% of the world’s population if it were counted as a nation – a very large one indeed. Social media platforms effectively construct their own ‘virtual borders’, creating selective access points for participation and spreading ideas and ideologies. This is evidenced by the growing concern over ‘fake news’ and polarisation. Above all, they generate profit and serve market interests. For this reason, they reflect and exacerbate existing social inequalities (Couldry and Mejias, 2019; Zuboff, 2019). The notion of a borderless utopia is based on the idea that the expansion of digital capitalism is creating powerful and intangible borders beyond the ter- ritorial limits of nations (large frontier zones, for example). Today, codified al- gorithms, privacy laws and emerging forms of digital private constitutionalism profoundly influence the digital governance of individual participation online (Micklitz et al., 2021). Despite the apparent seamless nature of the Internet in national contexts, the reality is much more complicated, with major disputes over ‘digital sovereignty’. As regulatory boundaries are set by states, corporate actors are accumulating power, a trend reinforced by the growth of AI (Cave and Dihal, 2023). Big tech companies wield political influence previously reserved for states (Zuboff, 2019), creating even more rifts and contradictions between scales of justice (Fraser, 2009). By operating on a transnational scale, Google, Facebook or Amazon are notorious for circumventing or challenging the author- ity of nation-states. However, the limits of their action can vary significantly de- pending on the geopolitical context. In the European Union, for example, strict data protection regimes (such as the General Data Protection Regulation) sub- ject key technology platforms to greater oversight. China’s state-centric model exerts top-down control over content and user data. In the context of digital China, the convergence of state directives and corporate expansion is giving rise to a distinctive model of platform capitalism, a synthesis of state agendas and Empire Reloaded 115 market-driven motives, establishing an ‘imperial project’ in the digital domain (Yuan and Zhang, 2025). In turn, the market-oriented governance of the United States lends itself to the creation of regulatory loopholes that provide tech gi- ants with more obvious room for manoeuvre. Digital private constitutionalism is therefore not a monolith, but is shaped by multiple factors. What is clear, how- ever, is that the rise of a digitally oriented rule of law is gaining ground globally. Without the procedural safeguards associated with constitutional or democratic systems, tech companies tend to function as virtual states, where the boundaries between private and state governance are increasingly blurred. Characteristic of these virtual empires is a complex and hierarchical struc- ture that reproduces inequalities. On the one hand, transnational elites and digi- tal corporations navigate online spaces with minimal restrictions. On the other hand, marginalised communities face increased surveillance, restricted access or outright exclusion (Walia, 2021). Data costs, bandwidth limitations and strict digital ID requirements often put online participation out of reach for many in the Global South. At the same time, the biopolitical reach of technology compa- nies extends beyond user profiling. Indeed, personal data is commodified, sold and repurposed to shape political campaigns, direct consumer behaviour and support risk-scoring systems (Zuboff, 2019). These technologies thus function as biometric border controls, sorting people into profitable or ‘undesirable’ cat- egories – similar to traditional border regimes that decide who can cross freely and who is turned away (Zevop and Ballet, 2025). Mimicking physical border walls and the security fences that demarcate terri- torial hierarchies, ‘digital borders’ also serve as fortified barriers for virtual em- pires. Through these barriers, big tech monetises connectivity, harvests user data and influences public discourse (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013). Beyond the nar- rative of the dissolution of geographical borders in cyberspace, numerous con- straints, both tangible and intangible, continue to impede the fluid mobility of individuals. In Digital Colonialism: US Empire and the New Imperialism in the Global South, Michael Kwet (2019) explores the ways in which contemporary digital technologies perpetuate forms of imperialism and colonialism, particu- larly in the Global South. Using South Africa as a case study, Kwet argues that the electronic dominance of US-based multinational corporations in the digital technology sector constitutes a new form of colonialism. Companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft exercise visible forms of digital control. Not only do they control digital infrastructure and influence local economies and politics, but they can also collect data and dictate terms of service and digital rights. The pattern of ownership by the global North and data extraction, often without adequate legal protections, in the global South represents a new form of economic imperialism, emerging in ways akin to colonial control of land and resources, Kwet argues. In the case of South Africa, this control includes inter- net access, social media and cloud services, which threatens the country’s digital sovereignty as it lacks the capacity to assert control over its digital landscape. 116 Political Modernity and Beyond In this field, such inequalities are a manifestation of digital neocolonial- ism. While Western nations, particularly the US, continue to dominate high- tech manufacturing and AI development (Cave and Dihal, 2023; Payne, 2024), China’s emergence as a contender for digital hegemony is noteworthy. Despite the potential of digital capitalism to bridge physical and temporal distances, inequalities have also emerged (Harvey, 2003). Neoliberal policies continue to rely on the logic of accumulation by dispossession, which involves the expro- priation of land, labour and resources for the purpose of wealth accumulation. This dynamic has been critically examined within the much-debated tradition of racial capitalism, which reframes capitalism as inherently colonial, postcolonial and racialised (Ince, 2018; Mezzadra, 2011). Rather than treating racial violence as a by-product of capitalism, this approach sees racial hierarchies as ingrained in its fundamental structures. Far from counteracting these legacies, digital are- nas often reproduce them, perpetuating spatial and economic segregation and relegating entire populations to what Sanyal (2013) describes as a ‘wasteland of the dispossessed’. In the field of AI research, prominent technology companies in the US and China are competing for global dominance, as evidenced by the growing popularity of generative language models such as ChatGPT (US) and Deep Seek (China) (Payne, 2024). Digital imperialism encapsulates a paradox of state power. At first glance, it may appear to transcend national boundaries, but in practice, states are often co- opted to promote digital agendas. Content moderation policies are an example of this trend, as they are often informed by state securitarian measures. These ideo- logical imperatives blur the lines between state and digital comparisons, ulti- mately allowing corporate entities to exert control over the ‘territories’ of public discourse (Zuboff, 2019). As states and corporations engage in negotiations over data governance and abusive practices, the notion of digital boundaries becomes increasingly context-dependent. Evidence of coercion, surveillance and selec- tive inclusion/exclusion dynamics is mounting (DeNardis, 2014; Walia, 2021). It is clear that border imperialism transcends physical demarcations on a map. Digital imperialism is predicated on a number of interrelated dimensions, including but not limited to: unequal power and mobility for elites and popu- lations and global competitions for hegemony. In the field of AI, as already mentioned, the ongoing US-China competition highlights not only hegemonic struggles for power but also intensifies resource extraction, climate impacts and cultural imposition (Walia, 2021). Secondly, digital governance involves barri- ers to mobility and new forms of biopolitical control (what Mbembe (2003) calls ‘necropolitical’), which usually involve bio/technological control of individuals across borders, with biometric surveillance escalating, despite local regulations against it (Zevop and Ballet, 2025). It is therefore clear that digital arenas have become the new frontiers of modern imperialism, insofar as digital develop- ments are profoundly reshaping social relations, labour practices and sovereign authority worldwide. Empire Reloaded 117 Beyond simply exacerbating existing inequalities, digital border imperialism is a good illustration of the modernity versus empire debate. The notion of digi- tal connectivity as a universalising force that increases global participation may fit with notions of rationalisation, progress and global integration. However, this is not the case when we understand the effects of virtual barriers, algorithmic governance or selective inclusion, to name but a few. Imperialist logics, whether along old colonial lines or in new manifestations, are very much at play. Such developments warrant a renewed examination of the nature of imperialism. Dig- ital inequalities and governance demonstrate the enduring importance of border imperialism (Walia, 2021). Whether physical or virtual, these borders determine who can move freely, what mechanisms of control are enacted and ultimately where power resides. Conclusion This chapter has argued that neither modernity nor empire can fully explain contemporary border crises on their own. Instead, imperialism, manifesting both territorially and digitally, continues to be intricately entwined with modern structures of governance, challenging the traditional distinction between these two analytical frameworks. Imperialist logics remain deeply embedded in global governance structures. Ultimately, this chapter does not deny the importance of modernity, nor does it rule out the potential for new, more equitable forms of global governance. Rather, I argue that, in parallel, we should consider notions of empire and imperialism as indispensable frameworks for understanding to- day’s border crises and the extent to which current developments are remnants of a fading imperial past or reflect the enduring logic of imperialism that persists within – and often drives – the modern state. As the ‘centre of gravity’ of global orders shifts, these questions become increasingly urgent. A relevant critical question, then, is what kind of imperialism we are dealing with today and why we need to rethink it. Hardt and Negri’s (2000) central for- mulation suggests that under the contingencies of globalisation, empire has lost its territorial core. It has become a networked, deterritorialised system of gov- ernance, spanning financial, legal and digital infrastructures. Border crises, ex- emplified by current revanchist wars and the unprecedented rise of digitalisation, reveal more complex realities. Indeed, paradoxical developments are central, illustrating that imperialism no longer operates solely through direct territorial conquest, but through a combination of hegemonic struggles, economic dispos- session, digital enclosures and biopolitical control. From militarised borders to AI-driven governance, imperialism now functions through the ability to define, restrict and exploit populations across multiple scales – territorial, financial and digital. Each of these multi-scalar arenas operates at different levels – local, national, transnational, global –, sometimes in tandem, sometimes in conflict and disruption. 118 Political Modernity and Beyond This is radically new and requires further study. More than that, it requires a conceptual shift. Whereas past imperialist endeavours involved the ability to physically occupy and administer land, contemporary imperial formations in- volve both control over space and control over information and digital infrastruc- tures. But more than this, what is new about contemporary imperialism is the blending of the material and the digital; that territorial wars and virtual wars co- exist and reinforce each other. Rethinking imperialism therefore means moving beyond its traditional definitions of colonial expansion, extractive economies and military conquest. It also involves recognising imperialism embedded in legal frameworks, financial infrastructures, digital governance and racialised migration regimes. Despite its ‘incoherence’ and complex layers of territoriality and virtual- ity, imperial power has the same trigger and motivation. It is fundamentally about control: control over land, bodies, information and economic flows. In closing this chapter, we must revisit our core argument that border crises, whether territorial or digital, are neither relics of the past nor failures of moder- nity. Examining border crises has revealed that the imperialist logics underpin- ning them have long developed alongside, and within, modernity. Rather than being shadows of a historical past, empires and the imperialism that shapes them endure in the present day. Imperialism offers a critical tool for understanding contemporary power dynamics and geopolitical developments. In this context, the chapter encourages us to reconsider the concept of politi- cal modernity. Rather than rejecting modernity, it suggests that we critically in- terrogate how its institutions continue to reproduce exclusion and hierarchy. The modern political order emerged through practices of exclusion, border-making and racialised control, which remain central to contemporary sovereignty. These practices are not anomalies or historical remnants. Rethinking political moder- nity today therefore requires us to recognise empire not as something from the past, but as an enduring feature of the present. Notes 1 Although a fuller discussion of empire and imperialism appears later in the chapter, it is useful to clarify that the imperial angle takes us beyond historical formations by highlighting the persistent logic of power – whether territorial, financial, structurally embedded or digital – that continues to shape contemporary governance. 2 It was only from this period that the defining features of modernity came fully into play. Earlier colonial regimes (from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century) operated under different systems of governance: absolutist, patrimonial and pre-capitalist. Only later did industrial capitalism and the modern bureaucratic state come to domi- nance. While this chapter does not focus on the dating of modernity (or empire, for that matter), these historical distinctions are useful for avoiding the anachronistic projection of modernity onto earlier colonial systems, or the conflation of different imperial formations into a single timeline. Regardless, the exact beginning of the modern era remains a matter of debate. For example, Enrique Dussel (1995) argues that it did not originate with the European Enlightenment, but in 1492, amidst the Empire Reloaded 119 brutal colonisation of the Americas by Europe. This reframing emphasises the inex- tricable links between modernity and imperialism, challenging Eurocentric narra- tives of its ‘birth’. 3 The concept of axial civilisations derives from Karl Jaspers’ notion of the ‘Axial Age’: a period roughly between 800 and 200 BC when major philosophical and religious traditions emerged independently in regions such as Greece, China, India and the Middle East. For Eisenstadt, their distinct cultural legacies influenced how different societies experienced modernity. 4 In 1846, Marx ([1846] 1975) had already written, in a letter to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov: ‘Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. 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In Brazil, the far right was able to elect a president of the republic, Jair Bol- sonaro, who governed the country between 2019 and 2022. Several members of the parliaments at all levels of the Brazilian federation have also been elected for consecutive terms. They have managed to obstruct progress on agendas such as the protection of minorities, reproductive rights, and the decriminalization of soft drug use. In Germany, In Germany, the AfD received 20.8% of valid votes in the 2025 election and is classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Consti- tution (Verfassungsschutz) as ‘gesichert rechtsextrem’, i.e. definitely right-wing extremist. The circumstances and conditions for the growth of the far right are certainly very different in the two countries. Nevertheless, given the transnational networks of the far right and the ways in which they mobilize public opinion for attracting new voters show obvious similarities in both countries. Furthermore, the growth of the right in both countries, and this is the main argument of this essay, can be explained in a similar way. In both cases, extreme right-wing actors have been able to offer a convincing repertoire of meanings for the changes in the intersectional situation voters have experienced in the two countries. To develop this argument, I first give a brief overview of the literature that seeks to explain the growth of the far right in both countries. I then go on to con- struct my own theoretical argument, which is that voting for the extreme right represents a contingent response to shifts in intersectional situations. Finally, I show how intersectional situations have undergone important recent shifts in both countries. I warn the readers that this essay is still unbalanced. My research on the Bra- zilian case is much more developed and documented (see Costa, 2025). In the case of Germany, I just apply my theoretical hypothesis to explore more evident DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-10 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-10 Intersectional Situations and Political Choices 123 political choices, but the argument is still poorly grounded in the relevant em- pirical literature. Three Explanatory Matrices There are countless theses, articles, books and studies discussing the reasons why a majority of Brazilian voters elected as president in 2018 a hitherto little- known politician, with no relevant record of service to the country and who built his winning campaign on the fallacious image of an anti-system politician – ultra-conservative in customs and ultra-liberal in economic policy. The list of academic papers and books that seek to explain the unusual sympathy of a sig- nificant portion of Germans with the AfD party, which at least partly relativizes the horrors that marked Germany’s history in the 20th century, is equally vast. Although I have no intention of exhausting the bibliography available, for the purposes of this chapter, it seems possible to classify the existing contributions to the two cases into three analytical matrices, organized according to the main cause they indicate for the observed inflections: socio-structural, ideological, and cultural explanations. Social-Structural Approaches Socio-structural approaches, in the Brazilian case, highlight the changing pro- file of the Workers’ Party (PT) electorate, which, over the course of successive elections, has increasingly moved from the educated middle classes in the south and southeast of the country to the lower income strata, the less educated voters and the northeast region. Gethin and Morgan (2018, 2021) seek to explore the relationship between motivation to vote and income gains and losses by different social strata, also considering other factors such as race, education, region and religion. They found a consistent correlation between voting for or against the PT and the groups that gained or lost economically during the governments led by the party and in the governments that followed. Particularly relevant is the situ- ation of the so-called squeezed middle classes who, even in times of rapid eco- nomic growth in which all strata experienced income gains, saw their increase in income fall far short of the income gains of the very rich and the poor. For Singer (2012, 2018), the links between electoral behaviour and socio- economic changes in the period require an understanding of the contradictions intrinsic to what he calls Lulism, that is, the class alliance that the PT formed to govern, which, as the author understands it, sought to reconcile the interests of the organized working classes and different fractions of the bourgeoisie and the middle classes. In their specific actions, the PT governments would have particularly benefited the subproletariat, that is, the informalized working mass, with uncertain occupations and precarious employment relationships. However, when Dilma Rousseff tries to deepen the social reformism begun in the Lula 124 Political Modernity and Beyond governments by adopting developmentalist policies and an anti-corruption pro- gram, the contradictions inherent in the class alliance materialized in Lulism were exacerbated, leading to the collapse of the Lulist arrangement. Saad-Filho (2021) seeks to understand Bolsonaro’s election in the context of what he calls authoritarian neoliberalism. According to his interpretation, the current phase of neoliberalism follows previous periods of continued economic and rights losses for the majority of workers. In this context, leaders emerge who present themselves as adversaries of conventional politics and the established elites, promising to restore the losses suffered in order to win the support of the electorate. However, these leaders, ‘when in power, implement programmes in- tensifying neoliberalism under the veil of nationalism and a more or less explicit racism’ (Saad-Filho, 2021: 135, emphasis in original). This generates new frus- trations, creating fertile ground for other cycles of deepening authoritarianism. In the German case, the reference to economic factors is mobilized above all to explain regional differences in voting. Accordingly, voters in regions that were important industrial hubs but have lost their economic importance show greater sympathy for the AfD than regions of stable economic importance (Schneider, 2020). Furthermore, on an individual level, studies state a correla- tion between the level of income and education and susceptibility to racist and sexist ideologies professed by the far right, i.e., the lower the level of education, the greater the propensity to follow such ideologies (Mokros and Zick, 2023). It is also found that these ideologies are more appealing to those who harbour negative expectations about the future, fearing economic and symbolic losses. Ideological Factors Studies focusing on ideological factors use both quantitative research into elec- toral behaviour (Fuks and Marques, 2020; Rennó et al., 2021) and discourse analysis (Messenberg, 2017), as well as analysis of right-wing organizations and networks (Rocha, 2021), digital ethnographies and even the study of ag- gregated data and digital traffic (see different contributions in Solano, 2018 and Solano and Rocha, 2019). The first conclusion to emerge from these studies is that the far right has succeeded in promoting a vigorous increase in their power to disseminate and connect their discourses and messages both on digital plat- forms and social networks and through organized social movements and street demonstrations, as well as through their penetration of conventional mass media outlets such as radio, television and the written press. Electoral disputes in Bra- zil, according to this reading, are becoming increasingly guided by ideological disputes, so that the decisive factor for electoral choices in the 2018 elections, when Bolsonaro was elected president, would have been political ideology: Since 2014, Brazilians have positioned themselves more on the left-right scale and, in 2018, they show greater coherence between their location Intersectional Situations and Political Choices 125 on this scale on the one hand and their party identification and voting on the other. In addition, their opinions and positions on some of the issues that divide left and right in Brazil today have proved to be good predic- tors of voting. (Fuks and Marques, 2020: 417) The German case is particularly notable for the far-right forces’ greater ability to use social media, and particularly the AfD’s great dominance on the TikTok platform (Geusen, 2023). The works dealing with ideological factors in both countries are particularly elucidating in explaining how the political strategies used by the far right and how instruments such as hate politics, culture wars, the relativization of facts and the creation of public enemies redefine the lines of political conflict. Issues that had been consolidated in previous decades as axes around which the political struggle was articulated, such as strengthening democracy and social justice, seem to have lost relative importance in elections. On the other hand, issues that were already relevant in political disputes are re- signified in moral language so that, for example, public safety becomes a dis- pute between good people and bandits, in the Brazilian case, or between orderly German families and crime-prone immigrants. In the Brazilian case, corruption is also re-signified in the right-wing discourse. It is no longer a systemic problem situated in the interface between the state, the political system and the economy, but is treated as a product of the lack of decency and composure of the PT politi- cians and particularly of President Lula da Silva. The studies also show the role of Operation Lavajato and its sensationalist media coverage in personalizing cor- ruption and feeding public rejection of the Workers’ Party, making anti-PT res- sentiments (anti-petismo) a decisive electoral political factor (Lopes et al., 2020). Cultural Approaches The approaches that look to culture to explain the turn to the right in Brazil and Germany tend to understand adherence to the right as a reaction to the loss or threat of loss of privileges guaranteed by a culture marked by multiple hierarchies in the areas of sex and gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, social origin, etc. To analyze the threat to racial privileges in the Brazilian case, Pinho (2021: 66) con- vincingly uses the concepts injured whiteness and aspirational whiteness: While wounded whiteness refers to the traditional Brazilian middle class, aspirational whiteness refers to the Brazilian lower class. These two phe- nomena are mutually conditioned and reveal the interclass complicity nec- essary to sustain the power of whiteness. To paraphrase Pinho, it can be formulated that, in different fields, studies show that adherence to the right is motivated by the perception of supremacy 126 Political Modernity and Beyond being hurt in the context of the transformations that have taken place over the last two decades in Brazil. This is what Pinheiro Machado and Scalco (2018: 97) observe, for example, in the case of the ‘destabilization of hegemonic masculin- ity’ in the face of women’s empowerment, or Almeida (2019) in the case of the defence of the traditional family against the pluralization of sexuality and family models, or various authors in the case of the loss of privileges of the established middle class (for a summary: Costa, 2017). In the German case, two distinct types of cultural factors are particularly highlighted as motivating factors for the turn to the right and the far right. The first concerns the increase in the number of immigrants in the country and the dissemination by right-wing parties, particularly the AfD, of the idea that the familiar and well-known land of one’s own (Heimat) is being mischarac- terized. The AfD would prove particularly successful in capitalizing on the anxieties and insecurities motivated by such changes (Heitmeyer, 2024). An- other much-emphasized factor concerns resistance to the cultural changes and dominant ways of life required by climate change mitigation policies. While progressive forces insist on the need to change existing consumption patterns, far-right forces reinforce doubts about the existence of a climate change mo- tivated by human actions, encouraging the population to exercise their free- dom to live according to their own convictions. This issue became even more acute after the war in Ukraine, which led to higher energy prices in Germany and uncertainty about the regularity of supply. As a large study conducted at the end of 2022 shows, there is a clear correlation between the denial or at least relativization of climate change, the pro-Russian view of the conflict in Ukraine and the preference for extreme right-wing political forces (Reusswig and Küpper, 2023). These three sets of arguments for explaining the strengthening of the right in Brazil and Germany provide relevant clues for understanding the profound transformations observed in both countries. Nevertheless, they leave many questions unanswered and, moreover, suffer from a certain monodisciplinarity, by reducing explanations of phenomena that affect all spheres of social life to the specific field of interest of the disciplines they represent. Thus, economic- structural explanations, when explaining the right-wing vote by the rise or fall in the social structure, adopt an economistic reading of inequalities and do not take into account that upward and downward mobility is not only economic. It also involves movements in power hierarchies or in specific dimensions of unequal access to goods such as public safety or environmental quality. Research focused on ideological factors, in turn, usually conducted by politi- cal scientists, by restricting themselves to analysing the most visible political transformations, explain how but not why the far right has grown. Nor, in the Brazilian case, do they explain why Bolsonaro was not re-elected. After all, dur- ing his administration, the structures and mechanisms of political action of the Intersectional Situations and Political Choices 127 extreme right were strengthened as never before, but even so their speeches lost some of their power to persuade and mobilize. Cultural explanations are also one-dimensional and lose some of their plau- sibility when we analyse variations in political preferences over time. In other words, cultural explanations, in some cases culturalist explanations, do not ex- plain why allegedly sexist and classist voters elected PT candidates for four consecutive presidential terms between 2003 and 2014 and, what’s more, re- elected Lula in 2022. In the German case, cultural explanations don’t explain, for example, why the far right generally advances more in areas where there are proportionally fewer foreigners and therefore the supposed threat of losing the homeland is lower. Intersectionality and Politics Adherence to discourses that are more to the right or more to the left of the po- litical spectrum cannot be explained by univocal links of determination, such as those described in the three currents discussed above, namely the links between political choices and, respectively, position in the social structure, the spread of right-wing ideologies or cultural dispositions. Less than something inevitable and determinable in advance, the political positions taken by different groups, whether defined by criteria of class, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, region or religion, are changeable and contingent. This is, for sure, not the same as say- ing that these links are fortuitous or random. There is a logic and a reason, or rather, there are logics and reasons that allow us to explain, at least a posteriori, why groups of people make certain political choices and adhere to certain dis- courses at certain times. In its analytical-theoretical formula, the central hypothesis of this chapter is that there is a strong and clear link between movements in intersectional situa- tion of individuals and groups and their political choices. The intersectional situ- ation influences but does not determine political choices. After all, contingency is the rule which, in sociology, admits no exceptions. Intersectional situation is a term used in this chapter to expand the concept of ‘class situation’ (Klassenlage) coined by Max Weber ([1922] 1956: 533). While for Weber the class situation referred to the position of individuals and groups in economic hierarchies, the intersectional situation refers to the position in multi- ple intertwined and interdependent social hierarchies. Analysing the intersectional situation requires a multidimensional definition of social inequalities capable of capturing the multiple vectors whose inter- section determines our position in social hierarchies, including economic and political inequalities (see Costa, 2017; Kreckel, 1992) but also symbolic and existential inequalities (see Therborn, 2013). It also requires the consideration of different hierarchical axes, i.e. it requires taking into account not only class 128 Political Modernity and Beyond inequalities but also those relating to gender, race, ethnicity and other axes that are relevant in each case. Applied to the Brazilian case, this theoretical proposition implies admitting that recent transformations, however abrupt and unexpected they may seem, can be explained based on the specific links between the displacements in in- tersectional situations of individuals and groups and their specific political choices. What matters here is not just the displacements themselves, but the way (if you’ll pardon the insistence: contingent!) in which these displacements are signified and explained. This means that someone who embraced the PT’s proposals with great conviction until, say, 2013 and, with the same conviction, took to the streets to call for Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in 2015 and vote for Bolsonaro in 2018 and 2022 did so because they saw their intersectional situation change and/or because they found more convincing ways of translating the anxieties and aspirations that these detachments activated in the discourses further to the far right of the political spectrum. In the German case, this theoretical proposition implies that the changes ob- served in the country since the reunification that followed the fall of the wall in 1989 are the context that explains the strengthening of the right and more particularly the AfD party. The adherence of a growing portion of the German population to the extreme right reflects, according to the hypothesis followed in this chapter, variations in the intersectional situations of a large part of the popu- lation. In general, those who have lost intersectional positions tend to support far-right ideas and political forces. To say who has gained or lost intersectional positions in a given period is not a trivial task. Firstly, because the multidimensionality of inequalities means that losses and gains can be asymmetrical, i.e. economic gains can coexist, for example, with existential losses, such as a decline in quality of life from an environmental or public safety point of view. In addition, the multiplicity of po- litically relevant hierarchies means, for example, that white men in Brazil who have risen out of poverty by gaining economic positions can have the feeling that they have lost intersectional status if, at the same time, they can no longer embarrass or oppress women, blacks and immigrants in the same way as a few decades ago. Shifts in Intersectional Situations in Germany and Brazil In a very suggestive book that discusses border regimes and migration in the European context, from a translocal and intersectional perspective, Anthias (2021) provides very interesting analytical clues for analysing social hierarchies that can be marked by rigidity and stability but also by moments of flexibility and destabilization. These fluctuations are characterized by the author as phases of de-ordering and re-ordering of social hierarchies relating to class, gender, race and ethnicity, nationality, etc. Intersectional Situations and Political Choices 129 Although derived from a different research question to the one studied in this chapter, Anthias’ theoretical-analytical insight is useful for understanding and interpreting recent shifts in social hierarchies in Brazil and Germany. After all, even in societies marked by class, gender and ethnic-racial hierarchies like German and Brazilian societies, some kind of shift in social positions is the rule rather than the exception. What’s more, in certain times different social groups rebel against the persistence or displacement of hierarchies, demanding, in the first case, a reduction in existing asymmetries (de-ordering) or, in the second, their restoration (re-ordering). In Brazil, the period from 2003 to 2024 is marked by deep disputes over the de-ordering and re-ordering of social inequalities in