Confronting the Pandemic’s Toxic Political Legacy
While many commentators point to a widespread “anti-incumbency” bias to explain the ascendance of the far right, this does not tell us why voters have turned against incumbents. In many cases, an underappreciated factor is the long shadow of the COVID-19 crisis, and the divisions and distrust that it sowed.
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PRINCETON – Not only is Donald Trump back in the White House, but the far right is poised to occupy the Austrian chancellorship for the first time in the country’s postwar history, and Germany is hurtling toward a fraught election next month, following the collapse of its “traffic light” coalition government. Is each of these countries unhappy in its own way (to paraphrase Tolstoy), or is there a common denominator to their unhappiness?