a broad sense. The depth of the disputes is such that the political system is no longer capable of accom- modating them, causing them to spill over into the streets and everyday life (Nobre, 2022). In Germany, there has also been a de-ordering of social hierarchies in recent decades, but this movement has been much less intensive than in Brazil. What is described by political scientists and also in colloquial language as political polarization are precisely these disputes over the transformation and maintenance of social hierarchies, in their various dimensions and in the various social spheres. Brazil In Brazil, recent displacements in intersectional situations can be divided into two periods: the first period marked by the PT-led governments between 2003 and 2015–2016, and the period following Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, marked first by Michel Temer’s government (2016–2018) and then by Jair Bol- sonaro’s government (2019–2022). Between 2003 and 2015, the anti-cyclical economic policies adopted and the favorable international climate during most of this period led to growth in gross domestic product of around 64%. During this period, social spending grew significantly and new poverty policies were implemented, halving the propor- tion of poor people in the Brazilian population. The minimum wage, set by the government, grew by 75% in real terms during the period and millions of new formal jobs were created every year (Pochmann, 2014). The favourable situation allowed a significant number of people to rise from the lower income strata to form the contingent that has become known in the Bra- zilian debate, in line with the vocabulary of the international consulting compa- nies and international organizations such as the OECD and the World Bank, as the new middle class or emerging middle class. According to Neri (2019a, 2019b), 51.1 million Brazilians moved from income classes E and D to class C between 2003 and 2014, joining the 67.9 million people who were already in this income bracket in 2003. This had important effects on the structure of consumption of 130 Political Modernity and Beyond goods and services. Examples include the increase in demand for air travel and motor vehicles in circulation. The number of passengers boarding domestic and international flights in Brazil jumped from 37.1 million in 2003 to 117.1 million in 2014. The number of cars and motorcycles in circulation, meanwhile, jumps from 27.7 million cars and 7.9 million motorcycles in 2006 to 47.9 million cars and 19.2 million motorcycles in 2014 (IBGE, 2023). Another set of public policies implemented by the PT governments and rel- evant for our analytical purposes concerns the expansion of access to higher ed- ucation. These include different types of scholarships and subsidized credit for paying tuition fees at private higher education institutions, as well as incentives to increase the number of places available at public universities. The quota law of 2012 also has an important impact, establishing that 50% of enrolment places at federal universities must be reserved for students from public schools and for whites, blacks and indigenous people according to the demographic representa- tion of these groups in the population of the respective state. These measures have led to an exponential growth in the number of university students, from 3.5 million in 2003 to 6.5 million in 2014 (SEMESP, 2016: 9) and a signifi- cant increase in the participation of black students and those from lower income strata in the composition of the Brazilian university population (Picanço, 2015). Evaluating the changes in political asymmetries – another central component of inequalities seen from a multidimensional perspective – that occurred during the PT governments is a complex and uncertain undertaking, since there are no transparent indicators for measuring inequalities of power. Analysis is therefore always qualitative and partial. In general terms, many groups located in the low- est positions of the power hierarchies were politically strengthened to the extent that their demands, compared to previous governments, were more effectively incorporated into the political agenda and were covered by specific compensa- tory policies. The creation of the ministry of social development and secretariats with ministry status linked to policies to promote gender and racial equality at the start of the first Lula government in 2003, as well as various programs to protect and promote the rights of quilombolas (the Brazilian maroons), the LG- BTQIA+ population and the expansion of programs to protect indigenous rights are clear demonstrations that, even though the results obtained may have been limited, there was an attempt to empower these groups (Feitosa, 2019). The brief overview of transformations observed in the first PT era paints an ambivalent picture. During the period, there was a slight reduction in income inequalities and indications that political inequalities, at least in relation to some minorities, could be reduced. These political gains are volatile, however, since they were institutionalized in the same way as poverty assistance programs and not as rights granted by solid welfare state institutions, but as benefits within temporary social programs. From 2015 onwards, the movements that had been taking place in the social structure, even with the limitations pointed out above, stalled or even reversed. Intersectional Situations and Political Choices 131 The economy goes into a deep recession and the gross domestic product, which grew at a rate of 7.5% in 2010, falls back to minus 3.5% in 2015 and minus 3.3% in 2016. After that, it grows again at rates of around 1.5% until 2020 when the crisis, aggravated by the pandemic, causes the country’s economy to shrink by 4.1%. The economic crisis is compounded by the political crisis. President Dilma Rousseff, elected by a small margin in 2014 for a second term that was to last until 2018, sees her government become politically unfeasible until she is deposed in 2016 as part of an impeachment process (Soler and Prego, 2020). Rousseff was replaced by Vice President Michel Temer, a conservative, who adopted a government program that clearly penalizes the poorest and minorities who had had their rights strengthened during the PT governments. It abolishes agencies that had been created to serve the less privileged population, freezes social spending and reduces workers’ social rights. Furthermore, beset by heavy accusations of corruption, it has become hostage to pressure from deputies and senators to serve the interests of specific economic groups, particularly the agri- business lobby. This is the political and economic context that precedes the elec- tion of Jair Bolsonaro, an extreme right-wing congressman elected from Rio de Janeiro who, until then, had not had much political relevance at the federal level. The legitimacy of his election is also being debated, since former president Lula da Silva, who had been leading the polls, was indicted for corruption, tried and imprisoned as part of the anti-corruption actions known as Operation Car Wash, and was therefore unable to run for president (Anderson, 2019). Once sworn in, Bolsonaro showed, from his first days in office, a profound inability to lead a government guided by a set of consistent and coherent actions (Nobre, 2022). He appointed right-wing influencers and people without the ap- propriate training and experience to ministries responsible for large budgets and the articulation of very complex tasks. The situation has been dramatically complicated since March 2020 with the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil. The Bolsonaro government’s irre- sponsibility and inability to adopt the necessary measures to contain the damage caused by the pandemic, combined with its denial of medicine and science, have led to a health crisis and a cost of lives unprecedented in Brazil’s recent history. To save himself from imminent impeachment, he has effectively handed over the power to control the federal budget and use public resources to the most clientelistic hosts in the Chamber of Deputies (Carnut et al., 2021). Despite the political wear and tear caused by the disastrous management of the health crisis associated with the Covid-19 pandemic and the many signs of incompetence in running his government, the system of power set up by Bol- sonaro and his allies has proved to be refractory to crises. In line with the rep- ertoire of discourses and resources adopted by far-right forces internationally, Bolsonarism, as a political and electoral machine, makes use of a very efficient combination of social capillarity based on direct communication with voters through different digital media and networks (WhatsApp, Telegram, Tik-Tok, 132 Political Modernity and Beyond YouTube, Instagram, Facebook) and the public staging of Bolsonaro as an anti- system politician. This construction of the anti-system image is reproduced and fed by the non-protocol manner and direct, often vulgar language adopted by the former president and most of the politicians who follow him. Rituals such as large street demonstrations, motorcades and interviews that are more like a conversation between close friends in ‘allied’ media outlets lend plausibility and substance to the image of the anti-system politician. The inequality, income and poverty indicators clearly reflect the impacts of the triple crisis, namely the economic crisis that has been dragging on since 2014, the political crisis and the government’s turn to the right during the Temer (2016–2018) and Bolsonaro (2019–2022) administrations, and the health crisis that took hold between March 2020 and mid-2022. The impact of the Bolsonaro government on the worsening of political asym- metries is striking. It affects relations between capital and labour, between rich and poor, as well as between groups organized on the basis of gender, race and sexuality (Gobetti, 2024; Hallak Neto, 2023; IPEA, 2022). In what it has man- aged to implement, the Bolsonaro government can be characterized as a radical- ized continuation of the Temer administration: it has dismantled the mechanisms for civil society participation in government decisions, reduced social rights and facilitated, through the dismantling of control bodies, access, use and criminal appropriation of common and public goods such as preservation areas, indig- enous reserves, public lands, etc. (Biroli, 2020; Costa et al., 2023; Rios, 2020). The redistributive rearrangement in favour of capital, the richest, men, whites and heteronormative families that he wanted to promote was already inscribed in the architecture of his first cabinet. This government architecture, in which environmental and social policies were downgraded and handed over to people without the minimum credentials to carry out their functions, while the minis- tries linked to the economy (economy, agriculture, infrastructure, mining and energy) passed into the hands of people with some technical competence to carry out their positions or who were direct representatives of the interests of economic groups, was supposed to pave the way for deepening the distributive readjustment that had already been started by Temer. The concrete measures adopted during his four years in office would consolidate these trends. Some of these are listed by way of example: the renunciation of any real increase in the minimum wage, the privatization and concession of profitable public services to private companies, the release of hundreds of pesticides whose damage to hu- man health and the environment has been amply documented, the scrapping of environmental inspection bodies and the unprecedented increase in the influence of environmental law violators over these bodies. Added to this are measures such as the deactivation of government collegiate bodies that had the participa- tion of civil society and the inaction or deactivation of bodies and programs dedicated to the protection of minorities such as LGBTQIA+ groups, quilombo- las and indigenous people, while the facilities for buying and carrying weapons are greatly expanded (Costa, 2020). Intersectional Situations and Political Choices 133 As a whole, these measures and policies were clearly aimed at concentrating wealth and power in the hands of those at the top of social hierarchies in each of the various axes of inequality (i.e. class, gender, race, etc.). The speeches and measures in favour of supposedly good families and people and against minimum rights for alleged bandits, while fulfilling the ideological role of con- veying some security, especially for the middle and wealthy strata, actually lent themselves to dramatically limiting the existential rights of disadvantaged groups. The increase in the number of police fatalities, especially among black men, in Bolsonaro’s four years in office, is just one of the many expressions of these restrictions on the existential freedoms of groups at the bottom of social hierarchies. Bolsonaro’s political-electoral machine had already shown its strength in the 2018 elections, when in addition to Bolsonaro himself, many governors and state and federal legislators linked to him were elected. In the 2022 elections, he confirmed his effectiveness once again. Contrary to predictions that Lula would win relatively comfortably, the difference between then-president Bol- sonaro and his opponent Lula was less than 2% of the valid votes, making it the most hotly contested presidential election in Brazilian history. In state govern- ments and legislatures, as well as in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, Bolsonaro won even more seats than in 2018. The parties furthest to the left of the political spectrum, which supported Lula from the first round of the elections onwards, achieved much more modest results than those achieved by Bolsonaro. The narrow victory, the lack of parliamentary support and the continuous mobilization of Bolsonaro, even after the electoral defeat of its greatest leader, culminating in the coup attempt of January 8, 2023 when the headquarters of the three branches of government in Brasilia were invaded and vandalized, created and continues to create obvious constraints for the implementation of major social reforms in Lula’s third term as president. Even so, the Lula government has been showing that, despite the existing resistance, which is incomparably greater than in the first PT era (2003–2016), it wants to implement measures that contribute to reducing social hierarchies. Germany The processes of de-ordering, i.e. movements or displacements in the hierarchies of class, gender, ethnicity, region, etc. in Germany intensified with the reunifica- tion of the country, which started in 1990, when five federal states of the former GDR (DDR) were integrated into the 11 existing states of the FRG (BRD). As a result, around 16 million inhabitants of the former socialist Germany were inte- grated into the territory and institutional order of capitalist Germany. Although, on the whole, unification or rather annexation has meant a material uplift for the former inhabitants of socialist Germany, this process has been accompanied by a loss of economic prominence for companies and regions that were once the driving forces behind socialist modernity, but then became obsolete when, in 134 Political Modernity and Beyond the unified country, they started competing with the much more technologically advanced regions and companies on the capitalist side. Social hierarchies are also reconstructed in this process so that, in general, inhabitants of the former East Germany, given their professional training and experience in companies and professions which often did not fit into the reunified country, faced loses in terms of social prestige and position in organizations and companies. The inequality in technological and material development between the east and west sides of Germany, although compensated for by specific actions and policies, is still present more than 30 years after reunification. While the average monthly wage in western Germany was 3340 euros in 2019, in the east it was 2850 euros (Suhr, 2020). As far as gender asymmetries are concerned, there has been a steady reduc- tion in the gender pay gap over the last few decades for Germany as a whole. However, the difference between the former West and East Germany is still very marked. While, for example, in 2023 the gender pay gap in the former West Germany was 19%, in East Germany it was 7% (IAB, 2023). An important and very relevant transformation for understanding the advance of the far right, which affects both the western and eastern parts of Germany, is the significant growth in the share of immigrants in the country’s population. Between 1990 and 2022, the proportion of people without German citizenship living in Germany rises from 6.7% to 15.9% (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2024). In addition to this figure, there is an increasing presence of people with a history of migration living in Germany. It refers to people who, although they may have German nationality, are considered by part of the population to be foreigners because they are either the children or grandchildren of immigrants or have ac- quired citizenship through naturalization. Around 30% of the population living in Germany today is considered to have a history of migration, but this figure varies greatly depending on the federal state. Bremen is the state with the high- est proportion of people with a history of immigration (47%), while the five states of the former East Germany have the lowest proportion of people with a history of immigration (between 9.4% and 10.8%) (BiB, 2022). The pay gap between immigrants and Germans is even bigger than the gen- der gap. The average salary of immigrants is around 25% lower than the aver- age salary of German nationals, even if this number varies according to the methodology to measure it. The risk of living in poverty is also much higher among people with a history of migration than among people without a history of migration: 28.6% compared to 18.4% (https://mediendienst-integration.de/ integration/arbeitsmarkt.html). Nevertheless, in terms of public visibility, both in the mass media, social media and various social spaces, the presence of im- migrants and people with a history of migration is growing significantly. Thus, if we consider the occupations in which a significant number of people with a history of migration work, we see that the vast majority are engaged in less prestigious and reputable activities such as cleaning services and lower-skilled https://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/arbeitsmarkt.html https://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/arbeitsmarkt.html Intersectional Situations and Political Choices 135 jobs in construction. However, participation is also significant in socially pres- tigious professions such as doctors, with 15% of foreigners, singers with 42% and artists and dancers with 28% (https://mediendienst-integration.de/integra- tion/arbeitsmarkt.html). Conclusions Following in the footsteps of Floya Anthias, who identified processes of de- ordering and re-ordering social hierarchies in recent transits and transitions in migration in Europe, this chapter sought to selectively reconstruct some of the significant transformations in Brazilian society since Lula first became president in 2003 and in German politics since the country’s reunification in 1990. In the Brazilian case, the transformations discussed in the two phases highlighted, the first PT era and the far-right backlash, constitute the political-institutional framework in which the displacements in the intersectional situations reported take place. In the German case, reunification is the caesura that marks the start of de-ordering of existing hierarchies The brief overview of intersectional displacements offered in the Brazilian case confirms Anthias’ intuition when referring to areas with varying degrees of rigidity in the existing hierarchies. Completing the author’s insight, we can even say that fluidity occurs in both directions. In other words, in cases where minimally de-ordering hierarchies was not so difficult, re-ordering such hier- archies also cost very little politically. If one looks at the class structure, for instance, poor people who left poverty during the first PT era returned to it very quickly during the far-right backlash. The areas of absolute rigidity, i.e. forms of inequality that have proved immune to the changes of all kinds observed, are equally evident. In terms of class, the situation of the richest 1% improved a lot and continuously in Brazil between 2003 and 2024. Other rigid inequalities are those linked to existential rights limited by violence. Although, in general, Brazil has become much more violent since 2003, the gap in vulnerability to the various forms of violence between white men, on the one hand, and women, black people and the LGBTQIA+ population, on the other, has widened greatly in the period (IPEA, 2019; Grupo Gay da Bahia, 2019). In the German case, we can’t talk about two cycles, one of de-ordering and the other of re-ordering social hierarchies. What has been observed since 1990 is a de-ordering of the hierarchies to the extent that women and immigrants, whose intersectional situation in material, political and existential terms is less privi- leged, could slightly improve their position. In the case of relations between the west and east sides of Germany, there has been a variety of relevant movements. Hierarchies that existed within socialist Germany itself are broken down, but at the same time regions, people and groups that had a privileged intersectional situation in the Ost Germany have occupied in less prominent positions in the unified country. https://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/arbeitsmarkt.html https://mediendienst-integration.de/integration/arbeitsmarkt.html 136 Political Modernity and Beyond The central argument of this chapter is that these shifts in intersectional situ- ations explain, to a large extent, adherence to both far-right but also more pro- gressive political positions. Those who improved their intersectional situation in the cycle of de-ordering hierarchies tend to reject the far-right. In the Brazilian case, this has been shown consistently in the presidential elections since at least 2014 as the poor (i.e. people who earn up to two minimum wages/month), the Queer population as well as women and blacks voted in these elections, for the most part, for PT candidates. People and groups who have either seen their intersectional situation worsen concretely or live in the expectation that their intersectional situation may worsen are more likely to accept and support the far right. In Brazil, this is the case for the richest, the heterosexual population, men and whites (Datafolha, 2022). In Germany, men, the population on the eastern side of Germany and people with less school education are more likely to vote for the AfD (ARD, 2021). Remember that this propensity is and remains con- tingent. In other words, the change in the intersectional situation may condition political choice, but it doesn’t necessarily condition it. After all, not only the objective situation, i.e. the position in the social structure, determines political choice. Equally important are the process of signifying structural changes and the anxieties and expectations associated with them, which can be articulated by very different discourses. Thus, the same people who, for example, believed that the redistributive promises disseminated by the PT in Brazil or by Die Linke party in Germany would restore or improve their intersectional situation may, in the next election, bet on the extreme right’s praise of meritocracy as the best path for upward mobility. References Almeida R (2019) Bolsonaro presidente: conservadorismo, evangelismo e a crise brasileira. Novos estudos CEBRAP 38(1): 185–213. https://www.scielo.br/j/nec/a/ rTCrZ3gHfM5FjHmzd48MLYN/?lang=pt Anderson P (2019) Bolsonaro’s Brazil. London Review of Books 41(3): 11–22. Anthias F (2021) Translocational Belongings. Intersectional Dilemmas and Social In- equalities. 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London and New York: Routledge. https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Querschnitt/Demografischer-Wandel/Aspekte/demografie-wanderungen.html https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Querschnitt/Demografischer-Wandel/Aspekte/demografie-wanderungen.html https://de.statista.com/infografik/19156/gehaltsvergleich-westdeutschland-und-ostdeutschland/ https://de.statista.com/infografik/19156/gehaltsvergleich-westdeutschland-und-ostdeutschland/ 8 Racial Capitalism, the Politics of Care, and People as Profit Premilla Nadasen Introduction This chapter is drawn from my most recent book, Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, in which I argue that we have reached a new phase of capitalism where people’s bodies, wellness, disabilities and vulnerabilities, and ability to survive have become sites of profit and extraction (Nadasen, 2023) This grow- ing, but not altogether new, form of financial accumulation signals a shift away from capital’s overwhelming reliance on the exploitation of labor power to extraction of profit from life-making. This iteration of capitalism, which has accelerated in recent years and outpaces the industrial economy in the US, is rooted in earlier forms of racial capitalism where the life-making of Black and Brown people was a source of profit. Scholars have examined the transitions from a slave economy to an industrial economy to finance capitalism (Fraser, 2016; Harvey, 2010; Silver and Payne, 2020). Many theorists believe a general crisis of capitalism is on the horizon because of capitalism’s tendency toward crisis as well as the unsustainability of finance as a site of profit-making, growing economic inequality, and the exis- tential threat of climate change. Evidence about the convergence of crises that have resulted in a fraying of support systems and infrastructure may point to a fundamental shift in capitalism. I suggest that in this moment of crisis capital has found new sources of profit-making from life-making. This new stage of capitalism is intertwined with and reliant upon manufacturing and finance. Like all capitalist transitions, the phases are not discrete but overlapping and nonlin- ear. The scope of what I am calling the care economy is yet to be determined, but the perceptible shift in how capital is making money off care at the moment is alarming. This was most evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic was marked by a devastating crisis of care: the closing of schools and childcare centers, families struggling with caring responsibilities while also trying to work, workers who either lost their jobs or were expected to work despite the dangers, and the disproportionate number of care and essential workers who contracted and died of COVID-19. Most people came to see care DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-11 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-11 Racial Capitalism, the Politics of Care, and People as Profit 141 as essential work, as necessary work, as the work that makes all other work possible, as the New York City-based domestic workers rights group, Domestic Workers United, said back in 2000. In response to the crisis, the US government spent hundreds of billions of dollars to shore up schools, hospitals, and childcare, and to fast-track vaccine and antiviral COVID-19 treatments (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Ser- vices [CMS], n.d.). Much of the money went to the corporate sector and only a small portion ended up in the hands of individual families. At the same time new profit-making interests emerged with the intention of addressing the care crisis. The pharmaceutical company Regeneron, for example, received $450 million from the federal government to develop an antibody treatment. After the com- pany provided the initial round of 300,000 doses, the federal government, using taxpayer money, paid the market price for an additional 1.4 million doses at a cost of 3 billion dollars. Regeneron, then, holds the patent for a drug developed with public dollars and it charges ten times what it costs to manufacture. Re- generon’s stock price almost doubled during the pandemic. The care economy flourished as a result of increased spending by both the federal government and individual households. In 2021, national health expenditures were almost $13,000 per person—$4.3 trillion (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS], 2022). CVS alone raked in $292 billion in revenue in 2021 (CVS Health Corporation, 2022). The health and hospital industry, pharmaceutical compa- nies, and insurance companies clearly profited from care. The pandemic made visible the links between the state and private care in- dustries. It is only the latest iteration in a trend of profit extraction from care. In this chapter I will demonstrate growing economic interest in the care economy. Although for-profit investment in health care has come under scrutiny, less evi- dent is the role of the state and nonprofit entities in the broader care economy, so I will focus most of my comments on those sectors. I argue that the welfare state and nonprofit, often considered a check on corporate profit and as crucial for alleviating poverty, are complicit in and fuel the care economy. By examin- ing the welfare state, the nonprofit sector, the care economy, and grassroots and labor organizing, I analyze the inequities in who is cared for and who is not, and how care has become a site of investment and profit making. I also discuss how the grassroots activists are developing alternative models for reimagining care. Racial Capitalism and the Care Economy The care economy and the state’s complicity in treating people as commodities is rooted in the history of racial capitalism. Black and Brown people, includ- ing enslaved people, indentured servants, and contract workers, were treated as capital with revenue generated from their lives, even as their labor was also exploited. Although care as a site of profit and accumulation has expanded 142 Political Modernity and Beyond recently, racial capitalism situates the care economy in a longer historical frame and challenges much of the conventional thinking that has emerged from the scholarship on care and social reproduction (Robinson, 1983). Marxist feminists’ theories of care rest on a presumed tension between life- making and profit accumulation (Bhattacharya, 2017; Ferguson, 2020; Fraser, 2023). They argue that capital produces profit through commodity production and relies on social reproduction for the production of labor power. Social re- production, in this view, is a necessary precondition for capitalist profit but not a source of capitalist profit. Capitalist strategies to reduce the cost of social re- production by lowering wages and dismantling the welfare state (a cost-saving measure for capital), Marxist feminists argue, have resulted in a crisis of care. Marxist feminist scholar Nancy Fraser (2023) has argued that the deple- tion of the systems that capital relies on to generate profit (the preconditions of profit): natural resources and social reproduction or people’s ability to re- produce labor will ensure a general crisis of capitalism. Fraser argues that the relentless drive for profit has resulted in a system in which ‘[capitalism] eats its own tail’ (Fraser, 2023: 80). Fraser’s argument that we are experiencing a dire crisis of care is persuasive, but I offer a different analysis about how capital- ism is responding to that crisis. Rather than the care crisis generating a crisis of capitalism, I argue that capital has turned the crisis of care into an opportunity to remake itself by embracing the care economy as a new site of profit. Capital’s profit-making frontier suggests not a contradiction between capital- ism and care, but an alignment. Capital has turned this crisis into a financially lu- crative opportunity, creating services and products, securing government grants and working closely with the nonprofit sector. But extraction of profit from care is not new. Profit has always been extracted from the lives of Black, Indigenous, and Brown people, without a clear distinction between production and reproduc- tion. For women of color, capital has exploited their labor, relied on them for reproduction of labor power, and extracted profit from their reproduction and labor of social reproduction. The example of slavery perhaps best illustrates this. An entire industry emerged around enslaving and transporting people as commodities. In the 18th century at the height of the Transatlantic slave trade, for example, slave owners found it cheaper to bring in newly enslaved people rather than to support the social reproduction of already-enslaved people to raise a child until full work- ing age of 14, thus fueling the trade in people rather than supporting life for the reproduction of labor power (Morgan, 2021; Williams, 1944). Financiers, insurance companies, and shipping companies benefited enormously from the trade in enslaved people and the presumed capital in human bodies. Profit ac- crued from the slave trade illustrates that people both produced commodities and were commodities that were sold separate and apart from those commodi- ties produced by their labor power (Berry, 2017; Blackburn, 1997; Johnson, 1999, 2017; Kish and Leroy, 2015; Murphy, 2005; Williams, 1944). Racial Capitalism, the Politics of Care, and People as Profit 143 Attempting to turn people into commodities involved an incomplete, imper- fect, and always fraught process. Stephanie Smallwood has brilliantly argued that “Turning people into slaves entailed more than the completion of a market transaction. In addition, the economic exchange had to transform independent beings into human commodities whose most ‘socially relevant feature’ was their ‘exchangeability’” (Smallwood, 2007: 35). In the care economy, capi- tal’s interest is not exchangeability, however, but extraction of profit from life- making, the stuff that enables us to live day to day, to ensure we are fed and cared for. With the end of the slave trade in the early 19th century, slave owners invested more in natural reproduction and began to encourage or force enslaved women to have children. In fact, encouraging reproduction for the purpose of selling enslaved people became a common strategy (Morgan, 2021; Turner, 2017). In this way, the labor of social reproduction that enslaved people engaged in for their own families (their care work) contributed directly to capitalist profit, not just labor power. If capital generates profit from social reproduction, there is no inherent tension between social reproduction and capital accumulation. That does not mean that people are well cared for, but it does mean that capital sees monetary value in them. Even after the abolition of slavery, Black and Brown people were rarely given the opportunity to produce life. They were excluded from welfare programs and labor protections, denied equal access to veterans, housing, and social security benefits, and entangled with the carceral system which destroyed family life. The moves toward greater racial equity in social programs in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with economic restructuring and the dismantling of social pro- grams. So, Black and Brown people rarely had state or capital support for social reproduction even when their labor was necessary. Social reproduction vis-à-vis capital and the state cannot be analyzed without considering the bodies, especially racialized bodies, that were being reproduced—that is, how some people were deemed more valuable than others, and how some people’s labor was deemed more valuable than other people’s la- bor. A lens of racial capitalism helps us understand how the relationship between care and capitalism differs depending on who is the subject of discussion. The Highest Stage Although patterns of profit extraction from care were historically confined pri- marily to people of color, it has become a hallmark of the US economy. Neolib- eral restructuring and the middle-class care crisis over the last few decades have laid the foundation for care as a site of capital accumulation. The diffuse and decentralized nature of the care economy means there are many layers of profit to be made. A growing number of corporate firms have developed business models to meet social reproductive needs. Capital accrues profit from consumer 144 Political Modernity and Beyond spending on health care aides, nursing homes, education, food delivery, and childcare. The care economy has benefited from the care needs of people with resources as well as the crisis of social reproduction of the most vulnerable people, often through state funding intended to alleviate the crisis. Care.com, for instance, which calls itself ‘the world’s largest online destina- tion for care’, connects people with care needs to people who are looking for care work (Care.com, 2024). Care.com is not an employer but a digital platform that treats workers as independent operators. It is the Uber equivalent for people looking for care workers. The site provides advice on how to fill out paperwork and file taxes but does not offer guaranteed wages, benefits, or hours (which means, because of low pay, it is generating a care crisis as much as purportedly addressing it). The website has grown exponentially in response to the care cri- sis and the large number of people in need of work. But Care.com is not a public service. The company makes a hefty profit as a care marketplace. In February 2020, it was bought by a US public holding company, Interactive Corp, for $500 million (PR Newswire, 2020). Under neoliberalism, the scale and pace of extraction from ‘life itself’ accel- erated and social reproduction now exceeds manufacturing as a source of capital accumulation. Of the top ten Fortune 500 companies in the US today (defined by revenue), four are part of the care economy: CVS Health, United Health Group, McKesson (a pharmaceutical and medical supply company), and Cencora (a wholesale drug company) (Fortune, 2025). By contrast in 1980 the top ten in- cluded six oil and gas companies, three auto manufacturers, and one tech firm. Many companies eagerly seek out new ways to profit from care. The Boston Consulting Group encourages investing in care, which it promises will ‘pay dividends’ (Kos et al., 2022). Pivotal Ventures, a company founded by Melinda French Gates, has produced both an Investor’s Guide and an Entrepreneur’s Guide to the care economy (The Holding Co., 2023). Such financial guidance suggests that there is a growing market for care and that social reproduction is a source of capital accumulation. In addition to the consumer goods market and increasing number of care workers, private companies have also eyed the public sector as potentially lucra- tive. Maximus is one of the largest health and human services contractors with local, state, and federal governments, and its backstory and growth are tied to the transformation of the welfare state. Founded in 1975, Maximus operates state health insurance exchanges, welfare-to-work programs, child support en- forcement, and job training, and administers Medicaid, Medicare, and the Child Health Insurance Program. The more convoluted the program is, the greater the need for a company like Maximus, whose motto is ‘helping government serve the people’ (Berry, 2020). Outsourcing welfare state responsibilities transferred dollars from the public into the private sectors and created a situation where a private, for-profit company determines, for example, who gets public assistance and who is covered by a state’s Medicaid Managed Long Term Care program. https://care.com https://care.com https://care.com Racial Capitalism, the Politics of Care, and People as Profit 145 Maximus’s approach to child welfare is particularly egregious. Its goal is to reduce costs and maximize revenue for state child welfare agencies. One way the company brings economic efficiency to foster care is to garnish the ben- efits of children who are entitled to disability or social security payments be- cause their parents have died. It examines personal health and school records and caseworker notes to determine if a child might qualify for assistance if they are deemed emotionally or physically disabled. Maximus describes foster chil- dren, law professor Daniel Hatcher (2016: 83) writes, as a ‘revenue generating mechanism’. Decisions about taking children into state care or leaving them with their families are influenced by the company’s revenue goals, which, ac- cording to Hatcher (2016: 46), ‘are not aimed at determining how to best meet the child’s needs, but rather at how to best use the child to meet the fiscal needs of the agency and the state’. Children are evaluated and ranked using data analytics to determine who among them might be most economically valuable to the state, and those chil- dren are pursued by Maximus. And of course, Maximus gets a cut as well. The child welfare system then is not a system of care, but as Dorothy Roberts (2022) calls it, a family policing system, one that destroys communities and produces profit. Rather than caring for poor children, it separates them from their families for the purposes of financial gain. Maximus benefits from poverty and hardship and treats people as products. It is deeply implicated in the welfare state and profit-making from care. In the winter of 2020, Maximus had $3.7 billion worth of state contracts in New York alone (Velasquez, 2020). Manufacturing still generates profit and there is still a need to produce labor power, particularly in the Global South, where a great deal of manufacturing has shifted. Indeed, the vibrant consumer economy of rich countries that runs parallel to and feeds off the care economy would not be possible without a man- ufacturing sector. Still, theories of care, social reproduction, and the welfare state that rest on a manufacturing-based economy and assume a tension between capital accumulation and social reproduction do not account for the growing importance of the care economy. The way human survival has become a means for capitalist growth in de- industrializing countries is shocking and grotesque. Economic instability, household debt, and labor precarity are all feeding on and thriving in the care economy. Under neoliberal racial capitalism, care for bodies with vulnerabilities and incapacities has become a source of wealth—whether those bodies are in jail cells, immigration detention centers, nursing homes, or day care centers. People who capital might otherwise have deemed ‘unproductive’ or a ‘surplus’ population and cannot contribute to capital accumulation through their labor power may contribute through their need for food, shelter, health care, and mo- bility assistance. Our love for them impels us to consume care services and purchase products to ensure they are cared for. And, in the process, we deepen our relationship with the care industry and further exacerbate societal inequities. 146 Political Modernity and Beyond Capitalism has always caused pain, whether through dispossession, forced labor, or environmental destruction. This is not new. But under free-market neo- liberal policies, investment in ‘people as profit’ has expanded and accelerated. In this new stage of capitalism, the care economy parasitically feeds off pain; that is, some people’s pain translates into other people’s profit. This is distinct from what we might call collateral casualties of capitalism, for example, communities that were displaced for the purpose of extractive mining or the pain and suffer- ing associated with the exploitation of colonial labor. Now, pain and suffering, and the ‘care crisis’ are lucrative rather than unintended effects. If someone feels pain, Big Pharma will quickly market a pill to alleviate it—but only for the right price and the right person. Rethinking Workers’ Struggles and the Care Agenda Class-based struggles should be rethought in light of the symbiotic relationship between social reproduction and capital accumulation. Working-class campaigns often center on labor: how, why, and under what conditions people labored, the rate of exploitation, and how the profit from their labor is distributed. Workers’ autonomy is usually defined in terms of wages and control of labor, which deter- mine the degree to which people are able to labor for themselves rather than in the interests of capital. Campaigns for higher wages and state protections are re- fracted through a lens of the contradiction between capitalist profit and workers’ ability to care for themselves. Demands for higher wages and state protections give workers a larger share of the profits generated from their labor in the mar- ketplace and reduce the rate of exploitation. Such life-making campaigns are a win for workers and a loss for capital. The New Deal, for example, is considered ‘a historic compromise’, a product of workers’ struggle, designed to manage the antagonism between capital and labor by granting workers the right to organize, reducing working hours, and raising wages. Its major weakness, many argue, was its failure to go far enough and the exclusion of various categories of work- ers. Demanding welfare assistance or a shorter workday, or withdrawal from the paid labor force, as Black workers did during Reconstruction, enabled the crea- tion of spaces separate and apart from the control of capitalist labor exploitation. Marxist feminists have significantly expanded the framework of labor and labor organizing to include social reproduction—the care and essential work that has become a more significant part of the economy. They argue that the labor of social reproduction that takes place in the home, a space over which workers have control, has been the basis of workers’ resistance to capital. The struggle between capitalist demand for labor power and the labor of social re- production is what Fraser (2016: 103) calls a ‘boundary struggle’: although capital moves to minimize support for workers, workers demand more time and resources for care. Struggles around social reproduction are a space of resistance because, as Susan Ferguson (2020) and Tithi Bhattacharya (2017) argue, it is Racial Capitalism, the Politics of Care, and People as Profit 147 precisely in this arena of producing life, where workers have autonomy.1 These spaces—social and cultural formations, cooperatives, and home life—were im- portant not only for the production of labor power but served as sites of resistance and autonomy, where people are able to care for themselves and their loved ones. What happens, however, when leisure, care, the welfare state, and love for one’s family become sources of profit? How does that change the calculus of these ‘autonomous’ spaces? How might it alter the trajectory of working-class campaigns? The synergies between life-making and capitalist profit should not diminish the importance of people resisting capitalist intrusions on their private lives and fighting for concessions from capital (benefits or wages) in order to live better lives. But profit extraction from care in both individual households and state programs warrants critical reflection on the role of the state and what constitutes effective reformist movements. Recent advocacy for more government spending and a comprehensive care infrastructure program aims to alleviate the care crisis, renew a liberal agenda, and push back on the neoliberal dismantling of the welfare state. But most care programs dispense services and tax credits rather than direct cash assistance. If the story of Maximus is any indication, states will outsource public programs to private entities. Large sums of public dollars allocated for care in combination with public-private partnerships and entities seeking profit from care have led to increasing inequality and fueled the for-profit care economy. Even with the push for a caring economy and advocacy for greater in- vestment in care over the past few decades, the truly needy—people with- out work or who are unable to work, the unhoused, single mothers, and the formerly incarcerated people—are left to fend for themselves. Close to 40 million Americans live in poverty (Shrider, 2024). That’s a shocking num- ber. A growing number of people in the United States live either in deep poverty (which the United Nations defines as people earning less than half the poverty threshold) or in extreme poverty (people who live on less than 2 dollars a day). Although extreme poverty is not part of everyday vocabulary in the US and is usually associated with ‘elsewhere’ one and a half million American households live in extreme poverty today—nearly twice as many as 20 years ago (Nadasen, 2017). We cannot accept at face value promises that a care agenda will help people in need. Neither can we completely reject government programs or state inter- vention. Rather we need to critically consider proposed state programs, their structure, costs, and potential beneficiaries. New Ways of Caring Grappling with how to organize around care and what to organize for is crucial. Given the high stakes—people’s lives—we cannot give up on care. One way to bypass rampant profit extraction from state programs is to demand a guaranteed 148 Political Modernity and Beyond income, a government payment that raises the income of everyone who falls be- low a certain threshold to a basic minimum amount. A direct cash payment is a viable alternative to state programs that mandate services and rely on the private sector (profit or nonprofit) to offer those services. Putting money in the hands of poor people gives them greater financial control. Although they still depend on the capitalist marketplace to meet their needs, it may be one small step to move us toward more autonomous and less extractive forms of caring. Grassroots care practices and community organizing also offer some insight about navigating this political landscape. The Mississippi Low Income Child- Care Initiative (MLICCI), a Biloxi-based organization, advocates for state and federal funding for affordable childcare so that mothers can meet state work mandates, get public assistance, and move toward economic security (The Mississippi Low Income Child-Care Initiative, 2016). They are operating in a context of extremely limited state support. Mississippi is the poorest state in the country. It is also the stingiest when it comes to public assistance (Wolfe, 2022e). The monthly Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) pay- ment is $260 for a family of three (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 2024). And only 5% of eligible families in 2021 received assistance (Mississippi Department of Human Services, 2021: 16; Wolfe, 2020). Compounding this is egregious fraud in the state welfare program. If Maxi- mus is an example of for-profit interest in welfare, outright embezzlement has characterized welfare in Mississippi. It recently came to light that the director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, John Davis, handed out mil- lions of public dollars in welfare grants to his friends who ran nonprofits. He gave the Mississippi Community Education Center, founded by his friend and supporter Nancy New, up-front payments of more than $60 million over four years to run programs supposedly to assist poor families. Instead, Davis and New allegedly used welfare money as a slush fund to enrich themselves, hire friends, support pet projects, take fancy vacations, and purchase luxury vehicles (Wolfe, 2022a–d). Although skeptical of state officials, members of MLICCI feel they must—because of the dire need among Mississippi mothers—continue to hold public officials accountable, even as they strive toward a more just and equitable system. Perhaps most importantly, grassroots organizations like MLICCI provide much-needed support to poor parents, helping them navigate the state bureaucracy and become knowledgeable about the rules and regulations. Through convenings and summits, MLICCI connects low-income childcare providers across the state, many of whom live and work in isolated communities and have little time or indi- vidual capacity to effect policy changes, giving them a platform and the power to speak in a united voice. By forging statewide unity, they have emboldened local activists, built a base for a political movement, and won concessions for the peo- ple who need it most. Perhaps the value of social programs can also be measured by the degree to which they contribute to building political power. Racial Capitalism, the Politics of Care, and People as Profit 149 MLICCI exemplifies how we cannot discount struggles around care as a site of political possibility. Poor women in Mississippi don’t have the luxury of boy- cotting the care industry or turning away from the state. Even a meager benefit can mean the difference between going hungry or having food on the table. MLICCI’s advocacy mixes state support, private sector home-based care, and collective care, and these often co-exist in the same center and individual. In addition to lobbying, MLICCI has modeled communal care. A few years ago, when I took my students to Mississippi as part of a pedagogical partner- ship with MLICCI, we had an especially illuminating experience about the im- portance of thinking collectively rather than individually. MLICCI asked us to construct an index of women’s economic security to assist in its efforts to lobby the state to expand childcare and welfare assistance. The students and I worked together to construct the index and interviewed people across the state to get their input about what variables should be included. One of our first interviews was with a job training program, Women in Con- struction, run by the nonprofit Moore Community House in Biloxi. Initiated dur- ing Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast, Women in Construction enabled poor women on public assistance to access higher-paying construction trades to make a dent in the gender-pay gap. It did so by giving participants practical skills, a stipend, and childcare. During the group interview about 20 of us were sitting in a circle at Moore Community House—15 trainees and 5 of us from Barnard College. The train- ees were mostly African American, with some Latinx and white women. The previous night, the eight students, the course assistant, and I crammed into my Best Western hotel room to review our list of questions. We decided that get- ting a handle on women’s economic security meant not only thinking about insecurity—what people lacked—but also understanding what security meant. How would one’s life be transformed with economic security? What would in- dividuals do that they are unable to do now? Marketing agencies have instilled in us aspirations for a life of travel, re- laxation, hobbies, and walks along the beach. Economic security and happiness, we are told, means finally doing the things we have always wanted to do. We believed this would look different for poor women in Mississippi. We predicted that, for our interviewees, economic security would mean quality time with their children or engaging in self-care. It might mean that day-to-day life would be less stressful and most certainly not be centered on crisis management. Or it might mean a full night’s sleep—a luxury for single parents who sometimes must work two jobs or travel long distances for work. We did not anticipate the response articulated by most women at the meeting. In contrast to the alleged correlation of economic security with personal fulfill- ment, which is a product of neoliberal ideas of individualism widely circulated in popular culture and informed our thinking as well, their sense of communal responsibility was surprising and inspiring. Our interviewees didn’t have steady 150 Political Modernity and Beyond work, were sometimes separated from their children, had been on welfare, and/ or had poor health, and many of them were in debt. Despite these multiple chal- lenges, their long-term goals and their visions for a better life were about col- lective well-being, not individual advancement or personal leisure. Rather than seeking personal fulfillment, they said they would choose to give back to the community and help others. Interviewees hoped, for example, to create a rec- reational space for young people in the neighborhood. They wanted to ensure that the less fortunate were cared for. Our meeting at Moore Community House revealed how ordinary people, hidden from public view, are creating alternative models of collective well-being and social justice. MLICCI is one example of communal care, of how communities in a context of state abandonment are coming together and providing basic social supports. Although doing so out of necessity, but they are simultaneously developing models for what a truly caring society could look like. Another example is the care collectives that emerged in the early 2000s among disabled people and their allies. In response to the inadequacy of public health care, collectives were founded on an ethic of interdependence: everyone gives and receives care, even as it is acknowledged that some people have more needs than others. This dynamic creates what gender and women’s studies professor Akemi Nishida (2022: 145) calls ‘messy dependency’ where mutuality is not reciprocal but based on de- sire, ability, and agency. It can be unruly and, according to neoliberal metrics, unequal. Mutual dependence in this context means that people contribute what they can. Controlled by disabled people, these ‘care webs’ as disability justice activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (2018: 33) calls them, are a way to build community power. Communal care is a fundamental ethic and praxis in households, families, and communities. Since the dawn of human history, people have cared for and about one another. With the dismantling of the social safety net and diminished state support for the poor, this critical labor has been performed by friends, family, and community members. The unpaid labor that so many of us engage in is often not accounted for. This labor may not involve direct care of another human. It could consist of mowing a lawn or washing dishes and sometimes comes from a place of love or emotional investment. It can be emotionally and physically taxing. Yet, the ethic of caring that prompts friends to help a disabled friend, children to care for elderly parents, and neighbors to offer assistance is central to human survival and the essence of what makes us social beings. Alongside communal care, radical care is collective and antihierarchical, sits outside capitalist profit-making structures, and contributes to long-term social change. The survival programs organized by the Black Panther Party for Self De- fense in the 1960s and 1970s embodied a commitment to democratic engagement and service to the needy that was an alternative to extractive care and formed the basis of a transformative anti-capitalist practice (Barker and Feiner, 2009; Nelson, 2011). The Free Breakfast for Children program which served eggs, bacon, Racial Capitalism, the Politics of Care, and People as Profit 151 grits, toast, and orange juice to neighborhood children, for example, filled a void that had resulted from the failure of the state to provide basic social reproductive services to the Black community. Managed largely by Panther women, the free breakfasts as well as free medical and dental clinics served impoverished Black communities (Matthews, 2001; Nelson, 2011). In addition to meeting people’s needs and exposing the inadequacies of the state, the survival programs, accord- ing to historian Robyn C. Spencer (2016), made people question the commodi- fied relationship that mediated their basic human needs. These experimental efforts, often emerging locally and from community need, are building blocks for a different kind of society, gesturing to an abolitionist fu- ture in which care is not defined by capitalist profit-making or racial and gendered norms but by an equally distributed commitment to the well-being of others. It offers us a way to move forward and consider how to create new forms of care. Conclusion This chapter examines the current care crisis in a context of capitalist shifts more broadly. It argues that under neoliberalism the care crisis has become a more important site of capitalist profit. By examining care and social reproduc- tion through the lens of racial capitalism and foregrounding the lives of women of color, I demonstrate how capital has long accrued profit from both the labor and life of Black and Brown people. Part of my reframing of the care crisis comes from fully integrating an analysis of race, as well as a methodological approach that relies on the voices of grassroots activists and organizers as well as Black feminist scholarship. In an insightful essay about racial capitalism, the historian Walter Johnson (2017) argues that in order to understand the relation- ship between slavery and capitalism, we should follow Cedric Robinson to ask not what Marx says about slavery but what slavery says about Marx. Similarly, I start with people who are care workers or people in need of care and ask what their experiences can teach us about the care economy. They help us consider how the care economy has been a site of extraction as well as how radical care practices can be a site of political possibility. Note 1 Salar Mohandesi and Emma Teitelman (2017) have suggested moving away from production to social reproduction as a starting point for our analysis. 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Available at: https://mississippitoday. org/2022/10/05/mississippi-reject-most-welfare-applicants. https://mississippitoday.org/2022/04/14/phil-bryant-save-the-children-welfare/ https://mississippitoday.org/2022/04/14/phil-bryant-save-the-children-welfare/ https://mississippitoday.org/2022/04/18/phil-bryant-troubled-nephew-welfare-scandal/ https://mississippitoday.org/2022/04/18/phil-bryant-troubled-nephew-welfare-scandal/ https://mississippitoday.org/2022/10/05/mississippi-reject-most-welfare-applicants https://mississippitoday.org/2022/10/05/mississippi-reject-most-welfare-applicants Part III Reconfigurations https://taylorandfrancis.com 9 Modernity and Its Horizon Today Phases, Challenges and Perspectives José Maurício Domingues Introduction Modernity is, by definition, a multidimensional civilization and, as such, has elements that more or less stably characterize it. But it is a historical entity, too; hence, within those stable parameters, it evolves. The modern state and a political system characterized by a mixture of liberalism and republicanism, capitalism, with its relentless drive towards capital accumulation and international inequali- ties, an objectifying relation to what has been established as ‘nature’, a tense dialectic between the nation-state – which included colonialism and imperial formations – and the global/international cosmopolitan sphere, individualism and the nuclear family, the horizon of equal freedom as emancipation, alongside social solidarity: these are its main imaginary, institutional and practice-oriented features. As it evolved, modernity hybridized, in a position of dominance, thus constituting a global modernity, not self-contained ‘multiple modernities’. These hybridizations encompassed other civilizations and even later the remnants of the party-state communist project. The latter was a revolutionary attempt to su- persede modernity that led, however, to a different civilization – not ‘real so- cialism’ proper, but authoritarian collectivism –, which was eventually either thoroughly defeated and disappeared or returned to modernity, keeping some of its peculiar features. Contingent modernizing moves (often loose, fuzzy and un- intended, sometimes as intentional and clear-cut modernizing offensives) define the specific paths modernity treads in each space-time configuration. Modernity has unfolded according to particular geographic arrangements, but also through different stages. Those parameters remain. Yet the way they operate, how they relate to each other, how they have concretely been shaped has varied not only due to national trajectories but also longitudinally (Domingues, 2012, 2024a). These changes have implied more or less clear-cut phases, in which espe- cially the market and the state have entertained specific entanglements. Most authors who worked with such periodization spoke of two or three phases, es- pecially with reference to the bigger or smaller role of the state viz-à-viz the economy (Berding et al., 1974; Domingues, [2002] 2006, 2012; Lash and Urry, DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-13 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-13 158 Political Modernity and Beyond 1987; Offe, 1985; Wagner, 1994). A powerful movement that has implied an ex- pansionary moment for that liberal-republican tradition viz-à-viz equal freedom, and, conversely at some point, a retraction of their unfolding in that direction, has accompanied the succession of those phases (Domingues, 2024a; Gerbaudo, 2021; van Apeldoorn and de Graaff, 2022). I believe that we may, moreover, be witnessing the emergence of a new phase, to which we are rather chaotically transitioning (Blühdorn, 2024; Domingues, 2023a). In contrast, some would say that modernity is finished and that we need new concepts – which is often the case of post-colonial or decolonial authors, who on the other hand are prone to denounce modernity’s oppressive features, with most of them as well as some others simply desiring to get rid of it. Other perspectives that have been dear to modern thinking, for instance pro- gress, which allowed for the openness of an emancipatory universe with imma- nent tendencies, have also been criticized. Of course, climate change is a crucial issue that has challenged modernity in the last decades and is certainly one of the elements that may push us it in the direction of a new phase. It has been, along with the retraction of liberalism from its expansive moment – and defeat of socialist movements one way or another – a motive behind the wavering of many social scientists and philosophers regarding the idea of progress. In its threatening potentiality, it has moreover entailed an interrogation about the idea of reason and the Enlightenment. In what follows, I try to elaborate on these issues in order to sketch the devel- opment of modernity, globally indeed and through its phases, in particular today. Reason and emancipation may be thereby more properly and finely assessed, resuming their discussion more systematically towards the end of this chapter. First, I conceptually articulate those processes, raising issues about alternative paths. It is worth mentioning, before we move further, that at present we live in a very fluid situation: changes abound but they have not coalesced in a clear direction, though the role of the nation-state has become more salient and a lack of popular mobilization is visible. The next decades will see further shifts which will surely confirm that a new phase of modernity is in the making, though which these will be is not clear or even settled yet. Capitalism Capitalism is a driving force in modernity – sometimes overwhelming. It has gone through different stages, from agrarian capitalism, through manufacture to industry and the latter’s several transformations, including liberalism, Fordism, outsourcing and lean production, Toyotism and the like, though these transfor- mations are globally uneven and the international division of labour has be- come more complex. Science is ever more important for the development of business and technology, while financialization also has gained the upper hand (Castells, [1996, 2000] 2010; Harvey, 1989). Since the pandemic, but reflecting Modernity and Its Horizon Today 159 prior problems, ‘reshoring’ in the United States and Europe – especially against China’s ascendancy – of industrial production is under way, above all regarding semiconductors. The US, but also Europe and Japan, drawing upon Taiwan’s and South Korea’s companies – the most advanced in the world –, have made a huge effort to install chip ‘facs’ in their territories. Electric cars are now a further issue in international competition, while raw materials to sustain post-carbon energy production has reiterated the traditional division of labour between the centre and the periphery. The partial setting aside of the constitutional ‘debt brake’ in Germany, allowing for rearmament and infrastructure as well as investment, is a definite albeit delayed watershed for Europe, partly jettisoning its ordoliberalism. The state has been crucial in all these moves, away from more radical liberal or neoliberal strategies, featuring the decisive return of industrial policy, stronger regulations and increasingly high tariffs against foreign production. This is true of the US and China, with Europe hesitantly grappling with neoliberal (ordolib- eral) foundations thus far. For the rest of the world, what was seen as attempts at catching up do not look easy at all since the technological sophistication of must branches makes industrialization, let alone high-tech production, very dif- ficult to achieve, even with direct foreign inversion and state intervention. Only gigantic and nationalist China has thus far fared well in the last decades in this respect. On the other hand, although oligopolies acquire ever more power, capi- talist markets remain fundamentally liberal, especially regarding wage labour, which lies at the core of a proper definition of capitalism, as Marx demonstrated, contrary to what has become a staple of world-systems theory. Some are prone to stress the extraction of rent through political capitalism, encroaching on the state, or techno-feudalism, based on big tech firms (Riley and Brenner, 2022; Dean, 2025), if not overall the absolute dominance of fi- nance capital (a rather generalized thesis) (e.g., Lapavitsas, 2014). We cannot dive into this discussion, but it is necessary to say that these interpretations seem far-fetched (see also Boyer, 2020, asserting the role of culture and health, as well as big tech, in US capitalism). Big tech firms can surely profit from certain oligopolistic dominance and radical exploitation, debt and data, whereas finance capital is widespread (but also a complex phenomenon). While big companies such as Elon Musk’s may have direct connections to the state and the political system, most of capitalism globally works as business as usual (though lob- bies and neocorporatism do have great importance across the world, what is not new). The promotion of crucial industrial activities by the state looks like a more important contemporary development, partly and in different ways resum- ing state capitalism such as it appeared during the second phase of modernity, superseding the third phase more radical reliance on the market (though the US president, Donald Trump, has been keen to slash – and possibly outsource – the country’s administration). To be sure, executives and shareholders, includ- ing pension funds, have exacted high profits and dividends from corporations. This looks, however, more like unbridled capitalism than a direct and exclusive 160 Political Modernity and Beyond consequence of finance or ‘feudal’ capital. Besides, long-term technological in- vestments have not been in short supply, either by venture capital or state invest- ment, despite seasonal variation. Some would also say that capitalism has reached its limits, due to the scarcity of raw materials, overaccumulation, useless and exploitative finance capital, low rates of growth, to which other negative elements and even doom scenar- ios can be added. This however seems oblivious to how capitalism has been amenable to reinvention. At rock bottom, moreover, raw materials are far from exhausted, while finance capital has many faces; rates of growth have not, in historical comparison, been so low and we seem to be indeed beyond the over- accumulation blockages that were visible in the 1970s-1980s. Besides, as Lenin was keenly aware of, capitalism will not end through an implosion, such as an economic crisis (Aricó, 2012: chap. 7). Subjective transformative forces must bring it down or, more realistically, implement projects capable of altering the logic of the economy. There is nothing simple about that, evidently. So-called real socialism, with collective state property and authoritarian central planning and command, went astray in the economic dimension. Finally, the issue is not merely economic: neoliberalism, with its entrepreneurial trust (Foucault, 2009), has captured the imaginary of advanced modernity. More basically, across the world people are legitimately keen on a better material life, more development and consumption – whether they embrace neoliberal rationality or just want to enjoy the benefits modernity has at least potentially made available to them (Chakrabarty, 2023). Beyond the forceful return of the state to the fore in this still fuzzy fourth phase of modernity, rather chaotic at this stage, we seem there- fore bereft of alternatives to overcome the restrained socioeconomic horizon we contemplate today. Politics and the State The second phase of modernity – with which the present ‘return of the state’ has some resemblance – was premised on some particular patterns. In the central countries of the global system an intensive pattern of consumption underpinned the process of capital accumulation, in the case of the US, or a rather strong welfare system, as in Europe, in part inspired by the Soviet Union, was put in place. The latter guaranteed the advancement of social policies that often tended to universalism, although some corporatist patterns were often to be found. In the peripheral countries only later did developmentalist projects and eventually the extension of the cycle of accumulation for some of them (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Greece, Portugal) allowed for some intensity of consumption among the middle-classes and restricted parts of the working classes, with a creeping extensive pattern of consumption, along with usually limited corporatist models of welfare system (Boyer, 2015; Boyer and Saillard, 2002). With the neoliberal counterrevolution that is central for the third phase of modernity, patterns of Modernity and Its Horizon Today 161 consumption in the central countries shrunk, while China in particular appeared as a new frontier in an extensive pattern of consumption that was typical of capital accumulation in this period (Domingues, 2012). The present situation looks however uncertain. Wages remain low across the world and it seems unlikely that intensive consumption will become a pattern for the accumulation of capital. A pattern of extensive consumption is there- fore likely to prevail, perhaps including India and some parts of Africa, the last large frontier for capital accumulation in this respect. Social policies remain restricted, particularistic and target-oriented, aiming at the poor – actually across the world, surely in the Americas, but in Asia and even Europe (where so-called social investment has combined with mean policies towards the poor). It is clear, thus, that, although this is an unfolding situation, the ‘return of the state’ is rather different from what it once was. The state is not directly involved in production: financial support, de-risking, subsidies and the like seem to characterize its in- tervention at present, with regulations rarely targeting market power and once again confining themselves to consumer welfare, with consumption patterns staying restricted across the planet, except for some upper layers of top earners. In turn, social policies are limited, too, insofar as they simply aim to remedy the situation of the destitute (Domingues, 2024a: chap. 5). This also relates to some crucial political developments undergone by po- litical systems in approximately the last 40 years. Liberal republicanism, the hegemonic perspective that was moreover institutionalized in modernity – save for the ‘communist’ countries –, was forced to democratize due to pres- sures from those excluded from the nineteenth-century political systems. The working-classes and women, in some places also subordinated racial and ethnic groups, fought hard to gain access to political systems and participate, through voting rights, mass organizations, such as unions, large associations and politi- cal parties. Liberal republican representative democracy has always had an oli- garchic core, which was eventually accompanied by what Dahl ([1960] 1963) defined as ‘polyarchic’ (with free and protected contestation and participation) and increasingly became a mixed regime, in which those mass organization – they themselves often rather oligarchic – incorporated the masses to democratic politics. But this has changed. The state political system (which is not to be confused with the state, being smaller than the latter since the bureaucracy is not in principle part of it, although any part of it may be politicized at any point) has been increasingly sealed off from its societal side (what some describe as ‘civil society’, without much analytical acumen), even though all the formal trappings of ‘poliarchy’ are present. Against the former democratizing process, we are thus in the middle of a de-democratizing trend. Authoritarian collectiv- ist regimes (what has often been often called ‘real socialism’), combined with capitalism where they survived and have become more autocratic, shrinking even their oligarchic features, a trend that can be observed in other political systems, too. 162 Political Modernity and Beyond Advanced liberal oligarchy and advance autocracy, as well as a variation of a more autocratic ‘communist’ political regime, may result from this evolu- tion (Domingues, 2024a: chap. 11). They underpin the downsizing of welfare systems in a social liberal direction as well as the non-intensive patterns of con- sumption that characterize capitalist accumulation today. While most liberals seem comfortable with this arrangement and communist parties seem more in- tent on capitalism accumulation than on welfare, social democracy has made peace with such extremely unfair arrangements, with more left-wing, properly socialist or the like alternatives shorn of any hope, apparently, of steering social development. It is true that liberal representative democracy – due to both its oligarchic and democratic features – has resisted what many, misguidedly, I believe, call ‘populism’ (at best a native term that describes demagogic tendencies in ad- vanced modernity). Yet, despite the dire inequality and the problems that beset the ‘poor’ across the world – though it must be said that they live longer and better than ever before, regional and generational variations notwithstanding –, our horizon of change is practically null, regarding the deepening of democracy, social policies and especially more ambitious social change. In this situation, only the reactionary dystopic views of extreme-right forces seem to thrive, cap- turing the imagination of dissatisfied people in many places. What would feature as a true emancipatory outlook and project today is not at all clear. Thus far there is no discontinuity between the de-democratizing trend we observed during the third phase of modernity and what we witness now. Re-oligarchization carries on – along with an expansion of surveillance, by the state and by private plat- forms (Domingues, 2024a: chap. 7; Zuboff, 2019). Politically defined plebeians have revolted and challenged the political system, despite regular explosions and uprisings. Yet they have had difficulties in turning them into more perma- nent institutional changes, although, at the imaginary level, the horizon of equal freedom and political horizontality has become extremely robust. This predicament is compounded by problematic developments at the inter- national level. The tense dialectic between nation-states and international organ- izations, and, more broadly, cosmopolitan perspectives is intrinsic to modernity (Domingues, 2024a: chap. 11). While nation-states have always been paramount, the second phase of modernity, after colonialism and imperial projects as such were exhausted, featured two competing cosmopolitan outlooks – the liberal and the communist – a contest won by the former, which absolutely steered the third phase with international liberalism. At present the former element of this pair has been gaining the upper hand. Nationalism, the rejection of migration, often with xenophobic feelings, wars of conquest and massacres, including gen- ocide (Gaza), have returned with a vengeance. Along with the Vladimir Putin’s Russian invasion of Ukraine, explicit albeit doubtful US imperialist projects have been announced by Donald Trump, while Xi Jinping’s China is keen to expand its global power and influence (Lake et al., 2021). These developments Modernity and Its Horizon Today 163 affect in particular one issue that has become central for the future of human- kind, which increasingly depends on how cosmopolitanism will fare in the next decades. What responses will be given to this conundrum will largely determine the contours of the future of modernity and the human species, in, furthermore, its planetary entanglement. ‘Nature’, Climate Change and Artificial Intelligence It sounds like a truism to state that the climate emergency is one of the greatest challenges modernity has ever faced (though denialism has engaged many peo- ple). Less obvious seems sometimes to be how we cope with it. The objectifica- tion of what in principle falls outside the circumference of human and social life, configuring a specific way of treating the materiality of the world and the vary- ing levels of subjectivity in the animal domain, characterizes how the ‘natural’ world has been dealt with overall but more specifically by capitalist, political, legal and bureaucratic agents. Already an increasingly important issue due to en- vironmental degradation, ‘nature’ – a radically modern concept in its opposition to ‘society’ or ‘culture’ – has thus become a site of civilizational contestation especially at the imaginary level (Domingues, 2022). We have therefore two conceptual – and to a more limited extent – practical issues rather than only one when we speak of climate change. Regarding climate change, the massive and emergency character of the phe- nomenon demands sobriety. Shorn of true civilizational alternatives, it must be within the parameters of social life at present that we must tackle it. Waiting for far-reaching changes of the imaginary, institutional shifts, the alteration of pat- terns of consumption, let alone of the capitalist ‘mode of production’, is not an option. The development of new technologies, especially in the energy sector, is of the essence, though inequality, within and between countries is also crucial to achieve long-term sustainability and just transitions. Even within capitalism those who want to attain decent and inclusive patters of consumption should be allowed to enjoy them, whereas the ‘rich’ must be taxed and their companies broken down (Domingues, [2023b] 2024). But we must not confuse what would be a decent, fairer and egalitarian Anthropocene – against present trends – with what some envisage as eco-socialism (Lowy, 2015). Not because eco-socialism should not be an aim, but because the association between its two elements is contingent rather than necessary and straight-forward, demanding, moreover, an extended period of transition. This would require time, which is in short supply, and a coalition of forces unavailable right now. Conversely, capitalists may end up shaping new patterns of accumulation based on moves that abandon fos- sil fuels, irrespective of fluctuations in strategies and the immediate success of some of their ‘fractions’ and lobbies, since their profits and state policies are at least in part prodding them in this direction. More problematic would of course be displacing the problem onto the future, a possibility fraught with dangers and 164 Political Modernity and Beyond threats, though the world will not end, what does mean that the more vulnerable collectivities of the species will not pay a high price if this is the path followed (Wagner, 2024; Blühdorn, 2024). This is surely one aspect of this unfolding fourth phase of modernity as it is slowly taking shape, but might imply much deeper changes in the workings of capitalism and modernity overall. Some, like Chakrabarty (2021), may argue that the climate crisis has opened a ‘planetary’ horizon that outstrips the human species (though he acknowledges that it is fair that most people in the world are eager to get a better material life). It is as though a multispecies perspective opened up, actually including the whole ‘Earth system’. So far, so good. But what does that really mean? Should we assume a post-anthropocentric perspective and, more than that, a post-anthropomorphic one? Has this ever really happened? Would this be possible and desirable? These are big questions and I think that anyone that pretends to have sharp answers to them is ill-advised, though I actually tend to think that the answer to both is no. In any case, these answers may yield ef- fects many imagine only in the very long run and are incapable of providing solutions for our Anthropocene emergency, although they may sensitize us to different possibilities. Besides, all these supposed alternatives have their own shortcomings, which include, like the Indic caste-based and Chinese Confucian perspectives (Weber, [1915/1920] 1988), stark hierarchies, or violence – more specifically, ‘predation’ – so central for South American original populations (Fausto, 2007; also Viveiros de Castro, 2009). If we may learn from the past, we must be aware of its shortcomings. Can we substitute it for the future, as though our transformative (emancipatory) horizon laid behind us, in a pristine state in which all species and even the Earth as a whole could nicely come together? It would be hard to make a case for such a past-oriented outlook, which goes even beyond the ‘conciliation’ with ‘nature’ the Frankfurt School hoped for (Domingues, [2023b] 2024). Those ancestral views could certainly be updated with some twists, though it is not really clear how they could be reconciliated with the complexity of modernity and the need for advanced technologies. They can surely sensitize us and provide, especially when modernized, circumscribed solutions for specific problems and small pockets of population if we, against some fantasies, do not embrace the obliteration of humanity in its modern conformation, by climate change or whatever else (as almost outspokenly supported by Danowski and Viveiros de Castro, [2014] 2017; see, critically, Chakrabarty, 2023). More than such more restricted moves seems doubtful. In the last decade in particular another issue has raised eyebrows across the world. Whereas climate change is just a disruption, Artificial Intelligence ap- pears in a much more ambivalent guise. In the very long run it is bound to have far-reaching effects across social life – positive and negative, far beyond what the internet and social media have produced, which was considerable. Right now, despite all the hype but all in all demanding strong regulation, AI impact Modernity and Its Horizon Today 165 has been – and is likely to remain for a good while – more limited. It fundamen- tally depends on human knowledge, upon which it directly draws (Mitchell, 2019). It may help human emancipation as well as undergird new forms of dom- ination. In any case, even if it is spreading across social life, it does not charac- terize the processes that are likely to bring up a new phase of modernity right away, despite its relative impact on the state and the political system, capitalism and sociability. Nevertheless, all over the world, especially now in the US with Trump, huge state and private investment is pouring into this area. Individual and Collective Responses ‘Reflexivity’ was, some 30 years ago, a big issue in sociology, as if it were an entirely new and, while sometimes seen as driven by insecurity, mostly positive phenomenon (Beck, 1986; Giddens, 1990). It has almost disappeared as a theme and a tool of analysis, often substituted by the concern with climate change and the rise of the extreme right, backed by people who purportedly lack reflexiv- ity. It was not however a new phenomenon: human beings always need to deal, individually and collectively, with their world always reflexively, though it was heightened in modernity, and as this has developed. Such intensification is due to the impact of disembedding mechanisms – especially capitalist markets, state erasure of bounded territorialities within their confines and an intense flux of information, with a tendency towards globalization and a vertiginous rhythm of development. These processes have deprived people of stabler identities, forc- ing them to find definitions for who they are and what they want. Nor is there reason to see reflexivity as begetting only niceties: the reflexive cancelation of reflexivity, driven by insecurity and rage, may lead to rigid identities that crave to return to supposedly traditional reembeddings (Domingues, [2002] 2006: chaps 1–2). This is the case of Indian Hindutiva, Salafist Islam, most of evangelical Christianity and contemporary extreme-right movements, with their reactionary nativism, often racism and misogynist patriarchal longings, and even neofas- cism. Individual and collective defensive identities propel such moves, which can impact, beyond allegiance to right-wing nationalism, all aspects of social life. This often leads to loneliness and isolation, a seeming epidemic now, over- all deepened by the trauma of the pandemic (Grimson, 2024; Surkalim et al., 2022), as well as loss of the sexual drive or at least its regular exercise (Zoja, 2022), without detriment to an openness to different identities and practices re- garding lifestyles, gender and immigration, which may also make recourse to ‘traditions’ stemming from different sources that assist their reembeddings. The problem is compounded by the sense of loss that permeates social life, as though what we had has been lost, while the future looks bleak (Reckwitz, 2024) Such defensive responses combine with the closure of the emancipatory hori- zon of individual and collective identities and, more generally, of the imaginary. 166 Political Modernity and Beyond People feel, and in a sense are, trapped into lives that have become usually more comfortable (despite the rise of inequality), but are nevertheless dissatisfy- ing and even threatened by developments they cannot control, such as climate change, AI and more basic ones potentially leading to poverty or downward mobility. The future appears, in addition, foreclosed in eternal hopelessness in a post-modern and post-historical world (Jameson, 1990), deprived of alterna- tives beyond different sorts of made-up ‘traditions’ with defective promises. The return of war and explicit imperialist discourses make things worse, surely, with sheer economic development totally unable to overcome a malaise that af- fects in particular a middle-class youth that often believes that their lives will be worse than their parents’. A sense of doom, or a mild depression, thus sets in, unless career and money drive many to deceptively find solation in instrumental reason, also a legacy of neoliberalism. The former phases of modernity were mostly infused with the optimistic view of an open world, in which individuality and individualism could flour- ish, while collective projects would push us forward. This creeping new phase has been permeated by darker and defensive feelings, even though citizens re- main committed to interfering in social life in democratic and socially-oriented, ‘progressive’ ways (Martuccelli, 2010), despite deep difficulties of organization due to social fragmentation and dispersal, which are partly an inevitable result of decentralizing and lean capitalist developments, with the situation compounded by a plebeian and increasingly autonomy-rooted refusal to enter hierarchical relations that are so typical of politics and buy into its unfulfilled promises. Emancipation has therefore not disappeared from our horizon, but its call has become fainter or more difficult to heed. Reason, Progress and Emancipation I have just used the word ‘progressive’ above as a provocation leading towards our final topics. A deep crisis regarding a number of concepts that were key for the emancipatory project of modernity have been severely criticized: progress, aforementioned, emancipation itself and, above all, reason have been taken to task due to their supposed Eurocentrism, even putative racism, oppressive char- acter and similar shortcomings. It is as though modernity had nothing to offer of positive, as exemplarily expressed in the pair ‘modernity-coloniality’ proposed by Quijano (2019), who dates it back to the sixteenth century (like world-systems theory – in opposition to Marx and most sociologists, who equate it to, in par- ticular, the establishment of capitalism, with wage labour, and the modern state). Progress would be merely a ‘western’ ideology buttressing the domination of the world – including ‘nature’ and its destruction – by Europe and the US (Allen, 2016). Reason would – with its abstract and utterly detached, male-rooted, ‘zero-point’ blindness to concreteness, experience and diversity – also appear as a sheer instrument of domination (Castro-Gómez, 2010). No emancipation Modernity and Its Horizon Today 167 could be expected, it goes without saying, from these intrinsically-tainted fig- ures of thought and practice. What to put in their place is more obscure, though the praise of experience and difference, just as in post-modernism and post-structuralism, with Romantic rings, comes to the fore, not as negativity or coasting the margins now, as in Adorno and Derrida, but in an radically affirmative way, with alternatives such a South American indigenous ‘perspectivism’ – rationalized and systematized, of course, in a very modern way – would allow the world to supersede modern thought (Viveiros de Castro, 2009), perhaps returning to mythology, we may surmise. We could even reinvent the concept of ‘nature’, supposing that such a move would be simple and quick, also because the separation of nature and society has always been an illusion (Latour, 1991) rather than a deep element of the modern imaginary, with profound practical consequences. Some are more moderate and keep the values of the Enlightenment and development as valu- able and worth keeping, as Chakrabarty (2000, 2023), while others, under the influence of pragmatism, deflate progress as mere limited ‘problem-solving’, as Jaeggi (2024), actually overlooking how the values that orient those solutions are deeply ingrained in the modern imaginary. These criticisms and perplexity are witness to the blockage of the emancipa- tory promises of modernity in the last few decades, with a unilateral and exces- sive expansion of instrumental reason – though we must never overlook how the emancipation of women has been the most radical and lasting revolution of the last 250 years, premised upon the very project of modernity and the social strug- gles it has energized, whereas racism has become hardly legitimate and poverty a social scandal. A loss of confidence and dismay, often followed by sharp dis- missal rather than criticism, especially in its immanent form, has followed this defeat, which was also the defeat of socialism in its diverse forms. This is, evi- dently, what usually follows defeats. That loss and its consequences also implied the invalidation of progress, reason and emancipation (though the excesses of liberalism – formerly and with its neo-liberal incarnation – and of state-oriented ‘real socialism’ were also responsible for this). The defensive collective identi- ties pointed out above dream of a return to the days in which modernity was simpler, with liberal capitalism and the untrammelled (and naïve) exploitation of nature, denying its deleterious consequences, a restricted state, national ho- mogeneity and watered-down citizenship, the closed nuclear family and ortho- dox, male-dominated gender identities, although also rejecting rationalism and much of science, unless it is good for war-mongering. Most of the emancipatory demands of modernity – based on equal freedom in all dimensions and spheres, hence beyond Kant’s rational individual independence – are jettisoned; even the concept is snubbed in some cases (replaced, for instance, with ‘liberation’ – see Mignolo, 2000: 7, 125, 147 –, as if anti-colonial struggles were not part of the struggle for emancipation and autonomy that is at the heart of modernity). A hundred and so years ago similar melancholic assessments were voiced in the 168 Political Modernity and Beyond perplexed Spenglerian diagnosis of the ‘decline of the West’ due to its historical civilizational exhaustion (Spengler, [1923] 1972). Whereas this then included a grimace, it seems to be, sometimes, greeted by a smile by critical perspectives today. Curiously, only the rougher aspects of science and technology, with dreams, or delusions, related to AI, the colonization of Mars and the like, are sponsored by big tech companies, with a caricature of modernity. This move resumes the sort of alliance between big tech and reactionary evangelical religious views – now more globally – that stunned Offe ([1987] 1996: 17–18) some decades ago, something more dubiously reproduced by the sinified, ‘harmony’-seeking partly Confucian party-state, Hindutva attempts to catch-up and other less prominent projects in different locations (with more straight-forward reactionary designs appearing in the torn-apart Islamic world). But it is also stunning that today a few critical perspectives tend to reject science and technology in favour of supposedly ‘traditional’ or ‘ancestral’ knowledge (as such fine and in many cases progressive, for example deriving in empirically-based agroecology, once modernized, that is, rationalized and perhaps generalized, whereas sometimes it must be rejected, for example in the case of the callous coivara, the slash and burn technique of Amazonian Indians, adopted in large scale today in Brazil). It may be even more stunning if the modern horizon of equal freedom is frown upon, replaced by no one knows what. Obviously, this sits uncomfortably with the denunciation of extreme-right projects and attempts to destroy or cripple democracy – a conquest of plebeian modernity, despite its limitations – that has been time and again repeated by the same agents. Progress seems then confined to the big tech narrow and caricatural project, coupled with a disruptive individ- ualist and almost futurist perspective, while most people across the world crave for advanced rights and true emancipation, which liberals and the centre-left are unwilling to offer, satisfied with a pragmatic approach (White, 2025). A self- inflicted defeat, adding to the already painful one conservative movements had already visited upon them, is thus produced by former progressive, rationalist and emancipatory forces. There are creative openings but confusion too. These at least partly anti-modern alternatives have trouble energizing the large majorities that are needed to enact real social change, to start with be- cause their ideas and projects are as such basically very circumscribed, when they do not embrace reactionary discourses (such as antivax ones, which those alternatives are inclined to overlook), and often disallow reason as part and par- cel of dire modernity. What to do then? Is the emancipatory horizon of moder- nity irremediably contaminated by its compromises, and even commitment, to domination and exploitation? Is there a true alternative horizon in the making? I believe that the answer to these two questions is no, surely if we learn from the trajectory of modernity and work once again to recover its emancipatory kernel with however greater modesty, as well as resuming the struggle, in a radical Modernity and Its Horizon Today 169 way, against domination and exploitation. We must embrace progress, reason and emancipation against the extreme right, also acknowledging that liberalism is in no position today to address the worldwide demands for equal freedom and prosperity (if it will ever be again since it deflected from its expansive moment between the 1920s and the 1970s is very arguable). This is the task awaiting critical thought, in its ecumenical conformation, in this budding fourth phase of modernity – to which we are still transitioning – and beyond, contrary to much of what we just too often see today. Our first step must be to recognize that ambivalence should characterize our attitude towards modernity (Wagner, 1994: i–xvi). By no means should we fully identify modernity with oppression and exploitation, with different sorts of domination; but it is certainly not emancipatory tout court. Capitalist labour markets did away with personal forms of domination but are entangled with an extremely unequal class structure and labour exploitation; the modern state gave us the rule of law (and socialist legality) but also state political and bureau- cratic hierarchies that are at the antipodes of equal freedom; we have developed individual autonomy but at the price of loneliness, while patriarchy, racial and ethnic inequalities and racism abound; liberal democracy is polyarchic but also oligarchic, whereas cosmopolitanism is seconded and at times overwhelmed by the power and interests of nation-states, often resulting in war. What is more, the emancipatory promises of modernity are blocked by its own institutions, in which domination and exploitation, oppression and violence thrive. The hori- zon of modernity remains emancipatory to a large extent, regarding its values, in particular equal freedom; it is historically unique in that for the first time in known history the emancipation of the majority has emerged from the own bosom of a civilization as the achievement of freedom for everyone in this world, first through the idea of citizenship, then including socialism, anarchism and communism, as well as feminism and antiracism and other anti-discrimination strands. Yet the critique of modernity’s shortcomings must go beyond its own institutions and dominant practices in order that its values can be realized. This was true from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, through the first three phases of modernity, and surely holds in its fourth phase in the twentieth-first and possibly beyond. That said, how would the three embattled concepts enumerated above look in a transformed modern horizon that could collect the teachings of history in its already considerably large trajectory? Reason is in fact a very complex concept – by no means the caricature made of it by post-colonial and decolonial thought as well as other strands of criticism. It does have an instrumental or, more broadly, teleological aspect, but is symbol- ically structured and communicatively exercised, whatever early modern think- ers believed. Even early on, reason – as well as ‘intellect’ or ‘understanding’ and later the more technical conception of ‘rationality’ – had different meanings, 170 Political Modernity and Beyond initially geometric-deductive and then more attuned to the empirical world and experience, what was later intensified, let alone the extremely sophisticated defi- nitions it acquired in the twentieth century, when its limitations came to the fore, even though irrationalism – and not reason – has been the main problem we have ever since had to cope with (even if it is true that the confidence on reason may have been indebted to the conquest of the Americas by Europeans, this process opened their eyes to a full gamut of diversity during the Renaissance, which later became central for the further development of modern thought, despite its entanglement with colonialism). Also, is it really a problem that the Enlight- enment conceived of reason (as well as of ‘understanding’) as detached and universally abstract? Does this not offer the prospect of perceiving it as pertain- ing to all human beings, despite racist readings that were prone to restrict it to Caucasian males? After all, relativism taken to extremes may become as ethno- centric and racist as unilateral universalism. Besides, if this original abstract and detached view of reason did not disappear – which is not as such only partly a problem, as I suggest –, it was soon transformed. It then moved beyond deduc- tivism, with the recognition of concrete experience, standpoints and interests that combine, on the one hand, with reason’s universal operations once humans exercise it anywhere, at any time, not only individually but collectively and to some extent communicatively; and, on the other, with its revisionist and totaliz- ing faculty. Moreover, this is all carried out with the mediation of hermeneutic- symbolic frameworks that are of course socio-historically specific, in whatever lay or specialized domain of knowledge. It is this more complex conception of reason, multidimensional and more rooted in concreteness than before that we must work with instead of discarding it as a homogenizing, domineering instru- ment of power – that is, we must avoid what amounts to a logocentric and flat- tening conception of reason in order to develop a consistent critical perspective (Domingues, 2024a: 3, 165–172; Welsch, 1996). Progress, in turn, is conditional. It is neither inevitable nor absolute. Yet it happens. We do not simply solve discrete problems. The imaginary – in what- ever civilization or delimited social formation – sets a horizon and a telos for our experience and projects (Domingues, 2025). Ours in infused with equal freedom, solidarity and prosperity. Combinations between these values and con- cepts are not simple and environmental degradation as well as the wellbeing of animals have compounded the situation. This means only that progress has become a more complex concept, with possibly internal contradictions, and that it is conditional. But that is what life is – social life too: the perennial handling of problems and contradictions, without, once we keep a rationalized and sustained attitude, giving up on the horizon of our beliefs and desires. Immanent critique is part of a more nuanced and further developed notion of progress that has indeed jettisoned the arrogant idea that we can fully – rationally – control his- tory, which we can, but only relatively, imperfectly and generating unintended consequences, which we must then, once again, try to master. Modernity and Its Horizon Today 171 Finally, emancipation is what we aim at in what regards our capacity of take decisions, choosing our paths, with each and every one having equal power – hence equal freedom – to perform those actions, both individually and collec- tively. This also lies at the core of our imaginary and horizon. It will never be perfect, nor is it easy to be achieved. But the values of modernity are still worth embracing – with a stress on solidarity, also planetary, that is, beyond the human species. The fourth phase of modernity – and while there is indeed modernity – is still tightly connected to these values, which work their way im- manently through the critique of modernity that intellectuals and social move- ments push forward. Those internalized alterities – which have globally and heterogeneously enriched modernity, without overcoming it at all – may indeed offer new resources for criticism and new value-laden elements worth pursuing. Nevertheless, they do not seem capable now, even in the very long run, to pro- vide alternatives and solutions to the problems we face. We must still bet on the emancipatory side of modernity. By Way of Conclusion I have in this chapter discussed what modernity means today and what is its potential, not discarding alternative views but emphasizing the key role of the immanent critique of modernity, which opposes the values that weave its imaginary to the institutions that set limits for its fulfilment today. We live in a world saturated by experience – with the eternal reproduction of the present and, as regressive utopias, the past, in all political quarters. We are really in need of a renewal of our horizon of expectations, beyond the defeats and weaknesses of the last century (see Koselleck, [1977] 1988, for such con- cepts). This is not easy and may lead either to melancholia or the search for solutions that are more limited than they may initially seem. Modernity still has much to offer, if we maintain a more mature and open view of its work- ings. There is not one stand of critique today that can reclaim a monopoly of its operations – critique needs to be decisively ecumenical (Domingues, 2024b). But equal freedom and solidarity must be at its core, whatever else accompanies its varied expressions. This was the case during the first, second and third phases of modernity. This shall be case of the fourth and while we remain within the bounds of this civilization, though for sure maybe some- day some radical and sweeping imaginary and institutional emergence may change the whole situation. A remaining problem is surely who can practically sustain such a project and how to implement it. 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Zuboff S (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future and the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/18/donald-trump-new-right-centre-left-technocratic https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/18/donald-trump-new-right-centre-left-technocratic 10 Re-Modernity Making Sense of Social Experience in Times of Digital Platforms, New State Interventionism and Technological Megalomania Paolo Gerbaudo Introduction What kind of time do we live in? Our contemporary existence seems caught in a sense of profound disorientation, which has a fundamental temporal and histori- cal dimension. Until recently, sociologists highlighted that we lived in a sort of unending ‘presentism’ (Castells, 2004), in which society seemed unable to look beyond the horizon of the present. Yet, the last two decades have been a time of enormous convulsions – political, economic, technological – in which the angel of history seems once again to be compelled to look ahead at the change, but also at the chaos and destruction that is unfolding. In the time of revolts and coup d’etat, of major wars and climate crisis, of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, of geopolitical confrontation and Big Tech dominance, it has become almost a commonplace to say that history is back with a vengeance (Badiou, 2012). Yet, what remains unclear is what kind of history we are now in and what kind of historical condition we should expect going forward. A recuperation of historical thinking is precisely what seems to be necessary to escape this sense of cognitive disorientation, achieving that cognitive mapping which, as Fredric Jameson already proposed, was the necessary ailment for the sense of confusion produced by postmodernism’s dizzying superficiality and its exhausting game of smoke and mirrors (Jameson, 1992). To address this orientational question, it is necessary to engage with a debate that has for some time become rather unfashionable among sociologists, as it seemed to be by and large a settled one, hence not a discussion from which further insights could be gleaned: I am referring to the debate about modernity, and dif- ferent forms thereof. Over the course of the 19th and 20th century ‘Modernity’ – from the Latin adverb modo, meaning just now – became a key term to capture the new spirit of the times, and how it differed from that of previous historical eras, but also more generally to capture a social experience marked by continu- ous change and acceleration (Berman, 1983; Rosa, 2013)., Yet progressively modernity was also considered as a negative term of comparison to discuss the DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-14 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-14 176 Political Modernity and Beyond nature of contemporary societies vis-à-vis modern societies. This was the gist of various narratives that claimed a move away from ‘modernity proper’, such as the notion of post-modernism as proposed by Jean-François Lyotard (1984) or the not n of second or reflexive modernity, as proposed by sociologists such as Beck, Lash, Giddens and Bauman (Bauman, 2000; Beck et al., 1994). These were very different narratives, but they coincided in identifying a number of key tendencies, affecting a post-modern, late modern, or sec- ond-modern society (the different terms indicating different meanings, but partly sharing a common assumption of historical development. Among other things, the second modernity was supposed to be marked by a crisis of nation- states as the central structure of social organisation; by a greater fluidity of social identities and roles; and by rampant individualisation, defying all at- tempts to assert clear and durable social structure and social coordination from above. The old vertical, integrated, organised, structured, paradigm of modernity would give way to an experience of constant precarity and flu- idity, well captured by the hydraulic metaphors used by Zygmunt Bauman (2000) in his discussion of second modernity as a ‘liquid modernity’. Is this imaginary of contemporary society a reflexive or liquid modernity that turns upside down some of the key logics of first modernity still relevant? Are we really living in a society marked by the crisis of the state and all vertical and integrative forms of social organisation? Or is something radically different currently afoot? My contention is that it is not possible anymore to look at our society as the time of a second modernity or reflexive modernity, and that some of the social tendencies that were taken as exemplary of this temporal scenario (neoliber- alism, post-industrialisation, globalisation) are now by and large exhausted. Rather, what we are seeing are some of the themes of first modernity coming back in extreme and redoubled form. We live in a world in which globalisation appears under serious threats, in which the indisputable dominance of market mechanisms is cast aside amid a return of trade protectionism, and in which the power of the state is made visible at all levels, not least in the proliferation of wars. Furthermore, we live in a world in which the end of many collective units (nations, states, parties, unions, firms etc.), which was widely taken as the most notable symbol of post-modern transformation, is also seemingly experiencing a moment of inversion. I consider how these trends are reflected in the rise of digital platforms, new forms of state interventionism and new forms of control and surveillance that are now exerted from within the state apparatus against ordinary citizens, which are reminiscent of forms of social engineering and are rightly dubbed as technological authoritarianism. Across all these phenomena, we do not see an overcoming of modernity, but rather modernity coming back with a vengeance, calling for a profound revision of our understanding. Re-Modernity 177 Modernity Suspended Since at least the end of the 1960s, the debate has not been much about mo- dernity in general, but rather about its crisis and decline, and how some of the fundamental contradictions of highly technological and post-traditional (Eisenstadt, 1973) and secular society would evolve. To be fair such recrimi- nations about the fraught path of modernity reach far back in time and have accompanied us since Enlightenment when modernity came to impose itself as a guiding principle, utilising which to orientate ourselves in history. A classic exhibit is Georges Sorel (1969) famous indictment of modernity in The illu- sions of progress, where the French socialist thinker highlighted the profoundly ideological and technocratic character of this intellectual project, and the way it served the bourgeoisie to construe a sense of superiority vis-à-vis a past framed as obscurantist and barbaric. In more recent times, in his famous Critique of Modernity, Alain Touraine (1995) highlighted how many new political phenom- ena, from ecologism to the backlash of religious traditionalism, pointed to an exhaustion of modernity as a project of rationalisation. The new social movements – ecologism, feminism, urban movements – which Touraine and colleagues analysed throughout the 1970s and 1980s were, in dif- ferent ways, if not altogether anti-modern, clearly sceptical of modernity and the form of technological control and political domination it had brought to life. Furthermore, in the aftermath of the crisis of the 1970s, stagflation and the oil shocks, the demise of many socialist movements was accompanied by the revival of traditionalist and religious fundamentalist movements, in the first manifesta- tion of what Gilles Kepel (1994) vividly described as ‘the revenge of God’. The decline of socialism as the most ambitious project of ‘modernisation’ and social and economic development seemed to inevitably carry with it a return of forms of traditionalism, which secular analysts had unwisely considered to have been con- signed to the bin of history by modernity’s triumph. The present surge in Europe and the US of right-wing populist movements should thus be seen in this light, not as a sudden and unpredictable phenomenon, but rather as the latest manifestation of an involution of modernity that had long been in the making. While the crisis of modernity was apparent already in the 1970s and had been signalled by several social and political theorists, the question of what this crisis amounted to and how one should make sense of it proved to be an issue of great contention. Precisely at the same time – at the beginning of the 1990s, as authors such as Alain Touraine highlighted the prevalence of a critique of modernity in contemporary politics and social movements, some spoke already of a transition towards ‘postmodernity’. This term – one of many post-prefixed notions which became fashionable around the time (think about post-industrial, post-traditional, post-ideological etc.) was meant to express a general shift in the logic of society, away from the focus on industrial production and centralised structures and towards a more fluid and unpredictable set of social processes. 178 Political Modernity and Beyond Theoretically involved a greater emphasis of the role of culture and language in society, as prefigured by French post-structuralism (another post-prefixed no- tion), and authors such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, as well as a fading of ‘grand narratives’ or ‘meta-narratives’ as proposed by Jean-François Lyotard (Kepel, 1994), as well as the loss of importance of class structures and ideology (Bell, 2000). While the authors proposed rather different interpretations of the notion of postmodernity and post-modernism, their common opinion revolved around the impression that the initial expansive wave of modernity, its promise to recon- struct the world along a conscious and rational project of continuous improve- ment, had come to a halt. Frederic Jameson famously described post-modernism as an ‘inverted millenarianism, in which premonitions of the future, catastrophic or redemptive, have been replaced by senses of the end of this or that’ (Jameson, 1992). In art and architecture, this new cultural logic revolved around parody, intertextuality, pastiche and collage, marked by superficiality and utter trivial- ity. Jameson and other Marxist authors such as David Harvey (1989) had lit- tle sympathy for the ethico-political content of post-modernism. However, they considered it as deeply interwoven with the logic of contemporary capitalism and therefore as a tendency that would be difficult to escape, in lie with the maxim ‘it is more difficult to imagine the end of capitalism than the end of the world’, often attributed to Jameson, and which constituted the key inspiration for Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism (2022). What these accounts captured was a historical condition marked by a sense of limbo and stagnation, in which the old project of modernity seemed to have lost steam, yet no clear alternative seemed capable of emerging. A different terminological approach to this thesis was that which, instead of talking of a postmodernity, identified a new wave of modernity, a ‘second mo- dernity’, or what was sometimes qualified more programmatically as a ‘reflex- ive modernity’, which would upset many of the assumptions that had hitherto been attached to the modernist project. The notion of ‘reflexive modernisation’ was developed by Anthony Giddens in works such as The Consequences of Modernity (1990) and Modernity and Self-Identity (1991). In The Consequences of Modernity, Giddens argued that ‘[t]he construction of the self as a reflexive project, an elemental part of the reflexivity of modernity’ (1990: 124) and that ‘an individual must find her or his identity amid the strategies and options pro- vided by abstract systems’ (Giddens, 1990). Other sociologists, such as Ulrich Beck and Scott Lash, followed a similar trajectory to Anthony Giddens’s (Beck et al., 1994). They argued that we were now plunged into a modernity marked by the waning of social groups and concern with self-identity. The twin forces of globalisation and individualisation pervade a society by the perception of risks of all kinds, while politics increasingly shifts from big macro-questions of systemic social change to the more micro-level of ‘life politics’ (Giddens, 1990) or ‘sub-politics’ (Beck, 1997). As Beck and Beck-Gernsheim put it in Re-Modernity 179 their book on individualisation, we were now in a condition in which people were compelled to solve structural conditions in their biographies (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). This sense of instability was perhaps most famously captured by Bauman’s (2000) analysis of second modernity as a ‘liquid modernity’; for the Polish so- ciologist this term aimed at capturing a social condition in which all the solid structures of industrial society were crumbling and individuals were left to themselves to battle it out for themselves. This was a society in which as Ulrich Beck argued in his book Individualization (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002), individuals were pried off their groups of membership, where people would need to make choices about many things that before were taken for granted or seen as descending from natural process (for example the decision to bear children in a society with availability of effective contraception) and would now be praised for all their successes and blamed for their failures. The individuali- sation society was thus one of greater freedom and autonomy, but also one in which it was evident how the counterpart of such freedom involved isolation or altogether atomisation. But this second modernity also crucially involved a transformation of the logic of capitalism. The rationalistic and expansive post-Fordism which domi- nated the golden phase of industrial modernity now seemed to give way to a post-industrial society, as first proposed by Alain Touraine in 1969 in the imme- diate aftermath of the May 1968 student protests in France and other countries. This was marked on the one hand by a shift of the economic structure away from industrial manufacturing and towards services, involving knowledge and information; hence the alternate description of such a post-industrial society as an ‘information society’. However, a second element would also involve a broader transformation of the logic of capitalism at a time of financialisation, popularisation of neoliberal ideas of the ‘free market’, and the growing power of multinational corporations. For Scott Lash, this new capitalism should be best described as a ‘disorganised capitalism’, given that it lacked that element of planning, and the long-term purpose of traditional capitalism. The new logic of capitalism described by Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (2018) involved a moment of disintegration of the organisational structure of the company, with a dispersion of its different components of the value chain in a wide-ranging network. Are we still in this second modernity or reflexive modernity, a time at which some of the most fundamental tendencies of modernity are turned on their head, and where our cultural outlook is marked by uncertainty and reflexivity? Modernity Redoubled In many respects, our contemporary social experience does not seem to corre- spond anymore to the paradigm of second or reflexive modernity, especially as developed by the likes of Beck and Baumann, namely as a condition of profound 180 Political Modernity and Beyond flexibility, uncertainty and individualisation. It is true of course that we live in times of instability, in an epoch pervaded by the sense that the political and economic order we experienced over the last decades is crumbling, but where this sense of instability seems to prelude to something rather different than a period of limbo or involution of modernity but rather to an extreme and tragic redoubling of some of modernity’s typical tendencies and social logics. The references to this time of transition abound in contemporary political discourse. The manifold political upheavals that have been experienced over the course of the 2010s have led some people to speak of an ‘end of the end of history’, in a derisory criticism of the famous diagnosis by Francis Fukuyama. The return of history has become a topos, first announced by the protest movements that emerged in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, as proposed by authors such as Alain Badiou (2012) and Slavoj Žižek (2012). The 2020 Covid-19 pan- demic, with the unprecedented subversion of everyday life and the generalised sense of emergency it has provoked, has only reinforced this perception. And ever since 2020, it seems that every year, or even every month, brings about a new crisis. In Germany, in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they have been talking about a Zeitenwende, a turn of times. These days are reminiscent of the famous words of Hegel (2018) in the pref- ace of the Phenomenology of Spirit, where a beautiful scene of transformation is condensed in these famous words: ‘This gradual crumbling to pieces, which did not alter the general look and aspect of the whole, is interrupted by the sunrise, which, in a flash and at a single stroke, brings to view the form and structure of the new world’. Authors such as Adam Tooze (2021) have popularised the term ‘polycrisis’, to express that we are facing a series of converging problems, rather than just one, pointing to the systemic nature of current economic and political troubles. The intensification of extreme weather events experienced in the 2020s have made fears about an impending environmental and social collapse, all the more pressing, even spawning new schools of thought, such as the so-called cur- rent of collapsology (collapsologie) popular in France (Charbonnier, 2019), or the discussion about existential threats of the scholars of the Future of Humanity institute at the University of Oxford such as Toby Ord (2021). In some ways, one could take these cultural orientations of our era as a re- doubling of the notions of ‘risk society’ developed by Ulrich Beck (2009), with the present awareness of collapse highlighting an extreme perception of the pervasiveness of all sorts of social risks. Yet, in many other respects we see a clear departure from the paradigm of a reflexive modernity, in which in a way society turns onto itself and looks at itself in the mirror, pondering the complex consequences, undesired effects and ironies of history connected with any of its action, but where we see a new desire of constructivism and ‘newness’, some- times presenting itself under the unmistakable robes of a new form of ‘social engineering’ taking centre-stage. It is this new historical spirit which I will try to capture with the term ‘remodernity’, in the sense of redoubled and re-asserted Re-Modernity 181 ‘hypermodernity’, in which some of the typical themes of first modernity, come back with a vengeance, forcing us to rethink the foundations of our present his- torical imagination. Amid a sense of instability accompanied by a perception of historical ac- celeration that has given new social media popularity to the apocryphal quote attributed to Lenin, according to which ‘There are decades where nothing hap- pens; and there are weeks where decades happen’. Yet, the frequent citation of this and similar phrases (perhaps the most cited one in the last decade has been Gramsci’s ‘the old world is dying and the new cannot be born’) appear inad- equate to get to grips seems more to serve as a compensation for a lack of clear conceptual frameworks to make sense of the new world that we are now expe- riencing. This is where the task of rehashing the long-standing debate on mo- dernity and postmodernity and considering what a post-post-modernity would look like becomes particularly important. If, as Jameson put it, postmodernity revolved around the affirmation of ‘the end of this or that (the end of ideology, art, or social class; the “crisis” of Leninism, social democracy, or the welfare state, etc., etc.)’, we now need to ask: what comes after the end of the end? Third Modernity? The obvious way to broach this question of what happens after the ‘end of the end’ of modernity, or in post-post-modernity, seems to be to try to raise the prospect, or better the question, of a ‘third modernity’. This would indicate a different modernity, both from the industrial and old modern worlds, and from the post-industrial society, or ‘second modernity’ discussed by the likes of Beck, Bauman and Giddens. Some authors have already adopted precisely this phrase to try to make sense of what comes, next the apparent crisis of neoliberalism and the excesses of its economic system. For example, Ingolfur Blühdorn used the term to express a departure from first and second modernity, as described by Beck. For him, in this third modernity, ‘the global power-centre seems set to move to Asia and the specifically European norms of liberalism, emancipa- tion and progress will lose in relative significance’ (Blühdorn, 2022: 152). José Maurício Domingues (2011) has instead referred to a third phase of modernity in order to capture the rise to the planetary stage of countries such as Brazil, India and China, whose patterns of development are often not in keeping with the Western expectations of what is supposed to be modernity. Perhaps to date, the most influential use of the term ‘third modernity’ the most famous use of the term is that put forward by Shoshana Zuboff (2019) in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. In this work Zuboff refers to Third modernity as a horizon of future development amid a world marked by the rise of Big Tech and the ever-increasing intervention of digital firms such as Google, Meta and Amazon in ‘data-gathering’, ‘data analysis’ and ‘behaviour modifica- tion’. She is interested in making sense of what is going to happen after second 182 Political Modernity and Beyond modernity, which she discusses as marked by a convergence between neoliber- alism with nefarious effects on the socio-economic structure, a post-industrial and information-focused logic of capitalism and the departure from the Fordist model of business organisation, as described by Boltanski and Chiapello in The New Spirit of Capitalism. In this context, Zuboff (2019) approaches the notion as a new possible synthesis which may give a respite to the excesses experi- enced in the context of present digital capitalism, a modernity ‘that transcends the collision, offering a genuine path to a flourishing and effective life for the many, not just the few?’. Zuboff posits third modernity as the possible horizon of a ‘genuine inver- sion and its social compact are institutionalised as principles of a new rational digital capitalism aligned with a society of individuals and supported by dem- ocratic institutions’ (p. 54). She is far from certain that this third modernity will be a positive turn. Rather, she sees it as a moment of bifurcation pitting optimistic and dystopian solutions against one another: on the one hand the possibility of ‘strengthening of democratic institutions’; on the other hand, ‘an antidemocratic vision’ marked by the dominance of what she describes as ‘in- strumentarian power’, namely the penetration of instrumental logic described by Max Weber into ever more intimate spheres of our life and of our behaviour (pp. 30–32). Furthermore, Zuboff suggests that, differently from the individual- ism of second modernity, this third modernity would be more collectivistic, but a collectivism enforced under the aegis of surveillance practice rather than in terms of solidarity. What she seems to suggest with the notion of ‘instrumen- tarianism’ is the return of top-down forms of social engineering, which seemed to be an anachronistic appendage of totalitarian regimes, or Fordist forms of capitalism that had become out of place in a more network-like and service- centred society. Despite these suggestions, Zuboff’s analysis remains at a preliminary level. How exactly should we understand this third modernity vis-à-vis second moder- nity? In what ways precisely does the instrumentarian power of digital platforms lead to a greater form of collective and vertical control? What are the manifesta- tions where we see this power of control being displayed with the most clarity? In the final part of this chapter, I aim at developing further Zuboff’s insights about third modernity and instrumentarian power, by first surmising a number of sundry trends that points to a return of vertical power, and the zooming in, on the authoritarian power amassed by Big Tech companies, how it is progres- sively also investing the state administration, involved in its own process of ‘platformisation’, and how it points to a return of some typical logics and ten- dencies of modernity that were long considered to have been side-lined in times of second or liquid modernity: top down control; strong direction bordering on authoritarianism; heavy disciplining pressure coming from above; and a revival of nation-state’s power of intervention on their territory and population vis-à-vis a declining globalisation. Re-Modernity 183 Technological Power and the New Social Engineering The emergence of a ‘re-modernity’ namely a moment in which typically modern themes are revived is testified by a number of tendencies in our society: in the return of state interventionism; in the centrality played by technology in the competition between states and as a means to exercise power; in the revival of vertical integration as an organisational blueprint, and the connected return of forms of authoritarianism – or techno-authoritarianism, as those manifested in the context of the dominance of Big Tech, but also increasingly in the platformi- sation of government and government services. One important manifestation is the current return of state power amid a crisis of globalisation and the way in which it problematises many of our assumptions about the terminal crisis of the nation-state as a unit of social organisation (Gerbaudo, 2021). From the growing role played by sovereign funds, to the revival of state- owned enterprises in China and elsewhere, to the imbrication of corporations in geopolitical competition, it has never been more apparent that there is hardly a ‘global market’, with substantive autonomy from nation-states and their na- tional economy. We can therefore speak of a neo-statism, or even of a new state capitalism, because it is becoming ever more apparent how much the state is a primary agent of economic organisation and competition. In some respects, we seem to be drawn back to the prevalent political economy reality of much of the 19th and 20th centuries, when states jealously protected their own national economy and their own captive markets. Of course, as Antonio Gramsci and many other theorists (including Chalmers Johnson) have pointed out speaking of state interventionism is a bit of a misnomer, given that the state always in- tervene in the economy, and it does so at different levels (for example Gramsci noted how Catholic parties were against economic interventionism but very much in favour of cultural interventionism). However, in relative terms, it is evident that we are now past the prevalence of laissez-faire attitudes to indus- trial and trade policy that was prevalent at the height of the neoliberal era of hyper-globalisation. These developments interestingly take place amid a rapid wave of techno- logical innovation, both in digital technology and in various ‘green technology’, that still have vast margins for improvement: from battery technology which will power transportation and back up the energy system; to the rapid gain in efficiency of photovoltaic generation (PV); to the connected developments of new grids. This can be interpreted as a shift from the fifth Kondratieff wave of technological innovation, which focused on information technology, to a ‘sixth Kondratieff’ – from the work of Nikolai Kondratieff, who theorised the exist- ence of long economic waves of around 45–50 years (Kondratieff, 1979). In- stead, this new technological innovation wave focuses on two key technological elements of human societies: energy and transportation, in the context of the much-celebrated green transition. 184 Political Modernity and Beyond Interestingly, this growing state intervention revolves around precisely tech- nological competition, as seen in the fight for technological supremacy between the US and China. The two countries are now competing in all critical technolo- gies from EVs, to satellites, 5G, communications and most recently AI, as seen in the fight between OpenAI and DeepSeek. Another interesting confrontation is the one pitting Musk’s Tesla against its Chinese rival BYD, with the two compa- nies adopting forms of business organisation that are reminiscent of the vertical integration of modernist companies such as Ford (Gerbaudo, 2024). My argu- ment is that, in their complex, these tendencies point to a revival of organised and centralised capitalism, away from the chaotic, network-like and hypercom- petitive structure of neoliberal capitalism and second modernity (Lash and Urry, 1987). At a time of rapid technological competition, which is fundamentally intertwined with the fight for technological supremacy of different nation-states in the incorporation of these companies, the old wisdom according to which companies should externalise as much as possible of their activity to cut their production costs, does not seem anymore to apply. Technology has, of course, always been an aspect of modernity in all of its forms, but what matters is that now technology has once again been associated with a project of revolutionary social transformation and top-down control, which is reminiscent of the first wave of modernity. This is most evident in the effects of the rise of digital platforms, the phenomenon mainly discussed by Shoshana Zuboff in her analysis of ‘surveillance capitalism’. Companies such as Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook) and Amazon have acquired the moniker of hyper- scaler, because of their massive capacity for computing and data storage. The colossal character of these companies and their operations is reminiscent of the megalomania of proverbial modernist firms such as Ford, with their enormous plants and their ambition to integrate vast expanses of the world and its inhabitants. These companies’ services have become pervasive, making it ever more dif- ficult for people to avoid them. Furthermore, as Zuboff (2019) has highlighted, these digital services are not simply concerned with gathering information about us, but they engage in forms of ‘instrumentarian power’ which is fundamentally geared at actively modifying our behaviour, for example, by exploiting some aspects of our psychology in order to expose us to new contents or sell us new products. This power of control and manipulation, with its clearly top-down direction, clearly contradicts the post-modern image of autonomous individuals organised in networks, proposed by sociologists such as Manuel Castells in his analysis of the network society. Rather, the very idea of the platform conjures up a vision of strong centralisation, massive accumulation and pervasive control. As argued by Tarleton Gillespie (2018) digital platforms have acquired mas- sive power in order to shape people’s behaviour and enforce social and cultural norms. The platform, integrated further into the logic of the stack, as discussed by theorists as Benjamin Bratton (2016), is immediately geared towards the con- struction of a totalising system, which in many respects is reminiscent of the most extreme modernist phantasies of creating a new technological world. Re-Modernity 185 This enormous power of structuring people’s behaviour and of connected behavioural modification is worryingly not something that is merely confined to commercial platforms. Rather, it is increasingly also migrating to the operations of the state as many governments are trying to adopt the model of ‘government as platform’ (O’Reilly, 2011). At face value, this project simply promises to up- date the functioning of the state to make it viable for the digital age. However, the reality is far more problematic. As seen in recent projects such as with the Indian e-identity system Aadhar, a large system using biometric information such as fingerprints and iris scans, the platformisation of the state can be used as a massive means for extending control over the population, on the one hand facilitating access to services and creating new markets but on the other hand exercising heavy form of control over the population. The fact that now many activities of the state are managed through complex datasets and algorithms also means that by claiming access to those databases, people can have a simplified way of meddling with other people’s lives. This has been seen in the US with the way in which the so-called Department of Gov- ernment Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk, has engaged in heavy forms of violation of people’s privacy and scrutiny over transfers to individuals, in ways that would have been unthinkable in scale and speed with traditional forms of bureaucracy and bureaucratic record. What we are faced with are fundamen- tally forms of ‘social engineering’, in the sense of an attempt to treat people as passive objects of top-down intervention (Alexander, 2013), which however, as in the case of Musk’s operations in this agenda of ‘government reform’ are couched in the language of libertarianism and reassertion of individual freedom. What these examples go a long way to show is how the rise of digital plat- forms and their progressive penetration also in the area of government and bu- reaucracy can unlock new ways for centralised power structures, to assert heavy forms of control over individuals and their behaviour, in ways that are reminis- cent of old totalising organisations, which many sociologists had considered to be out of place in the context of a time of second-modernity, and reflexive societies, marked by growing individualisation and weakening collective coor- dination. Hence, in many respects, the now fledgling third modernity seems to project us into a very worrying nightmarish scenario in which the promise of in- dividual liberation, and the hope of a more horizontal and participatory society, in fact, becomes the opportunity to enforce new forms of vertical control, too often descending into outright authoritarianism. This is the challenging scenario we now must confront in our times. Modernity Redux In this chapter I have engaged with the notion of ‘third modernity’ especially as it has been put forward by Shoshana Zuboff (2019) in her work on ‘surveillance capitalism’ to argue that many of the current, social, technological and politi- cal developments do not seem to conform to the view of a second or reflexive 186 Political Modernity and Beyond modernity, in which many aspects of first modernity are inverted or cast into doubt. To the contrary we find a return in redoubled, and often extreme or al- together violent form, of typical logics associated with first modernity: mega- lomania, faith in technology and science, instrumental reasons, constructive ingenuity and social engineering. We live in times in which much of the sense of suspension of modernity, of living in a phase of doubt and historical limbo has been overcome, but not as a step towards embracing a new positive project of social transformation, but rather in highly troubling ways, amid the espousal of a new faith in the power of technology, often tied with ideologies of power, control and domination, as those that are manifesting themselves in the most virulent form in the power of tech oligarchs in the United States. This return of modernity, its disruptive effect, and the way in which it rede- fines power relations and possibly opens new fronts of confrontation and av- enues to challenge power structures should be the focus of researchers in the coming years. We can rest assured that the concept of second modernity is not anymore capable of capturing the content of our historical time; but we do not have yet a clear idea about the content of the emerging third modernity, which seems to project in extreme form many of the worst aspects with associated with the most beleaguered pages of the modernity of old. As it happened in the past the attribution of this historical meaning is likely to be the result of a pro- tracted political and cultural contention in which we will all be – in one way or another – called to bear witness to and critically analyse in the hope that this new historical phase is not just a repetition of worn-out social dynamics nor simply a moment of contemplative reflection over where they went and may go wrong. References Alexander JC (2013) The Dark Side of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. Badiou A (2012) The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings. London: Verso. Bauman Z (2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. Beck U (1997) Subpolitics: ecology and the disintegration of institutional power. Or- ganization & Environment 10(1): 52–65. https://doi.org/10.1177/0921810697101008 Beck U (2009) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. 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New York: Public Affairs. https://doi.org/10.3917/crieu.013.0088 https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431011417935 https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431011417935 https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/byd/ https://doi.org/10.1162/INOV_a_00056 11 Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics Rethinking Political Modernity Filipe Carreira da Silva Introduction Like those before us, we face a major challenge today – one that unfolds on two levels. Epistemologically, we live in a post-disciplinary era, with science shaped by inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration (Nowotny et al., 2001). Po- litically, the nation-state’s dominance has waned, a trend long noted by scholars. At the core lies the declining authority of two key modern institutions: academic disciplines and nation-states. Once central to knowledge and power, both have weakened, especially in Western Europe and the US. This signals a deeper trans- formation of modernity itself. For sociology, born of and shaped by modernity, this is especially troubling. Its core concepts remain tied to the nation-state, framing societies, classes, and actors within national boundaries. How, then, is sociology to respond to this moment of historical rupture?1 I acknowledge the enduring strength of disciplines and nation-states, but ar- gue we must also engage with new organisational forms. These emerging struc- tures demand fresh theoretical and empirical work. What follows are early steps towards such a theoretical response. Before outlining the main arguments, a quick note on chapter structure. The chapter has four parts. First, I place my epistemological reflections within the wider modernity debate, identifying three core problematics. Second, I argue against viewing modernity as a single, uni- fied project – a common tendency in sociology. Third, I explore the decolonisa- tion of the social sciences, using the sociological canon’s material history to support my epistemological stance. Finally, I turn to the political realm, using cities and empires as alternative analytical units to nation-states, to illustrate a ‘pluralist dialogical’ metatheoretical approach. What do I mean by dialogical pluralism? In short, this refers to a metatheoret- ical approach that treats the history of theory and the practice of theory-making as two interwoven dimensions of a single intellectual endeavour. This perspec- tive encourages the integration of past theoretical contributions – whether re- cent or distant – into contemporary theoretical work, as if current scholars and their predecessors were engaged in an ongoing, imaginative dialogue aimed at DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-15 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-15 Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics 189 addressing common or overlapping problems. This perspective draws on two key intellectual traditions. First, the historicist methodological orientation as- sociated with the ‘Cambridge School’ – especially the work of Quentin Skinner, John Dunn, and J.G.A. Pocock – has significantly shaped my thinking. Second, classical American philosophical pragmatism, especially John Dewey’s view of science as a problem-solving enterprise and George Herbert Mead’s theory of objects, provides further conceptual grounding. As I have argued elsewhere (Silva, 2006), dialogical pluralism has important theoretical and methodological implications. Methodologically, my position in the historicism versus presentism debate is more closely aligned with the former. I am particularly critical of the latter’s tendencies towards quasi-naturalism and abstract rationalism, preferring instead more processual and culturally attuned approaches. Moreover, I situate my theoretical reflection firmly within the ho- rizon of modernity. Modernity serves not only as a contextual backdrop for my inquiry, but also as a central object of analysis. In this regard, the contemporary debate on multiple modernities provides a crucial framework through which I ar- ticulate and develop the principles of dialogical pluralism.2 As will become clear, my position in this debate diverges both from Shmuel N. Eisenstadt’s thesis of ‘multiple modernities’ and from the perspective of neo-modernisation theorists such as Volker Schmidt. While Schmidt upholds functional differentiation – following Parsons and Luhmann – as the most appropriate analytical framework for understanding the spread of modernity (Schmidt, 2006, 2007), I part ways with him on this point. Although I share his view that modernity manifests itself in multiple variants, I reject the notion that functional differentiation should remain the dominant model for interpreting social development in the modern era. Nevertheless, I find Schmidt’s (2025) more recent work on ‘world society’ – an attempt to move beyond the Eurocentric underpinnings of sociology’s ‘core concept of society’ – to be a step in a more promising direction. As I will show in the final two sections, alternatives to differentiation are clearly at work in science and democratic politics. Disciplines and nation-states – long shaped by modernity’s cultural and political needs – now require rethinking. I begin with the epistemological side. My main point is this: the social sciences must confront global modernity. Foundationalist approaches no longer suit to- day’s post-disciplinary context. Theory must shift from rigid foundations to more flexible forms of justification. As Michael Gibbons puts it, ‘problem-solving on the move’ aptly captures this evolving condition (Gibbons et al., 1994). On Modernity: Provisional Answers to Inescapable Questions I begin by questioning the common belief that the social and human sciences need epistemological foundations. In my view, this search is misguided. Ask- ing for universal moral, social, or rational principles behind human societies is 190 Political Modernity and Beyond the wrong approach. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1953) shows why: meaning comes from use within specific forms of life, not from abstract reference to an external reality. Language must be studied in relation to prac- tices, traditions, and contexts – not in isolation. Concepts like justification and truth are inherently contextual and nonfoundational. Foundationalism, however, ignores this and seeks generality through abstract metaphysics. Wittgenstein (2003: §38) called this the moment when ‘language goes on holiday’) – when words lose their grounding in lived contexts. Theories that aim for abstraction often obscure what they intend to clarify. Objectivity, too, is context-bound. There is no view from nowhere, no universal justification beyond the specifi- cities of practice. My main claim, based on The Politics of the Book (2019; co-authored with MB Vieira), is clear: there are no epistemological foundations separate from the contexts of scientific practice. The key issue is Wittgenstein’s view that the link between self and society is not accidental but essential. Influenced by William James, he emphasises that the self cannot be separated from its social context. This challenges the liberal idea of the self as atomised and asocial – a central theme of this chapter. Liberal theory grapples with how solitary individuals form a society, and how empathy arises from isolation (Sznaider, 1998). But if Wittgenstein is right – that the self and social world are inseparable – then liberalism rests on a flawed assumption. Why contrast liberal rationalism with Wittgenstein’s contextualism and American pragmatism? Because liberalism has shaped the Western understand- ing of science, reason, selfhood, and democracy. Descartes, for instance, argues in the Meditations that one can doubt everything but the mind. Wittgenstein rejects this. In Philosophical Investigations, he asks: could I truly grasp mental concepts without others? The answer is no. Language depends on rule-follow- ing, and rules can’t be followed in isolation. Without others, there’s no way to judge if a rule is being followed correctly – so both mind and language are inherently social. The point I want to emphasise is that it is possible to reconstruct common problem areas addressed by different generations of social and political theorists (see Silva, 2008: 15). At a fundamental level, the problems I am grappling with today are essentially the same problems that Wittgenstein faced half a century ago, and that Descartes sought to resolve three centuries earlier. It is in this sense that I interpret Habermas’s (1998: 43) remark that Hegel ‘is not the first philosopher who belongs to modern times, but he is the first for whom moder- nity became a problem’. What, then, are the essential elements of this problem? In attempting to answer this question, I begin by distinguishing the core aspects of modernity as a problem – what, following Wagner, one can call the ‘modern problematics’.3 Western modernity rests on three core problematics – science, politics, and selfhood – each unavoidable, yet all solutions remain provisional. To be modern, I argue, is to grapple with how knowledge is produced (science), how democratic Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics 191 rule is formed (politics), and what human autonomy means (selfhood). Since the late eighteenth century, liberal, rationalist, and individualist frameworks have dominated responses to these issues. Importantly, this same framework justified European colonial expansion, making colonial encounters a necessary counter- point to modernity as a civilising ideal. The positivist split between object and subject, the calculating self of economics, and the abstract rights-bearing liberal individual all reflect a single, unified image of ‘the human’. Briefly, each problematic can be outlined (Silva, 2008: 19–25). Science is the cornerstone of modernity, grounded in the experimental method and the faith that reason can solve ancient problems. Thinkers like Galileo, Bacon, and Newton exemplified this belief. Tradition came to be viewed as outdated, something mod- ern individuals could shed. The conviction that everything could be scientifically explained defined modernity. Weber called this ‘rationalisation’, a concept that continues to shape sociological understandings of the modern world. In what sense is selfhood a distinctly modern concern? Claude Lefort (1988) offers a helpful answer: modernity erodes traditional ‘markers of certainty’ while continually seeking to restore them. The modern self, then, is defined by its con- frontation with uncertainty about its place in the world. Jerrold Seigel (2005) captures this dynamic with depth, showing how modern identity is shaped by this tension. Decolonial thinkers push the origins of this problem further back, to 1492, when debates over the humanity of indigenous peoples (Dussel, 1995; Wynter, 1994) raised foundational questions about what it means to be human. As for democratic politics – the third major problematic – modernity’s core challenge is to balance autonomy and freedom with stability and predictability. While constitutionalism and the rule of law predate modernity, they take on new forms in the modern era. What truly marks political modernity, I argue, is the rise of individual rights and the idea of universal equality. The key distinction lies in their temporal orientation: constitutionalism looks backwards to found- ing texts, whereas rights-based discourses look forward, embodying a distinctly modern sensibility. The Grotian-Lockean moral tradition, foundational to hu- man rights, remains central to political modernity; alternative frameworks often define themselves in contrast to it (Darwall, 2014, 2023). Modernity: One, Many, or a Plurality? Referring to something as complex as ‘modernity’ in the singular is not without issues. As Gallie (1964) notes, ‘modernity’ is an ‘essentially contested concept’ – used to describe everything from an empirical social reality to an epistemologi- cal condition or a temporal framework. There are compelling reasons to reject a singular, unified view of modernity. Bernard Yack warns that this approach risks ‘fetishizing modern thought and experience’, which once fuelled revolutionary energy but now tends to encourage ‘exaggerated passivity’ (1997: 130). More im- portantly, it misrepresents modernity by ignoring its diversity and contradictions. 192 Political Modernity and Beyond This risk is especially pronounced in sociology. Since Mannheim’s (1972: 222) claim that sociology arises from the study of historically situated knowledge, the discipline has often treated itself and modernity as parallel developments. Founda- tional narratives taught to students continue to reinforce this link, suggesting that sociology emerged as a response to modernity – urbanisation, industrialisation, and new social forms. Not all sociological work falls into this trap. Many stud- ies thoughtfully examine the hybrid nature of modern life, where ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ elements coexist. Yet some major theorists continue to portray moder- nity as too unified and coherent, overlooking its internal tensions. Habermas’s vi- sion of modernity as an ‘unfinished project’ is a notable case of this simplified view. In The Theory of Communicative Action (1981) and The Philosophical Dis- course of Modernity (1985), Habermas develops a theory of modernity that inte- grates Parsons’ systems thinking with the critical insights of Marx, the Frankfurt School, and Weber. He distinguishes between two perspectives on modern soci- ety: the system, which includes the economy and state governed by instrumental rationality (money and power), and the lifeworld, the shared cultural and commu- nicative background of social actors. Modernity, for Habermas, involves growing tension between these domains. The system becomes increasingly autonomous through societal rationalisation, while the lifeworld differentiates into culture, so- ciety, and personality via cultural rationalisation. Each sphere – science, art, and law – develops its own logic. Habermas sees the fragmentation of value spheres not as a failure, but as a sign of modernity’s ongoing, unfinished project. Habermas’s theory assumes modernity moves towards coherence among value spheres, but this overlooks the possibility that tension and fragmentation may be defining features of modernity itself (Yack, 1997). There is little reason to expect or desire greater harmony between differentiated spheres as moder- nity progresses. His theory of communicative action seeks to bridge contex- tualism and transcendentalism, offering both a descriptive framework for the human sciences and a normative critique of modern society. This dual aim is meant to renew, not abandon, the Enlightenment project. However, the frame- work ultimately risks becoming monological, privileging rational argument as the dominant mode of discourse. Despite its emphasis on communication, it can marginalise alternative perspectives, forming a self-referential system. As Knodt (1994: 94) notes, this allows Habermas to dismiss entire intellectual tra- ditions while integrating diverse disciplines into his own unified model. In sum, Habermas’s view of modernity as an ‘unfinished project’ risks fetishising mo- dernity by ignoring its internal contradictions and diversity. The very framing of modernity as a ‘project’ is questionable – especially today, in a globalised context where Eurocentric models fall short. Rather than adopt Habermas’s monological stance, I advocate a dialogical approach to intellectual history, one that engages diverse perspectives and helps address the modern challenges of science, selfhood, and politics. Before developing this further, I briefly turn to recent sociological debates on modernity. Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics 193 Instead of viewing modernity as a singular project or claiming its end, think- ers like Shmuel Eisenstadt (2002, 2003) have proposed the idea of ‘multiple modernities’. This approach captures the civilisational diversity of modern ex- periences and resists equating modernity solely with Europeanisation (Silva, 2008). Still, the framework has limits. It often overlooks local and regional dy- namics and marginalises questions of power and colonialism. It also tends to overstate differences across civilisations while downplaying those within them (Schmidt, 2006). Thus, the multiple modernities thesis risks replacing one fet- ish with another – shifting from Western-centric to civilisational-centric models that obscure complexity at smaller scales and earlier historical stages. This is where Volker Schmidt’s neo-modernisation proposal offers an impor- tant advantage. His approach shows a greater sensitivity to empirical validation of theoretical claims about modernisation processes. According to Schmidt, one can legitimately speak of ‘variants of modernity’ if, and only if, it is empirically de- monstrable that societies exhibit ‘coherent patterns of institutional co-variation’. Such patterns must not only systematically differentiate individual subsystems (economies, political systems, educational structures, etc.) across different groups of countries, but also reflect broader institutional configurations according to a coherent logic that permeates all major societal subsystems (Schmidt, 2007: 224). Thus, while the multiple modernities framework makes important advances in challenging Eurocentric conceptions, Schmidt’s variant-based perspective pre- sents itself as a potentially more nuanced and empirically robust alternative. Neo-modernisation theorists, like their 1950s counterparts, remain tied to reductionist frameworks. Volker Schmidt, for example, accepts modernity’s institutional diversity but still prioritises functional differentiation as its core logic (Schmidt, 2007; Therborn, 2003). This perspective, while more open, fails to consider alternative forms of social organisation. Such thinking exemplifies what Peter Wagner (2001) calls ‘modernist’ thought – mistaking what is possible under modern conditions for what is necessary. Neither multiple modernities nor neo-modernisation theories, then, offer a fully adequate model. I propose instead a dialogical pluralist framework that embraces plural modernity – recognising varied institutional patterns across regions and domains, akin to Hall and Soskice’s (2001) ‘varieties of capitalism’. These institutional variants relate to broader modern problematics, though not always in clear alignment. In what follows, I focus on science and epistemology to advance two claims: theory today must be non-foundationalist, and it must engage with an increas- ingly post-disciplinary context. Dialogical Pluralism in Science: The Materiality of the Sociological Canon How does this approach work in practice? A good example lies in combin- ing historical reconstruction of earlier thinkers’ ideas with rigorous theoretical 194 Political Modernity and Beyond engagement with the enduring questions they addressed – what Simmel (1978: 53) called the questions ‘we have so far been unable to answer or dismiss’. These unresolved questions still shape my work, making it possible to engage in a kind of imagined dialogue with past theorists. Such engagement treats them as intel- lectual partners in responding to modernity’s persistent challenges. At the core of my dialogically pluralist approach is the belief that theory and the history of theory are intertwined. Facing modernity’s recurring questions, I aim to integrate past insights into my own thinking. This approach fosters dialogue with both present and past interlocutors and highlights the intellectual continuity – and complexity – of modern thought. This meta-theoretical stance fits today’s academic landscape. Interdisciplinarity first challenged traditional disciplinary boundaries, but science is now increasingly defined by transdisci- plinary collaboration (Klein, 1990; Rigolot, 2020). These range from multi-field teams tackling specific problems to global research networks, indicating that disciplinary silos no longer define scientific inquiry. However, I believe it would be premature to dismiss the organisational role of disciplines altogether. We may indeed have moved beyond a strictly ‘disci- plinary age’, but the emergence of the so-called ‘post-disciplinary’ era does not mean that disciplines have ceased – or will soon cease – to play a central insti- tutional role. On the contrary, disciplines continue to provide essential structure, coherence, and stability to scholarly activity. They provide the basic organisa- tional framework on which much contemporary research is still based, and there is little evidence that this role will disappear any time soon. In order to explain why I hold this view, it may be helpful to make some additional remarks about the primary organisational patterns of the contemporary academic system. In analysing modern science, I distinguish two main theoretical orientations (Heilbron, 2004). The first is the systems-theoretical approach, shaped by Rein- hart Koselleck, who saw a major transformation between 1750 and 1850 as the concept of ‘discipline’ took on its modern meaning. Scholars like Rudolf Stich- weh (2025) argue that academia became a subsystem of modern society, struc- tured by functional differentiation. Here, academic disciplines replaced informal intellectual spaces like salons and clubs, forming the institutional backbone of modern knowledge. The second orientation draws on the French tradition of historical epistemol- ogy, especially through Michel Foucault. Influenced by Bachelard and Canguil- hem, Foucault (1966) identified an epistemological rupture in Les mots et les choses, marking modernity’s rise. This shift was not just conceptual – it produced new institutional forms. Disciplines, for Foucault, embodied this transformation, enabling new forms of knowledge control and governance (Foucault, 1975). While distinct, both perspectives aim to explain how disciplines shaped mod- ern science. Yet both have been critiqued for presenting modernity as arising from a singular rupture followed by increasing coherence. As I have argued, this view is empirically weak and risks fetishising modernity. For instance, contrary Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics 195 to systems theory claims, research shows that European academia may have been more institutionally diverse before 1800 than after (Heilbron, 2004: 28–29). The history of modern science shows that disciplines have not all devel- oped through functional differentiation. Biology, for instance, emerged through synthesis, integrating botany, zoology, and medicine into a unified life sci- ence. Chemistry evolved from artisanal practice into an academic discipline by adopting methods from established sciences (Heilbron, 2004: 36). These cases suggest that differentiation is important but not the sole organising principle in academia. Rather, modern science has developed through multiple, overlapping institutional logics. Today, those modern conditions are rapidly changing. Many sociologists now argue that we have entered a post-disciplinary era (Abbott, 2001). Traditional disciplines, often seen as rigid and slow to adapt, are losing their centrality in favour of more fluid, global forms of scientific collaboration. I largely agree with this shift. Michael Gibbons’ idea of transdisciplinarity is especially persuasive. He argues that knowledge today is increasingly prob- lem-driven (Gibbons et al., 1994), moving fluidly between basic and applied research. This mode of production is performative and dynamic, marked by ded- ifferentiation – dense, cross-disciplinary networks that foster dialogue among diverse traditions and methods. But despite this shift, I remain convinced that academic disciplines remain essential as the primary institutional structures underpinning scientific practice. The dynamic ‘problem-solving capacity on the move’ that Gibbons describes would be inconceivable without the training, conceptual frameworks, methodo- logical rigour, and intellectual legacies provided and safeguarded by established disciplines. To engage effectively in interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary pro- jects, researchers must necessarily do so as trained practitioners, firmly rooted in their own disciplinary identities and traditions. Let me now briefly illustrate this understanding with my own work, The Poli- tics of the Book (2019). A central insight of the book is that theory is not simply conceptual or abstract; it is also sensuous, material, and performative. The act of theorising, we argue, involves writing, editing, translating, and publishing – all of which are embedded in wider social practices and institutional settings. Far from being transparent carriers of ideas, canonical texts are shown to be objects with a life of their own, shaped by paratextual frameworks, publishing constraints, and shifting political agendas. By tracing the transformations that works such as The Protestant Ethic or The Souls of Black Folk have undergone through re-editing, anthologising, and translation, the book shows how literary form, philosophical argument, and political intent are deeply intertwined. This is transdisciplinarity not as an external imposition but as an internal feature of how theory is made. The argument goes beyond textual materiality to address the political dimen- sion of the book. We try to demonstrate that books – especially those considered ‘classics’ – are not neutral artefacts, but rather sites of political contestation. 196 Political Modernity and Beyond Disciplines, reputations, and intellectual traditions are negotiated and reshaped through the ways in which texts are framed, attributed, and interpreted. The case of Mead’s Mind, Self, and Society, posthumously constructed by his students, challenges conventional notions of authorship and disciplinary coherence. The same is true of the reception of Durkheim, whose contemporary reinterpretation by figures such as Jeffrey C. Alexander effectively repositioned him within a new theoretical constellation. These examples show that the development of sociological knowledge is best understood as the result of transdisciplinary ne- gotiations between scholars, institutions, and discursive traditions. In this sense, The Politics of the Book offers not only a critique of the sociol- ogy of knowledge, but a metatheoretical intervention into the nature of theory itself. It challenges both the idealist conception of theory as pure abstraction and the positivist reduction of texts to neutral data. Instead, it advances an un- derstanding of theory as always already entangled in material, institutional, and historical mediations. The result is a powerful argument for a dialogical, plural- ist, and transdisciplinary sociology – one that treats the canon not as a closed archive, but as a living, evolving conversation across generations and fields. In doing so, it invites us to reflect on the conditions under which we produce, transmit, and transform knowledge, and in doing so reaffirms the political stakes of theoretical work itself. Dialogical Pluralism in Democratic Politics: Cities, Nation-States and Empires If academic disciplines represent the quintessential institutional form of moder- nity in the scientific realm, then the territorial nation-state occupies a parallel position in the political realm. It is not surprising, then, that remarkably similar claims are now being made in both spheres of debate. Just as we are told that contemporary science has entered a post-disciplinary phase, so we are increas- ingly confronted with the claim that the nation-state is a political form that no longer corresponds to the structural conditions of our time. Once again, the leg- acy of Michel Foucault looms large behind these arguments. As Foucault showed in his lectures in the 1970s, the consolidation of the modern state between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries was not only the result of institutional changes but also, and crucially, of transformations in political thought. For the first time, the state was conceptualised as an object with measurable characteristics – wealth, population, territory, and military strength – amenable to the emerging sciences of political arithmetic, statistics, and political economy. In stark contrast, medieval and early modern political thought was primarily concerned with cities and their often-antagonistic rela- tionship with emerging state formations (Isin, 1999: 166). It is this earlier focus on the city that much of the recent urban literature seeks to recover and reframe. However, this reappropriation raises complex methodological and conceptual Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics 197 issues. While interest in pre-Westphalian forms of urban political life is intel- lectually stimulating, drawing direct lessons from these historical configurations to interpret post-Westphalian experiences of citizenship risks anachronism. The underlying premise of such comparisons is that our current, rapidly changing postmodern condition demands conceptual tools untainted by the categories of modern, state-centred political thought. Thus, for some, a turn to pre-modern conceptual frameworks seems a more promising route. However, this strategy must be approached with caution. The idea that pre- modern concepts are somehow immune to the epistemological assumptions of modernity overlooks the deeply contextual nature of all political categories. Rather than simply substituting one historical framework for another, what is needed is a critical engagement with both – modern and pre-modern – through a metatheoretical lens that can account for the multi-layered and often contradic- tory legacies that continue to shape our political imagination today. Much as we may be reassured by historical continuities, the work of the true historian is to be open to the unfamiliarity of the past (Skinner, 1969). Looking to the past for answers to our problems blinds us to what they really are. For example, the current impact of global corporate capital on the changing, fluid, and es- sentially de-territorialised nature of power is unprecedented and lives in a new tension with the placedness of urban politics. This tension explains some current tendencies towards urban disengagement and depoliticisation (Bauman, 2003; Castells, 1989). Another important point of contention concerns the implicit and sometimes explicit dismissal of the state that underlies many of these post-statist propos- als. Much like premature declarations of the end of academic disciplines, this abandonment of the state as a meaningful analytical and institutional category is, in my view, both unwarranted and theoretically fragile. States continue to ex- ercise considerable power through mechanisms that shape social and economic life within their borders. Far from being obsolete, they remain essential to the functioning of both domestic and international orders. Indeed, the idea that non-state actors – be they multinational corporations, NGOs, or sub-national political entities such as cities, regions, or associations – can operate autonomously and with procedural legitimacy independent of the state is deeply problematic. These actors remain dependent on the infrastructure, legal frameworks, and regulatory oversight provided by state institutions. Even in the most globalised of settings, the procedural fairness and enforceability of the rules within which these actors operate are guaranteed by state-backed authority. Despite frequent claims about the increasing dominance of corporate power and the global reach of financial and digital capital, corporations have not dis- placed states. On the contrary, they remain dependent on states for critical func- tions: they need currencies to be printed, interest rates to be set, and legal systems to protect contracts and intellectual property. Moreover, corporations – especially 198 Political Modernity and Beyond those with transnational reach – require state regulation to prevent them from engaging in exploitative, reckless, or outright criminal practices. Indeed, the degree of oversight needed to ensure corporate accountability and market sta- bility is far greater than is often acknowledged. From environmental standards and labour protections to financial compliance and data governance, states are called upon not only to enable but also to constrain corporate behaviour. Rather than being replaced, the role of the state has in many ways become even more important, albeit transformed and operating through new forms of interaction with global and sub-national actors. In sum, the assumption that we are entering a post-statist world mirrors the equally flawed notion of a post-disciplinary academic landscape. Both positions underestimate the institutional inertia, adaptability, and enduring relevance of the frameworks they seek to discard. What is needed instead is a more nuanced account of how these institutional forms are being reconfigured under contem- porary conditions – not a wholesale dismissal of their analytical or political significance. In affirming the continuing relevance of the state, I am not denying the in- creasing importance of the urban scale of governance – an importance that has indeed grown considerably over the past few decades. That much is undeniable. Cities have become critical political arenas in which fundamental struggles over citizenship rights are played out. Foremost among these is the right to the city itself, a right that is increasingly threatened by processes of social polarisation, the commodification and privatisation of public spaces, distortions in housing markets, and growing inequalities between social groups. This right is not just an aspiration; it entails concrete obligations, both for those who live in the city and for the municipal structures that govern them. Participatory budgeting ini- tiatives, among other institutional innovations, exemplify the growing demands for democratic accountability and citizen engagement at the urban level. Yet much of the literature celebrating the resurgence of urban governance suf- fers from a recurring conceptual limitation. While explicitly framed as a critique of the scalar thinking that has long underpinned Western modernity, it often ends up replicating rather than transcending it. Scalar thinking is based on a rigid, hierarchical, and ahistorical conception of political organisation, one that assigns exclusive competencies to discrete levels of governance – local, national, global – while obscuring the fluid, overlapping, and often contested nature of these rela- tionships. The rescaling alternatives proposed in this literature often reproduce the very logic they seek to displace. By suggesting that citizenship rights can be neatly distributed across different levels of governance – often with a prefer- ence for the local or the global, while minimising or bypassing the national – these accounts extend scalar reasoning across multiple levels rather than questioning its underlying assumptions. In doing so, they inadvertently reinforce a compartmen- talised and vertical model of political authority that is ill-suited to capturing the complex and relational dynamics of contemporary governance. Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics 199 What is required, in my view, is not simply a multiplication of scales, but a conceptual reorientation that acknowledges the co-constitutive, interdepend- ent, and overlapping nature of political spaces. Rather than conceiving of cities, states, and transnational entities as discrete containers of power and rights, we must begin to think of them as embedded within each other, constantly inter- acting and reshaping each other’s boundaries and functions. This calls for an alternative analytical framework – one that moves beyond scalar abstraction and towards a dialogical understanding of political modernity as internally plural and structurally entangled. Reality does not present itself as a neatly stratified set of layers – local, na- tional, global – within which human action unfolds independently. To under- stand citizenship rights, one cannot simply disaggregate the various components of the modern conception of citizenship and reassign them to different levels of governance. While it is true that the liberal paradigm has historically privileged one level – the state – at the expense of others, the alternative is not to reverse this hierarchy by redistributing rights and privileging another level in its place (e.g. Cohen, 1999). To do so merely perpetuates the scalar logic embedded in the liberal paradigm one seeks to transcend. The crux of the matter is that scale is not a natural given, but a human con- struct. It is we who draw boundaries, who decide where the city ends and the countryside begins, who distinguish between local, regional, national, and global levels of governance. Those who propose to link specific rights to specific levels of governance often overlook this constructed nature of scale. There is no necessary relationship between a particular scale and a particular type of right. It is one thing to perceive the world as stratified; it is quite another to assume that this perception reflects a singular and objective reality. A more compelling approach is to conceive of the city as a context of action in which citizens, their rights, the institutional and socio-economic conditions that sustain them, and the cultural and economic forces that challenge or reshape them are mutually constitutive. Determining the relative weight of these factors is an empirical task. But the meaning and scope of any given ‘act of citizenship’ can only be understood by abandoning rigidly stratified logics and treating such acts as both shaped by and crossing constructed boundaries of scale. Rejecting scalar think- ing allows us to move beyond the dominant liberal rationalist discourse, which remains abstract and atomistic. As I have argued elsewhere, the rights-bearing individual of liberal theory, the reductionist self of behaviourism, and the in- strumental subject of Cartesian rationalism all fail to account for the embedded, relational nature of the modern self (Silva, 2008). In this light, a performative conception of citizenship presents itself as a coherent alternative to the legal rigidity of the liberal model. An example may help to illustrate the conceptual reframing I am proposing. Imagine a young woman taking part in a climate justice march in London. She is holding a sign denouncing the environmental policies of the US government 200 Political Modernity and Beyond and its role in obstructing international climate agreements. Her act of protest, seemingly local and temporal, is in fact the product of a much broader and multi-layered configuration of scales. Their right to assemble and voice dissent is guaranteed by the state, but their ability to do so depends on a series of ena- bling conditions – permission from local authorities, access to public transport, and the material means to forgo work or other responsibilities. The object of their protest, however, goes far beyond the national: it is global, even planetary, targeting a world system in which ecological degradation is inseparable from military hegemony, economic extraction, and geopolitical dominance. The po- litical imaginaries that animate her action – climate justice, anti-imperialism, intergenerational solidarity – are transnational in scope, but as she embodies and enacts them, they become part of her own political subjectivity. In acting, she does not merely apply these values; she transforms them – and herself. To account for this kind of political agency, we must move beyond the tri- chotomy that treats citizenship as either legal status, cultural identity, or social practice. More crucially, we must reject the scalar logic that links specific rights to predetermined levels of governance. The young woman’s protest does not belong to the ‘local’, the ‘global’, or the ‘national’. It crosses them all. The per- formance of her citizenship cuts across these categories, drawing on them and disrupting them at the same time. Each such ‘act of citizenship’ brings into play a plurality of intersecting forces – legal, economic, discursive, embodied – and must be understood as both a use of and a challenge to the institutional configu- rations that constitute contemporary political order. What this example also illustrates, however, is the urgent need to reintroduce empire as a relevant scale of governance into our theoretical toolkit. Much of the climate crisis is inextricably linked to imperial histories and ongoing forms of domination – extractivism, militarism and the structural imposition of environ- mental damage on peripheral regions of the world. The global carbon economy is not simply the result of nation-state decisions or corporate interests. It is the product of a historically embedded imperialist structure in which a few power- ful actors – most notably the United States – impose the costs of their economic and political strategies on the rest of the world. To protest climate injustice is therefore to confront an imperial order that transcends national boundaries and conventional models of governance. Empires do not function like states, but neither are they reducible to abstrac- tions. They operate through networks of military bases, trade regimes, techno- logical dependencies, financial leverage, and cultural domination. The United States, for example, projects power not only through its government but also through corporations, foundations, universities, and global media platforms. The protester in London may never set foot in Washington, but the structures she opposes – fossil fuel subsidies, trade deals that block climate action, military spending that dwarfs environmental investment – are largely shaped by impe- rialist logics. The exercise of her citizenship is therefore not just a claim on her Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics 201 own state or a gesture of solidarity with other activists; it is an intervention in a world system structured by empire and imperialism. Recognising empire as a scale of governance forces us to move beyond the bi- nary of local versus global, or the assumption that political agency is always an- chored in a single institutional level. Empire complicates the picture: it blurs the boundaries between public and private, civil and military, domestic and foreign. It does not govern in the name of citizenship, but it does govern – with profound consequences for those who seek to act politically. In this sense, the performa- tive act of protesting climate injustice is also a confrontation with the political architecture of empire, in which rights are unequally distributed, responsibilities are evaded, and the language of democracy masks systemic domination. From this perspective, a performative conception of citizenship offers a more adequate framework than the juridical and stratified liberal model. It allows us to see how acts of citizenship are constituted by overlapping, often conflicting, institutional logics – state, city, market, and empire. It also allows us to see how such acts can simultaneously inhabit and disrupt these logics, refusing the scalar reductions that underpin much of modern political theory. Rather than assigning rights to levels and persons to places, this approach insists on the irreducibly relational, mobile, and contested nature of citizenship today. Conclusion A few concluding remarks are in order. I have distanced myself from Luhmann- ian functionalism, which treats differentiation as the dominant logic of mod- ern development. Empirical evidence contradicts this – especially in science and politics. I have also rejected the ‘multiple modernities’ paradigm, where it equates modernity too closely with the nation-state. Instead, I propose a notion of plural modernity, shaped by overlapping historical trajectories. Academic disciplines and nation-states, though central, have evolved through various logics – not just functional differentiation. Today, both science and politics are undergoing accelerated redefinition. Nation-states and academic disciplines still matter, but they coexist with emerg- ing forms that challenge their boundaries. Politics is becoming increasingly post-national, shaped by actors like the UN, NGOs, corporations, and local com- munities. In parallel, scientific knowledge is shifting towards transdisciplinary collaboration. Here, differentiation, dedifferentiation, and synthesis all operate at once. The concept of performance helps us rethink both citizenship and sci- ence beyond rigid scales and boundaries. Capturing these changes calls for a dialogical pluralism – a commitment to engaging diverse intellectual traditions in conversation.4 It is precisely this meta-theoretical orientation that underpins the broader aims of Political Modernity and Beyond. The volume offers a timely response to the pro- found and interlocking crises – climatic, geopolitical, institutional, epistemic – that 202 Political Modernity and Beyond define the contemporary world. By situating the current moment as one of transfor- mation rather than rupture, the book opens up space for reflection on the uneven, contingent, and often contradictory trajectories of political modernity. The argu- ment advanced in this chapter contributes directly to this ambition. It engages the epistemological and institutional dimensions of science not only to trace the devel- opment of disciplines, but also to show how contemporary patterns of transdisci- plinary collaboration point to a decolonisation of the curriculum. By highlighting how modern science is shaped by exclusionary categories, Eurocentric assump- tions, and the marginalisation of non-Western epistemologies, the chapter calls for curricular and institutional reconfigurations that make science accountable to the global condition in which it is embedded. Moreover, considering empires and cities as alternative or complementary scales of governance extends the conceptual reach of political modernity be- yond the nation-state. While the dominant liberal paradigm relies on a scalar logic that locates sovereignty squarely within the territorial state, the imperial and urban scales destabilise this assumption. The chapter thus provides the basis for a non-Eurocentric theorisation of political modernity that takes into account the colonial entanglements of statehood and the contemporary relevance of urban sites of political agency. The demonstrator protesting US imperialism and environmental degradation exemplifies how acts of citizenship engage multiple overlapping scales – city, nation, empire – while resisting their hierarchisation. Their actions are not readable within traditional liberal models of citizenship, but are made intelligible through the dialogic, performative, and trans-scalar conception of modern political agency advanced here. This chapter therefore plays a bridging role within the broader structure of the book. It moves between epistemology and political theory, between discipli- nary histories and emergent institutional forms, and between Western concepts and global realities. By theorising disciplines and nation-states as historically contingent rather than normatively necessary institutional forms of modernity, it opens space for imagining new configurations – both within and beyond the state. By bringing empires and cities into the analysis, it responds to the book’s call to examine the post-colonial and post-Westphalian conditions that shape political modernity today. And by advancing dialogical pluralism as a metatheo- retical alternative, it provides a common conceptual language through which the diverse contributions to the volume can be brought into productive conversation. Notes 1 A similar question has been posed by Connell (2007). See also Wimmer and Kössler (2006) and Wagner (2020). 2 See, for example, Yack (1997), Roniger and Waisman (2002), and Therborn (2003). 3 Peter Wagner distinguishes several modern problematics, including those of science and democratic politics. See Wagner (1994, 2001). 4 For a similar viewpoint, see Levine (1995). Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics 203 References Abbott A (2001) Chaos of Disciplines. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Alexander J. et al. (eds.) (2006) Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Prag- matics, and Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bauman Z (2003) City of Fears, City of Hopes. London: Goldsmith’s College, University of London. Castells M (1989) The Informational City. Information Technology, Economic Restruc- turing, and the Urban-Regional Process. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Cohen J (1999) Changing paradigms of citizenship and the exclusiveness of the demos. In- ternational Sociology 14(3): 245–268. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580999014003002 Connell R (2007) Southern Theory: Social Science and the Global Dynamics of Knowl- edge. Cambridge: Polity Press. Darwall S (2014) Grotius at the creation of modern moral philosophy. In Honor, History, and Relationship: Essays in Second-Personal Ethics II. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Darwall S (2023) Modern Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to Kant. Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press. Dussel E (1995) The Invention of the Americas. New York: Continuum. Eisenstadt SN (ed.) (2002) Multiple Modernities. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Eisenstadt SN (ed.) (2003) Comparative Civilizations and Multiple Modernities, Part II. Leiden: Brill. Foucault M (1966) Les Mots et les choses. Une Archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard. Foucault M (1975) Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison. Paris: Gallimard. Gallie WB (1964) Essentially contested concepts. In Gallie WB (ed.) Philosophy and the Historical Understanding. London: Chatto & Windus. Gibbons ML, Limoges C, Nowotny H, Schwartzman S, Scott P, Trow M (1994) The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage. Habermas J ([1981] 1986) Reason and Rationalization of Society, vol. 1 of The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. McCarthy T. Cambridge: Polity Press. Habermas J ([1985] 1998) The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hall P, Soskice D (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Com- parative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Heilbron J (2004) A regime of disciplines: toward a historical sociology of disciplinary knowledge. In Camic C, Joas H (eds.) The Dialogical Turn. New Roles for Sociology in the Postdisciplinary Age. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Isin E (1999) Introduction: cities and citizenship in a global age. Citizenship Studies 3(2): 165–171. Klein J (1990) Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory and Practice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Knodt E (1994) Toward a non-foundationalist epistemology: the Habermas/Luhmann controversy revisited. New German Critique 61: 77–100. Lefort C (1988) Democracy and Political Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Levine DN (1995) Visions of the Sociological Tradition. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Mannheim K ([1936] 1972) Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580999014003002 204 Political Modernity and Beyond Nowotny H, Scott P, Gibbons M (2001) Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Rigolot C (2020) Transdisciplinarity as a discipline and a way of being: complementari- ties and creative tensions. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 7(100): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00598-5 Roniger L, Waisman CH (eds.) (2002) Globality and Multiple Modernities. Comparative North American and Latin American Perspectives. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press. Schmidt V (2006) Multiple modernities or varieties of modernity? Current Sociology 54(1): 77–97. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392106058835 Schmidt V (2007) One world, one modernity. In Schmidt V (ed.) Modernity at the Begin- ning of the 21st Century. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Schmidt V (2025) From Societas to World Society. Genealogy of a Concept. New York: Brill. Seigel J (2005) The Idea of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silva FC (2006) Habermas, Rorty e o pragmatismo americano. 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Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00598-5 https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392106058835 https://doi.org/10.1590/S0011-52582006000100005 https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310030063002 12 Global Perspectives on Local Solutions eHealth and Digital Divide through the Comparative Law Lens Elena Grasso Overview States worldwide share the goal to protect human health. Some, particularly those in the Western legal tradition, afford human health constitutional protec- tion. The European Union (hereinafter: EU) and its Member States have elevated health to the status of a fundamental principle in the Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR).1 However, as is well known, EU intervention in this field is char- acterised by the adoption of rules aimed at coordinating national systems, with the individual Member States remaining the sole ‘holders of responsibility for managing health services, medical care, and the allocation of related resources’.2 While national constitutions protect both collective and individual health— albeit within the limits of national borders—within the EU, the right to health has been constructed around the individual as the holder of an economic free- dom, and therefore as a market actor (Uccello Barretta, 2014). This means that, within the EU, health is protected indirectly, insofar as it is safeguarded in the Member State of affiliation.3 The competence to provide healthcare services, thereby giving substance to the right to health, thus remains with the Member States, with national rules guaranteeing the extent of access to healthcare services. EU law becomes rel- evant when, for instance, healthcare is provided in a Member State other than the one of affiliation (Grasso, 2019). In other words, the right to health may well be universally recognised, but it is inevitably affected by the different legal frameworks governing its domestic implementation (Boggero, 2018; Pataut, 2015; Cohen, 2014). Indeed, the financial stability of national health insurance systems constitutes a legitimate objective recognised by Union law.4 Although the implementation of health protection remains anchored at the domestic level, the implications for the collective interest extend beyond the national framework. This is especially true in epidemic contexts, where there can be no effective protection of health unless appropriate protective meas- ures transcend national borders (Allot, 2002). Consider, for example, the quarantine—a 40-day isolation period imposed between 1348 and 1359 on ships DOI: 10.4324/9781003650188-16 This chapter has been made available under a CC BY NC ND license. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003650188-16 206 Political Modernity and Beyond and people before entering the city of Dubrovnik in an effort to curb the spread of the Black Death, which resulted in the death of nearly 30% of the population in Europe and Asia (Oddenino, 2010). Epidemics and pandemics have played a significant role in the development of international community structures (Riedel, 2009).5 A recent example is the outbreak of COVID-19, which the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic.6 As is well known, the spread of the disease had a disruptive impact on national health systems and on the relationship between health protec- tion and the organisation of healthcare services (Balduzzi, 2020). To face this crisis, the EU Member States adopted an emergency instrument involving finan- cial intervention: the Emergency Support Instrument (ESI).7 While the Union’s role has historically been complementary to national health policies—expressed through coordination and support of Member States’ actions, initially limited to diseases and major scourges8—it was later extended to all threats to human health, with the general objective of improving global public health.9 This goal is also shared by the WHO, which is currently drafting an instru- ment aimed at improving the prevention, preparedness, and response to future pandemics on a global scale.10 The instrument strives to ensure the sustained and long-term political commitment of signatory countries, to define clear processes and responsibilities, to provide long-term support to both public and private sec- tors at all levels, and to promote a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. This approach involves integrating health issues into all relevant strategic sectors (e.g. research, innovation, financing, transport). The proposed instrument has been submitted for consideration at the 77th World Health As- sembly and seeks to strengthen existing mechanisms for preventing health crises (Seatzu and Vargiu, 2023). On 16 April 2025, the INB finalised a proposal for the WHO Pandemic Agreement. The Assembly decided to adopt the instrument under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution on 19 March 2025, with several de- tails to be finalised during upcoming negotiations. On 20 May 2025, govern- ments of Member States adopted by consensus the Pandemic Agreement in the full plenary of the 78th World Health Assembly. In the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak, the response of each national health system differed (Wenham and Eccleston-Turner, 2022). Notably, the simultaneous influx of critically ill patients into healthcare facilities placed extreme pressure on the sustainability of these systems, severely testing their resilience. Resilience in health systems—although a key concept in disaster risk management—is relatively recent in its application to healthcare. It is commonly understood to refer to the capacity of institutions and healthcare professionals to anticipate, withstand, and recover from crises while maintaining essential func- tions and addressing both routine and emergency healthcare needs. Past epidem- ics such as Ebola, SARS, and MERS have illustrated the link between resilience and the ability to control outbreaks (Nuzzo et al., 2019). Global Perspectives on Local Solutions 207 On the one hand, health system resilience entails the capacity to respond to unexpected shocks, but on the other hand the ability to sustain healthcare ad- vancements, ensure system stability, and prioritise patient-centred care (Legido- Quigley and Asgari-Jirhandeh, 2018). The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the discourse on resilience, underscoring the need for a more thorough un- derstanding of national responses from this perspective. In the fight against COVID-19, new technologies have played a crucial role. Coordinated public health measures such as testing and contact tracing have proven essential to ef- fective responses to COVID-19. However, such strategies often rely on digital technologies that may exacerbate existing inequalities and lead to violations of fundamental rights. As such, future investments must adopt a holistic approach that engages vulnerable communities and actively seeks to mitigate these risks (Haldane et al., 2021). These considerations fall within the scope of Article 35 CFR and, more recently, Article 168 TFEU, which require that a high level of human health protection be ensured in the definition and implementation of all Union poli- cies, even though access to healthcare services remains governed by national legislation.11 This has inevitably resulted in fragmented implementation of the right to health, which has been challenged by both the territorial organisation of healthcare and the potentially global nature of its provision due to the principle of free movement.12 In this regard, the various European models exhibit highly specific char- acteristics, some of which the pandemic has accentuated, while others it has softened. The solutions implemented share a common denominator: the exten- sive use of new technologies (Cohen et al., 2024). This contribution aims to highlight the risks associated with the main measures adopted by Italy, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. While these solutions may, in theory, en- hance the efficiency of resource allocation, they are also likely to deepen ex- isting inequalities—particularly in relation to vulnerable individuals, who face increased barriers in accessing an increasingly digital and computerised health- care system. This phenomenon, known as the digital divide (OECD, 2001), dis- proportionately affects the most fragile groups, such as migrants and the elderly (Cui et al., 2024; Mensah and Mi, 2017). So Close, So Different? A Comparative Perspective on Healthcare Systems Developing a common and harmonised health policy faces several challenges, the most significant of which is the differing organisation of national healthcare systems. While all European models share similar values and are based on the principles of solidarity and equity, the management and delivery of healthcare services have been implemented through different models, generally character- ised either by a ‘universalist’ (National Health Service) or ‘mutualist’ (social security healthcare system) approach. 208 Political Modernity and Beyond The main reference models are the Bismarck13 model—mutualistic or in- surance-based—(adopted by Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Hungary) and the Beveridge14 model, which underpins the Na- tional Health Service or tax-funded universal system, used in Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (Klein, 2006). The Bismarck model is characterised by a system in which both the financing of healthcare and the right to access it are linked to employment relationships, such that citizens who contribute to social security benefit from health insur- ance. This model is based on the obligation for all residents to obtain health insurance, excluding foreigners without regular residence permits. Coverage is funded through taxation. Healthcare is structured as a triangle, whose vertices consist of compulsory social insurance providers, healthcare service producers, and the State, which plays a regulatory role within the system. The State defines the rules that govern the system, while mutual funds negotiate and purchase out- patient and hospital services on behalf of their members. Some Member States that follow this model also incorporate a reimbursement mechanism, whereby citizens pay for healthcare services and are subsequently reimbursed by the pub- lic system. By contrast, in the Beveridge model, the right to healthcare services is not linked to any employment relationship. The system is financed through general taxation, i.e. from citizens’ tax contributions. The State is responsible for meet- ing all care needs. The role of the private healthcare sector also varies across the systems described above. In some countries, healthcare is provided directly by the public system, while in others, there is significant participation by private health insurance through the subscription of complementary insurance plans (Lopez-Casasnovas et al., 2015). The Bismarck and Beveridge models are examples of two approaches, but others exist: there are also models based on compulsory private insurance, such as those in Switzerland and the Netherlands, where the primary source of funding consists of insurance premiums calculated according to average risk (community rating). These premiums are paid by citizens, with public funds in- tervening to equalise the risks assumed by insurance companies. Complement- ing the picture are the so-called mixed social models, which—each to varying degrees—draw inspiration from the aforementioned three main models (Muraro and Rebba, 2008). Each model naturally presents both advantages and disadvantages. In theory, national health systems may be better positioned to control public expenditure (as it is inherently budget-based) but demand pressures can lead to longer wait- ing lists, the management of which reveals tangible inadequacies in service pro- vision. In insurance-based systems, which in many cases separate care providers from funders, increases in demand or costs translate into rising expenditures. Global Perspectives on Local Solutions 209 This increase may become unsustainable for public finances which, in seeking to contain costs, often face opposition from stakeholders—especially given the difficulty in setting clear priorities for healthcare delivery (Ciolli, 2019). The sustainability of the different models has led to the implementation of various adjustments—some intended to enhance rights protections, as in socially oriented systems; others aimed at improving expenditure control, as in universalist systems. These changes have produced a substantive conver- gence of the models, creating what may be described as a mutual attraction of opposites. The model based on voluntary private insurance—also known as the American model (modified significantly by the so-called Obamacare reform)—allows individuals to choose whether and how to insure themselves against potential healthcare costs. The severe inequalities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic have revealed how the American Rescue Plan moves in the direction of ensuring universal eligibility for subsidised private health insurance.15 This issue has global relevance, with the health systems of Japan, Indonesia, and China presenting three contrasting models that differ significantly in their organisational structures, stages of development, and the specific challenges they confront. Japan has a mature and universal health system, based on a broad network of social health insurance schemes introduced in 1961. The system guarantees uni- versal access to services, with a significant role for private providers regulated by the State. It stands out for the high quality of its services, the widespread use of advanced medical technologies, and direct access to care (Sakamoto et al., 2018). However, the system is currently under pressure due to population age- ing, rising healthcare costs, and a growing imbalance between the working-age population and retirees. In contrast, Indonesia is engaged in building a universal health system. With the introduction of the JKN (Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional) programme in 2014, the country has extended coverage to hundreds of millions of citizens. However, the system remains highly decentralised, with significant regional dis- parities. The public sector is often perceived as inefficient, and structural weak- nesses result in uneven quality of services. Moreover, the system faces major governance and financial sustainability issues, exacerbated by recurring deficits and administrative inefficiencies (Mahendradhata et al., 2017). China, on the other hand, represents a rapidly evolving hybrid model. Since its 2009 health reform, the Chinese government has heavily invested in expand- ing universal health coverage, which was formally achieved in 2011 through multiple public insurance schemes.16 China’s system is largely state-managed, with an extensive public hospital network, but also a growing role for private actors. Despite formal coverage expansion, severe urban-rural disparities per- sist, along with a rising demand for chronic and specialised care, and an over- burdened hospital system. The country also faces challenges related to service 210 Political Modernity and Beyond quality, administrative fragmentation, and long-term sustainability (Chen and Liu, 2023; Yi, 2021). Remaining within the EU, the example of convergence becomes clear when comparing the healthcare systems of Italy and France. The Italian healthcare system has, over time, operated under conditions of limited resources: co-payments and reliance on intra moenia services due to unacceptably long waiting lists have led to a revision of the principle of uni- versality. In both cases, these mechanisms risk increasing inequality by condi- tioning access to services on individual financial capacity.17 Furthermore, due to regional disparities in both regulations and resource allocation, Italy—four years after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic—faces profound difficul- ties and concerns related both to its long-term sustainability and to the contin- ued relevance of the core principles of universality, comprehensiveness, equity, accessibility, and general tax-based financing that have characterised the sys- tem since the founding law of the National Health Service (Servizio Sanitario Nazionale, SSN) in 1978.18 The COVID-19 pandemic revealed many of the Italian National Health Ser- vice’s limitations, which were, in truth, more closely related to failures in im- plementation than to structural weaknesses. The primary shortcomings emerged in community-based care, including the integration of health and social care, as well as in the articulation of the multilevel governance shared between the State and the Regions.19 The situation in France differs. Initially modelled on a Bismarckian system with compulsory health insurance, the French healthcare system has evolved over time by incorporating principles of universality and solidarity typical of the Beveridge model, thus becoming a hybrid system. The French constitutional order ranks the protection of health amongst the Republic’s primary objectives, as affirmed in the 11th paragraph of the Preamble to the 1946 Constitution, with particular attention given to minors, mothers, and the elderly. Today, the protection universelle maladie (Puma) allows individuals to receive healthcare coverage without infringing on their rights. This protection applies even in cases of changes to one’s professional (e.g. job loss) or family situation (e.g. separation), or place of residence. Compulsory health insurance covers approximately 70% of the cost of care for nearly all residents20 (Tabuteau, 2016). The remaining share is paid by the patient, who may, however, subscribe to a Mutuelle Complémentaire d’Assurance Santé (AMC) to obtain reimburse- ment for the outstanding balance. The AMC market is highly regulated, with restrictions limiting the ability of insurers to select or exclude patients. Over time, complementary coverage has not only expanded but also become increasingly ‘professionalised’: once an optional individual choice, it has evolved into a collective, employer-sponsored benefit. In 2019, approximately 96% of the French population was enrolled in an AMC. Global Perspectives on Local Solutions 211 From an organisational perspective, the French healthcare system operates through several levels of government: national, regional, and departmental. At the regional level, Agences Régionales de Santé (ARS) play a key role in health governance and planning. These agencies are responsible for ensuring that healthcare services meet the specific needs of local communities by coordi- nating the delivery of care across hospitals, general practitioners, and other pro- viders. Departments—France’s second-level administrative subdivisions—have only a marginal role in healthcare policy but are important actors in delivering social services and managing healthcare resources locally. Another challenge affecting the French healthcare system is the declining number of general practitioners in relation to the population. Moreover, their geographical distribution is uneven, with significant shortages in rural and dis- advantaged areas. This disparity impacts the availability of primary care: faced with difficulties in accessing outpatient services, patients increasingly turn to emergency departments, placing considerable pressure on public hospitals in both staffing and financial terms. Recent reforms have sought to address this issue by promoting the coordina- tion of care and the development of local healthcare networks through financial incentives and task-sharing amongst healthcare professionals. The Challenge of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Cross-Fertilisation of Solutions The responses to the crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic varied, yet the pandemic itself acted as a catalyst for rethinking and restructuring the relation- ship between health protection and the organisation of healthcare services. This trend has also affected systems in which continuity in reform processes with pre-pandemic changes is often emphasised. The responses adopted can broadly be classified into two models: (i) struc- tural interventions, and (ii) strengthening existing systems without altering their organisational foundations. In this sense, we observe a convergence in the solu- tions prompted by the pandemic that appears indifferent to the type of healthcare model originally in place. A preliminary distinction must be made between systems that used the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity to reform, wholly or partially, the structure of their healthcare services, and systems that opted to focus on reinforcing ex- isting mechanisms without altering their essential features. Germany and the United Kingdom followed the former, whereas Italy and France followed the latter (Balduzzi, 2024). Italy chose to reinforce community-based healthcare, simultaneously in- vesting in telemedicine and digitalisation (e.g. the Electronic Health Record— Fascicolo Sanitario Elettronico, FSE). Community healthcare was reorganised through investments in home care services, the creation of new local healthcare 212 Political Modernity and Beyond facilities and centres aimed at improving accessibility and proximity of services to citizens, and the development of a new institutional framework for health- related prevention in environmental and climate contexts.21 France took a direction both similar to and different from that of Italy, start- ing from the same concern: the long-term sustainability of the healthcare sys- tem. Without interventions aimed at building a network integrating hospital and community care (soins hospitaliers and soins de ville, together with the third category établissements médico-sociaux),22 the resilience of the healthcare sys- tem could not be ensured, due to the high level of separation between hospitals and the local level.23 Compulsory and complementary health insurance—hallmarks of the French system—did not, in fact, cover all types of healthcare services. Cer- tain treatments, which were often relatively expensive (e.g. optical devices, dental care, hearing aids), remained partly or entirely at the patient’s expense. This situation created disparities in access to care for lower-income popula- tions, who risked forgoing treatment, thereby increasing social isolation and marginalisation. To mitigate this inequality, the 100% Santé reform was introduced in 2020 with the aim of ensuring a basic package of services and devices in the afore- mentioned areas, with full coverage provided by the healthcare system.24 It is worth noting that, unlike Italian analyses—where criticism focused primarily on the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the community-based care network—the most frequently cited issue in France was the rising cost generated by the gap between soins hospitaliers and soins de ville, and the resulting loss of efficiency across the entire healthcare system. This difference in diagnosis led to a different reform strategy in France, cen- tred on, on the one hand, modernising hospitals and socio-medical facilities (Les établissements et services sociaux et médico-sociaux, ESSMS, and Établisse- ments Hébergeant des Personnes Âgées Dépendantes, EHPADs), and, on the other hand, expanding digitalisation. The French solution differs from the Italian approach by having restructured the healthcare system through an extensive and participatory public debate that involved healthcare professionals.25 Germany also responded to the pandemic by reinforcing digitalisation. The German Recovery and Resilience Plan (Deutscher Aufbau- und Resilienzplan, DARP)26 was premised on the assumption that timely lockdown decisions, co- ordinated amongst the Federal States (Länder), and the functioning of local monitoring and alert services would enable a rapid and effective response to the health and social threat. Accordingly, the majority of DARP funds were al- located to research and vaccine development and the creation of a digital infra- structure, with particular focus on the hospital network (Brönnecke and Debatin, 2022). The goal was to create an interoperable digital infrastructure to connect healthcare facilities and other actors within the public health service, responding to the pressing need to prevent the borders of the Länder and the autonomy of Global Perspectives on Local Solutions 213 various health entities (particularly the sickness funds) from becoming obstacles to full-scale digitalisation. In turn, a distinction is necessary between health-related and non-health- related responses to the pandemic, and between immediate measures and longer-term strategies aimed at reorganising healthcare systems in light of the pandemic emergency. In this context, the Future of Hospitals Act27 (Kranken- hauszukunftsgesetz, KHZG), which entered into force in October 2020, consti- tutes legislative intervention aimed at promoting the digitalisation of hospital facilities through the establishment of funds designated for financing targeted investments in technological modernisation of healthcare structures (Kranken- hauszukunftsfonds, KHZF). The primary objective of the KHZG is to enhance IT infrastructure in hospi- tals by encouraging the integration of advanced solutions (such as telemedicine, robotics, artificial intelligence, and high-tech medical technologies) to increase management efficiency and the quality of healthcare delivery. A key aspect of the legislation concerns the improvement of process organisation, documenta- tion, and communication—both internally and across different sectors of the healthcare system. Moreover, the KHZG introduced specific provisions aimed at strengthening information security, with particular attention to the protection of sensitive data and the resilience of digital infrastructures (Petzold and Steidle, 2023). Access to KHZG funding is subject to a strictly regulated procedure, re- quiring applicants to comply with specific criteria and application procedures (Jorzig, 2022). In the United Kingdom, the pandemic reaffirmed the intention to implement reforms to the National Health Service that had long been under legislative con- sideration. The starting point was the Health and Care Act 2022, passed in April 2022. The core aim of the reforms is to create a healthcare system that better responds to people’s needs. This is pursued through the creation of 42 Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), which have been entrusted with planning functions previ- ously centralised at the national level, including the commissioning of services necessary to realise the right to health (Roderick and Pollock, 2022). On one hand, the inclusion of local personnel on the ICS boards should help ensure more effective service delivery by tailoring it to local communities. On the other hand, there is a risk that the independence of these entities may be compromised, as their decisions could be influenced by conflicts of interest. eHealth and Digital Divide The responses to the pandemic have been manifold, but they all share one com- mon denominator: the belief that digital technologies offer the main avenue for improving the efficiency of healthcare systems.28 Digital health technology has been fundamental in combating COVID-19. Telemedicine has been the most 214 Political Modernity and Beyond prominent innovation, followed by electronic health records, artificial intelli- gence, big data, and the Internet of Things (Kalhori et al., 2021). States and their healthcare systems differ significantly in their levels of digi- talisation (Androniceanu et al., 2022). The EU has explicitly linked its vision of technological development to the principle of protecting and promoting digi- tal citizenship (Masucci, 2019). As articulated in the European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade,29 EU institutions are com- mitted to a people-centred digital transformation grounded in European values, fundamental rights, and universal human rights. This approach seeks to benefit individuals, businesses, and society as a whole. Concerning the public sector, the Declaration affirms the right of all individuals to access essential digital pub- lic services within the EU and to participate in the digital public sphere, ensuring the protection of freedom of expression, information, assembly, and association in the online space (Mesa, 2023). Ensuring equitable access to digital health technologies is another major challenge, as disparities in digital literacy and infrastructure can exacerbate existing health inequalities. Moreover, over-reliance on digital tools must be avoided when it comes at the expense of investing in traditional public health infrastructure and workforce capabilities. This raises serious concerns regarding access for large segments of the popu- lation. In 2019, nearly 30% of people in Italy were not regular internet users, and more than half of the population still lacked basic digital skills.30 Few initia- tives have been specifically targeted at disadvantaged groups (e.g. those with low educational attainment) or at adults over the age of 65 (Gardella Tedeschi, 2023)—segments of the population at greater risk of digital exclusion (Okan and Paakari, 2020). Indeed, the impact of new technologies has deepened the divide between genders, generations, and social groups (WHO, 2020, 2021). Article 25 of the CFR is dedicated to the rights of the elderly. It states, ‘The Union recognises and respects the rights of the elderly to lead a life of dignity and independence and to participate in social and cultural life’. Furthermore, Article 34 of the Charter establishes the right to access social security benefits and services as a fundamental right. The Italian case is emblematic: in order to stimulate the development of ini- tiatives directed at this segment of the population, two key measures were in- troduced in the national plan: the development and enhancement of a network of digital inclusion access points (punti di facilitazione digitale) and the launch of a digital civil service (servizio civile digitale).31 According to the Italian Na- tional Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), in Italy the number of elderly internet users is increasing, though only 19.3% of people aged between 65 and 74 have basic digital skills.32 The development of digitalisation has indeed facilitated access to public ad- ministration, the submission of documents, digital health records, and online Global Perspectives on Local Solutions 215 shopping—all features that risk excluding the very population groups that could most benefit from them (Dong et al., 2023). Digital health literacy (DHL) is an extension of eHealth literacy and refers to the ability to search for, understand, evaluate, and use health information from digital sources to make informed decisions (WHO, 2023). General Comment No. 14 on the right to health underscores that healthcare services must be ac- cessible to all, particularly the most vulnerable or marginalised individuals, who may suffer from indirect discrimination precisely because they have not been empowered with sufficient digital literacy. In recent years, the DHL concept has become central to public health and the formulation of health policy. The digitalisation of society and healthcare, the proliferation of digital communication technologies, the public health impact of digital health tools, and the advent of artificial intelligence have all significantly contributed to the growing interest in DHL (UNDP, 2012). Today, digital literacy is recognised as a key determinant of health, on par with socioeconomic status, income, education, age, and gender. Although nearly the entire global population now lives within reach of some form of mobile broadband or internet service, and mobile phones are becoming ubiquitous, only half of the world’s population uses the internet and possesses basic information and communication technology (ICT) skills. This gap between access and the conscious, informed use of digital technologies demonstrates that the digital divide is no longer simply about ownership of digital tools, but rather about access to public communication network infrastructures33 and the possession of scientific, technological, and digital literacy necessary to use those tools criti- cally and competently. On the one hand, digital transformation has demonstrated a positive and developmental impact on both individual and public health; on the other, it is equally capable of exacerbating existing inequalities (van Kessel et al., 2022). Inadequate DHL can have significant implications for both individual and col- lective health outcomes. The digital divide mediates the effect of cultural capital on health. Effective use of the internet reduces the digital divide and improves health, but achieving this requires a solid cultural foundation. Cultural capital helps older adults integrate more effectively into the digital age, facilitating ac- cess to health information and services. A study conducted by the China Social Science Survey Center of Peking University, based on data from the 2020 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), shows that cognitive ability acts as a positive moderator: older adults with strong cognitive skills are better able to convert cultural capital into digital competencies, thereby reducing the digital divide. However, cognitive ability does not directly moderate the relationship between the digital divide and health, as many older adults still do not recognise the importance of using the internet for health-related purposes (Cui et al., 2024). Limited DHL prevents individuals from harnessing the potential of digital technologies, for instance in receiving and understanding communications and 216 Political Modernity and Beyond prescriptions from healthcare professionals (Patil, 2021). This becomes espe- cially critical in times of extraordinary public health challenges, as witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic (Zakar et al., 2021). In addition to jeopardising an individual’s ability to manage health infor- mation and to engage meaningfully with healthcare professionals in the co- production of value and services, low DHL may also have indirect negative effects on the functioning of the healthcare system itself. Individuals with limited literacy may share misleading, incorrect, or misinterpreted health in- formation via digital platforms, apps, and online communities—facilitating the spread of dangerously unreliable information that undermines both value co-creation and the sustainability and credibility of the healthcare system as a whole (Lovari, 2020). Concluding Remarks Reforms across different healthcare systems have followed varied directions and priorities, reflecting the historical and structural differences of national systems and their respective conceptions of the right to health. These reforms range from the reorganisation of community-level healthcare networks in Italy, the strength- ening of the connection between hospital, community, and medico-social care in France, the digitalisation and reorganisation of the hospital network in Germany, to the integration of care services in the United Kingdom. All the countries con- sidered have placed a strong emphasis on the digitalisation of health services, recognising the importance of technology in future health resilience. Addressing the digital divide and promoting the well-being of older adults require a multidimensional approach that actively involves various social ac- tors. First and foremost, the role of the government is essential, as it bears the responsibility of creating inclusive structural policies to facilitate the integra- tion of older adults into the digital landscape. This involves not only significant investments in digital infrastructure, especially in rural or less-developed ar- eas, but also the creation of digital literacy programmes specifically targeted at the elderly population. Such programmes should offer free or subsidised train- ing courses, ensuring that older adults possess the necessary skills to navigate the digital world in a safe and informed manner. Additionally, the government should promote the accessibility of digital platforms by simplifying interfaces and adopting inclusive language that takes into account the different cognitive and technological abilities of the elderly population. The creation of integrated health networks reflects the recognition that health protection goes beyond the mere provision of hospital-based medical services. It requires systems capable of supporting the most vulnerable patients in man- aging chronic diseases and addressing non-clinical needs. This represents a common denominator amongst the solutions adopted in the systems examined: the Italian Case della Comunità, the reformed French EHPADs, Germany’s Global Perspectives on Local Solutions 217 Medizinisch-Pflegerische Versorgungszentren, and the United Kingdom’s Inte- grated Care Strategy. The right to health is realised by valuing both curative care and prevention, as enshrined in Article 35 CFR. Both pillars are shaped by the interaction and ten- sions between public objectives and private interests, which each legal system addresses in accordance with its own legal traditions. While the measures adopted by the EU Member States differ, they are united in their commitment to strengthening eHealth. During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital health played a critical role in preparedness and response—supporting surveillance, patient management, communication, and outreach through data integration. Digitalisation plays an increasingly important role in Asian health systems, with varying levels of advancement. Japan has high medical technol- ogy standards but has been slow to implement systemic digital reforms, facing cultural and institutional resistance despite recent efforts like electronic medical records and telemedicine. Indonesia views digital tools as essential for improv- ing equity and system governance. It has introduced digital platforms within its national health insurance (JKN), but progress is hindered by infrastructure gaps and low digital literacy, particularly in rural areas. China, by contrast, has made the most significant strides, integrating artificial intelligence, big data, telemedi- cine, and digital payments into its health system. Tech giants like Tencent and Alibaba have been key players, especially dur- ing the COVID-19 pandemic. However, concerns about data privacy and digi- tal inequality remain (Legido-Quigley and Asgari-Jirhandeh, 2018). As well as the elderly, digital divide marginalises also citizens with limited cultural capi- tal, unemployed, those living in rural areas. As the world moves into the post- COVID-19 era, it is essential to build on these advancements while confronting the challenges they have introduced, to ensure the resilience of healthcare sys- tems against future pandemics without leaving behind those who are struggling to keep up with the now irreversible digitalisation of healthcare systems. The effectiveness of digital health technologies depends on the relevance and contextualisation of the information they provide. Digital literacy acts as a tool of empowerment, both individually and societally. By enhancing individuals’ ability to navigate the digital healthcare system, manage communication chan- nels with healthcare professionals, and access and critically engage with health content, digital literacy enables active participation in healthcare decision-mak- ing, fostering value co-creation between individuals and the public healthcare system (Dunn and Conrad, 2018). Nonetheless, in the era of ‘platform society’ (Van Dick et al., 2018), inequali- ties persist and deepen when accessing online health systems. The European Economic and Social Committee on DHL supports the European Commission’s efforts to make digital health literacy a top priority within the eHealth Agenda. Integrating seniors into the digital world necessitates a collaborative effort amongst governments, families, communities, and the seniors themselves. Each 218 Political Modernity and Beyond stakeholder plays a strategic and complementary role in bridging the digital di- vide and enhancing the health and well-being of older adults. An integrated and inclusive approach is vital to reduce inequalities related to digital access and usage, ensuring seniors’ full and active participation in contemporary society. Notes 1 See Art. 35 CFR: ‘Everyone has the right of access to preventive health care and the right to benefit from medical treatment under the conditions established by national laws and practices. A high level of human health protection shall be ensured in the definition and implementation of all Union policies and activities’. 2 See Art. 168 TFEU which includes amongst the objectives of all Union policies the guarantee of a ‘high level of human health protection’. See European Commission, ‘White Paper. Together for Health: A Strategic Approach for the EU 2008-2013’, 23 October 2007, available at www.ec.europa.eu/health/ph_overview/Documents/ strategy_wp_en.pdf (accessed 25 March 2025). The White Paper aimed, inter alia, to support dynamic health systems and the implementation of new technologies. 3 See Art. 3(c) Directive 2011/24/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 March 2011 on the application of patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare, OJ L88, 4.4.2011, p. 45. Report on the implementation of the Cross-Border Healthcare Directive, available at www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2019-0046_ EN.html (accessed 23 March 2025). 4 CJEU Case C-243/19 A v. Veselības ministrija 29.10.2020 ECLI:EU:C:2020:872. 5 See Art. 23(f) Covenant of the League of Nations. 6 https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening- remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020 (accessed 23 March 2025). 7 The Emergency Support Instrument (ESI) was activated in 2020 in the early stage of the COVID-19 crisis. Its aim was to help Member States respond to the coronavirus pandemic by addressing needs in a strategic and coordinated manner at European level and was in place until January 2022. The Report from the Commission to the Council (COM/2022/386 final) is available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-con- tent/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52022DC0386 (accessed 23 March 2025). 8 See Art. 129 Treaty of Maastricht, signed on 7 February 1992, OJ 191 C 29.7.1992, p. 1. 9 See Art. 152 Treaty of Amsterdam, signed on 2 October 1997, OJ C 340, 10.11.1997, p. 1. 10 The mandate of the intergovernmental negotiating body, created by the World Health Assembly in 2021, initially scheduled to expire in May 2024, has been extended until the WHA scheduled for May 2025. The work of the intergovernmental negotiat- ing body is accessible at https://apps.who.int/gb/inb/ (accessed 23 March 2025). The Draft Proposal for the WHO Pandemic Agreement is available at https://apps.who. int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA77/A77_10-en.pdf (accessed 23 March 2025). 11 The initial reluctance to develop a common health policy, expressed by the Treaty of Maastricht itself, underwent a major change with the health crisis of the 1990s and, in particular, what was commonly known as the mad cow crisis, triggered in the United Kingdom by the use of carcasses of cattle affected by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in the production of meat and bone meal intended for animal feed. The mad cow crisis led the European Union to adopt a series of measures, updated over time, aimed at protecting human and animal health from the risk of https://www.ec.europa.eu/health/ph_overview/Documents/strategy_wp_en.pdf https://www.ec.europa.eu/health/ph_overview/Documents/strategy_wp_en.pdf https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2019-0046_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/A-8-2019-0046_EN.html https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020 https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52022DC0386 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52022DC0386 https://apps.who.int/gb/inb/ https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA77/A77_10-en.pdf https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA77/A77_10-en.pdf Global Perspectives on Local Solutions 219 transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. See Commission Decision of 23 April 1998 on epidemio-surveillance for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, in OJ L 122, 24.4.1998, pp. 59–63. 12 In particular, uncontrolled patient mobility could undermine national healthcare plan- ning that can guarantee quality care without wasting resources. See Opinion of AG Tesauro, in joint cases C-120/95 Decker v. Caisse de Maladie des Employés Privés and C-158/96 Kohll v. Union des caisses de maladie 16.9.1997 ECLI:EU:C:1997:399, para. 17. 13 Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), Prussian chancellor who in 1891 introduced the first measures of a modern welfare state, centred on insurance-type principles to protect workers and their families against illness, disability, and unemployment. 14 In 1942, the British economist William Beveridge proposed a plan for a free national health service and a pension system: it was the first step in a comprehensive system of protections that was to accompany citizens ‘from the cradle to the grave’. 15 www.whitehouse.gov/american-rescue-plan/ (accessed 25 March 2025). 16 See CPC Central Committee and State Council. Opinions of the CPC Central Com- mittee and State Council on deepening the health care system reform. Available at www.china.org.cn/government/scio-press-conferences/2009-04/09/content_ 17575378.htm (accessed 25 March 2025). 17 See Article 1 of Legislative Decree of 30 December 1992, n. 502 on the Reorganisa- tion of the discipline in health matters, pursuant to Article 1 of Statute of 23 October 1992, n. 421; Legislative Decree of 19 June 1999, n. 229 on Rules for the rationalisa- tion of the National Health Service, pursuant to Article 1 Law of 30 November 1998, n. 419. 18 See Statute of 23 December 1978, 833 establishing the Italian National Health Service. 19 See Constitutional Law of 18 October 2001, 3 amending Title V of Part Two of the Constitution. 20 loi n° 2015-1702 de financement de la sécurité sociale pour 2016. 21 See Decree of 23 May 2022, n. 77, Regulations on establishing models and standards for the development of territorial care in the National Health Service. 22 In the United Kingdom, the terms ‘assisted living’ or ‘senior housing’ refer to resi- dences for self-sufficient elderly people that are halfway between sheltered facilities and day centres and offer light care integrated with a series of services that encour- age socialising with flexible fees, which start from a basic package and also allow a series of optional services to be chosen. This sector is beginning to spread also in Italy, where the over-65s number 13.8 million and account for 22.8% of citizens and where family caregivers show greater difficulties than in the past in providing help and care. Senior housing has a great potential for growth in Italy, as it has already happened in countries such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The pro- gressive increase in the senior population, the reduction in the number of members per household (considering that today, in addition to parents, there are one or at most two children, who not infrequently live far apart) are factors that require finding residential solutions for elderly and lonely but still self-sufficient people. 23 Loi 2019-774 du 24 juillet 2019 relative à l’organisation et à la transformation du système de santé. In particular the reform focused on the reorganisation of medical studies, creation of proximity hospitals, creation of territorial health projects, exten- sion of vaccination rights to pharmacists and midwives. 24 The Réforme 100% Santé provides for full reimbursement via social security de- posit and supplementary health insurance for a certain number of hearing aids, opti- cal devices and dental care, combined with a cap on the prices of the goods. This https://www.whitehouse.gov/american-rescue-plan/ https://www.china.org.cn/government/scio-press-conferences/2009-04/09/content_17575378.htm https://www.china.org.cn/government/scio-press-conferences/2009-04/09/content_17575378.htm 220 Political Modernity and Beyond reform was justified by the significant burdens on families that could discourage the use of these devices or medical treatments. As of 1 January 2019, rates for hearing aids decreased and the reform was continued gradually until 2021. As of 1 Janu- ary 2021, 100% Santé will offer all French people who subscribe to a ‘contrat de complémentaire santé responsable (corporate maladie complémentaire assurance)’ or an ‘assurance complémentaire santé solidaire’, treatment, and a wide choice of audiological, optical, and dental equipment. The aim is to improve access to quality care and strengthen prevention. See Decree n. 2019–2021 of 11 January 2019 aimed at guaranteeing access without remaining out-of-pocket expenses to certain optical equipment, hearing aids, and dental prosthetic care, taken in application of Article 51 of the LFSS for 2019. 25 The Ségur de la santé is a consultation of stakeholders in the French healthcare sys- tem which took place from 25 May 2020 to 10 July 2020. The in-depth consultation made possible to negotiate with all union and professional representatives strong commitments to revaluation for professionals and managers in healthcare establish- ments as well as EHPADs. The Ségur de la santé agreements were signed on 13 July 2020 by the Prime Minister, the Minister in Charge of Solidarity and Health, as well as by a majority of union organisations representing, on the one hand, non-medical professions and, on the other hand, medical staff in public hospitals. 26 Bundesministerium der Finanzen, Deutscher Aufbau- und Resilienzplan (DARP), 27 April 2021, 15–17, available at www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/Content/DE/ Standardartikel/Themen/Europa/DARP/deutscher-aufbau-und-resilienzplan.html (accessed 25 March 2025). 27 BGBl. (Federal Gazette) 2020 I n. 48. 28 See Decision (EU) 2022/2481 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 December 2022 establishing the Digital Decade Policy Programme 2030 ‘Pathway to the Digital Decade’ based on digital skills, digital infrastructure, the digitisation of businesses, and the digitisation of public services, available online at eur-lex.europa. eu/eli/dec/2022/2481/oj/eng (accessed 25 March 2025). 29 European Commission, European Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles for the Digital Decade. Available online at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT /?uri=OJ:JOC_2023_023_R_0001 (accessed 25 March 2025). 30 See European Commission (2022). Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) 2022 Italy. Available online at: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/desi (ac- cessed 25 March 2025). 31 www.repubblicadigitale.gov.it/portale 32 www.istat.it/it/files/2023/12/Cittadini-e-ICT-2023.pdf. 33 T.A.R. L’Aquila, (Abruzzo) sez. 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Environmental Research and Public Health 18(8): 4009. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18084009 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18084009 Index Adorno TW 167 Africa 87, 103, 107, 109, 112, 114–115, 119, 121, 149, 153, 161 Alexander JC 196 Amin S 111 Anthias F 128–129, 135 Anthropocene 7, 70, 84, 163–164 Appadurai 107 Arendt H 52 Argentina 160 Artificial Intelligence 164, 213–215, 217 Asia 18, 23, 48, 92, 95–103, 107, 109, 161, 170, 181, 206, 217 Ausubel 80 Axial Age 107, 119 Bachelard G 194 Badiou A 180 Bauman Z 176, 179, 181 Beck U 71, 78–79, 176, 178–181 Beck-Gernsheim E 178 Beckert J 21–24 Belgium 52, 55–56, 60, 118 Bhattacharya T 146 Blühdorn I 181 Boltanski L 179, 182 Bonaparte L 52 Brand S 90 Bratton B 184 Brazil 8, 122–136, 160, 168, 181 Canada 103 Canguillen G 194 capitalism 1, 3, 5, 8, 11–13, 51–54, 66, 68, 72, 77, 92, 96, –97, 99, 106–118, 140–151, 157–167, 178–185 Chakrabarty D 74, 164, 167 Chalmers J 183 Charbonnier P 24 Chiapello E 179, 182 Chile 7, 33–44 China 5, 8, 18,70, 87–102, 112–114, 116, 119, 159, 161–162, 181 183–184, 209, 215, 217 Christianity 165 classes, social 5, 7–8, 23, 35, 38, 50–53, 77, 88, 95, 106, 123–129, 133, 135, 160–161, 166, 169, 178, 181, 188 Cold War 26–28, 8790, 97 colonialism 3, 106, 109, 115, 157, 162, 170, 193 Confucianism 96–97 Congo 1 Cooper F 105 COVID-19 1, 15, 18–22, 24–25, 71, 98–100, 131, 140–141, 180, 206–207, 209–211, 213, 216–218; as accelerator 5; as critical juncture 5 crisis 1–7, 10, 15–32, 51, 52–54, 56–61, 64–65, 68, 71–72, 75, 84, 89, 91, 93, 95, 103–105, 110, 113, 117–118, 131–132, 138, 140–144, 146–147, 149, 151, 160, 164, 166, 172, 175–177, 180, 181, 183, 200–201, 206, 211, 218 Cuba 34 democracy 1, 47, 9, 15, 17, 19–21, 23–45, 77, 87–88, 96–99, 109, 125, 161–162, 168–169, 181, 190, 201 Derrida J 107, 178 De Tocqueville A 3, 40 Dewey J 189 Dobry M 29–30 Index 225 Domingues JM 33, 72, 104, 106 Dryzek J 91 Dunn J 189 Durkheim E 3, 30, 36, 105, 106 Dussel E 3, 108 Earth System 72, 74, 78, 164 East 28, 88, 93, 96–97, 99–101, 112–113, 119 Ebola 206 Empire 8, 9, 87–88, 93–94, 99, 101, 103–121, 188, 196, 200–202 Enlightenment 17, 118, 158, 167, 170, 177, 192 Epistemology 9, 96, 188–202 Eisenstadt S 107, 119, 189, 193 Eurocentrism 115, 166 Europe 1, 3, 6, 7, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 31, 50–69, 73, 88, 93, 94, 99, 103–106, 109, 113–114, 118–119, 128, 135, 159, 160, 161, 166, 170, 172, 177, 181, 188, 191, 193, 195, 206–207, 214, 217–218, 220 European Community see Europe Falletti J 20 Ferguson S 146 financial crisis 2008 6, 54, 56–57, 61, 64, 91, 93, 180 Finland 28, 208 Fisher M 178 Foucault M 178, 194, 196 France 27, 52, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 63, 66, 88, 95, 179, 180, 207, 208, 210, 211, 212, 216 Frankfurt School 53, 164 Fraser N 142, 146 French Revolution 3 Fukuyama F 97, 180 Gates Foundation 19 Gaza strip 1, 112–113 genocide 1, 71, 79, 162 Germany 8, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 33, 47, 48, 52, 53, 55, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 66, 87, 88, 93, 94, 95, 100, 122–136, 159, 180, 207, 208, 211, 212, 216, 219, 221 Gethin A 123 Gibbons M 189, 195 Giddens A 3, 176, 178, 181 Gillespie T 184 Go J 104 Goldscheid R 53 Gramsci A 53, 181, 183 Greece 26, 28, 71, 100, 119, 160 Greenland 113 Habermas J 190, 192 Haiti 34 Hall P 193 Haltiner KW 27–28 Hardt M 104, 108–113, 117 Harvey D 111 Hatcher D 145 health care 140–154, 215–223 Hegel GWF 100, 180, 190 Hobson JA 87, 95, 108–109 Hong Kong 18, 89, 96 Horkheimer M 54, 65 Huntington S 97 Imperialism 3, 8, 73, 87–88, 92–93, 104–121, 200–212 India 70, 119, 161, 165, 181, 185 Industrial Revolution 3, 73–74 Islam 97, 98, 165, 168 Italy 52, 55, 57, 58, 70, 71, 72, 73, 76, 94, 207, 208, 210, 211, 214, 216, 219 Jameson F 2, 4, 175, 178, 181 Japan 19, 20, 22, 33, 48, 87, 94, 96, 159, 209, 217 Jaspers K 119 Kant I 100, 167 Kautsky K 87–88 Kepel G 177 Keynesianism 54, 56 Kirchheimer O 53–54 Kondratieff N 183 Koselleck R 4, 7, 194 Krätke M 53 Kwet M 115 Lash S 176, 178, 179 Latin America 34, 39, 40, 43, 88, 92, 93, 107, 121 Latour B 77–78 Left 37, 89, 124–125, 127, 133, 162, 168 Lenin 87–88, 92–93, 108, 160, 181 226 Index Lewis M 80 Lim J 120 Luhmann N 198, 201 Lyotard JF 176, 178 Mahoney J 20 Malaysia 97 Mann M 110–111, 113–114 Martuccelli D 39 Marx K 3, 52, 77, 93, 109, 142, 146, 151, 159, 166, 178, 192 Mbembe A 103, 107, 116 Mead GH 189 MERS 18, 25, 206 Mexico 90, 103, 107, 160 Middle East see East Mignolo W 108 modernity 1–11, 17, 23, 33, 50–54, 56, 59, 62, 64, 65, 70–94, 97, 113–132, 133, 167–187, 188–204 Morgan M 89 nation-state see state NATO 26, 28, 61 Negri A 104, 108–113, 117 Netherlands 57, 63, 208 Neumann F 53, 65 New Deal 156 Nicaragua 34 Nordhaus T 80 North America 23, 102 O’Connor J 53–54 Pacific islands 22 pandemic 1–10, 15–32, 51, 56, 59, 60–64, 71, 79, 98–100, 131, 140–141, 143, 165, 205–223 Parsons T 105, 189, 192 Peace of Westphalia 106, 197, 202 Pickering J 81 Pinheiro Machado R 126 Pinho P125 Pinochet A 37 Pocock JGA189 Pollock F 53, 66 Popov V 99 Portugal 160, 208 Qatar 24 Quijano A 104, 106, 166 Right 8, 33, 34, 113, 122–139, 162, 164, 168, 169, 177 Roberts D 145 Robinson CJ 109, 151 Roth KH 18, 20, 30 Rosanvallon P 35 Russia 15, 24, 25–26, 28, 59, 60–61, 64, 93, 96, 99–100, 112, 114, 119, 126, 162, 180 Saad-Filho A 124 Saito K 76, 77 Sanyal K116 SARS 18–30, 35, 206 Saudi Arabia 18, 27 Scalco LM 126 Schmidt W 189, 193 Science 2, 16, 19, 21, 71–76, 131, 137, 158, 167–68, 186, 188, 204 Simmel G 3, 194 Singapore 96–97, 101 Singer A 123 Skinner Q 189 Soskice D 203 Sorel G 177 South Africa 19, 115 South Korea 19–23, 96, 100, 159 Soviet Union 25–27, 53, 70 Spain 52, 55–58, 60, 63, 66, 208 Spencer RC 151 state 1–3, 10–15, 22–24, 27, 35, 50–69, 70–83, 87–102, 103–121, 122–139, 141–151, 157–176, 177–187, 188–204 Streeck W 53, 55 Switzerland 22, 28, 208 Taiwan 19–22, 91, 92, 94, 96, 100, 159 Thompson H 55 Tooze A Touraine A 177, 179 Turkey 26, 28 Turner FJ 104, 107 Ukraine 15, 18, 24, 25, 26, 28, 51, 59–60, 64, 103, 112, 119, 126, 138, 162, 180 United Kingdom 27, 66, 87, 93–95, 207, 211, 213, 216, 218–219, 221 United Nations 119, 24, 27, 97, 147, 201 United States 5, 8, 33, 40, 58, 87–102, 103, 107, 111, 116, 140, 141, 143, 144, 147, 159, 160, 165, 166, 177, 184, 185, 186, 188, 199, 218 Uruguay 34 Venezuela 34 Vietnam 19, 20, 22 Wagner P 15, 18, 21, 70, 190, 193, 202 Walia H 104, 111 war 1, 6, 15, 27, 28, 51, 53, 63, 71, 79, 87, 88, 92, 93, 94, 95, 100, 103, 105, 108, 110, 112–113, 117, 118, 126, 162, 166, 167, 169, 175, 176 Index 227 Weber M 3, 52, 53, 96, 105, 127, 164, 182, 191–192 West 8, 19, 24, 27, 31, 34, 37, 39, 40, 42, 52, 70–71, 77, 81, 87, 88, 96–101, 107, 108, 109, 134, 166, 181, 190, 193, 198, 202, 205 Wittgenstein L 190 World Health Organization 18–20, 206, 218 Yack B 105, 191, 202 Žižek S 103 Zuboff S 181–182, 184 Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of Figures About the Editors List of Contributors Introduction PART I: Crisis 1. Democracy and Statehood: Varieties of (Pandemic) Crises and Their Consequences 2. The Fate of Democracy and the Weakening of Its Moral and Socio-Cultural Supports in Contemporary Societies: The Case of Chile 3. Taxing Political Modernity: Fiscal Relations in Europe Since 2020 4. Modernity and the Anthropocene: Between Rupture and Fulfilment PART II: Struggles 5. From the Geopolitics of Inter-Imperial Rivalry to the Geo-Ideology of Inter-Civilizational Struggle 6. Empire Reloaded: Rethinking Modernity through Territorial and Digital Border Crises 7. Intersectional Situations and Political Choices: Far-Right Voters in Brazil and Germany 8. Racial Capitalism, the Politics of Care, and People as Profit PART III: Reconfigurations 9. Modernity and Its Horizon Today: Phases, Challenges and Perspectives 10. Re-Modernity: Making Sense of Social Experience in Times of Digital Platforms, New State Interventionism and Technological Megalomania 11. Post-Disciplinary Science and Post-National Politics: Rethinking Political Modernity 12. Global Perspectives on Local Solutions: eHealth and Digital Divide through the Comparative Law Lens Index