France’s recent snap parliamentary elections featured a paradox that was hard to make sense of. On one hand, popular disaffection with President Emmanuel Macron dominated the elections, both during the short and frenzied campaign that preceded them and in their outcome. On the other hand, as no shortage of observers pointed out, Macron’s record on a range of economic indicators has been pretty good.
It would be easy to chalk that up to Macron’s governing style, which can be charitably described as top-down and centralized, but which most people would call arrogant and monarchical. A similar dynamic is on display in the U.S. presidential campaign, which has also been dominated by popular anger and grievance, despite President Joe Biden’s even more impressive record on the economy. And that, too, can be explained by the particularities of former President Donald Trump’s appeal to his electoral base, as well as recent controversies over Biden’s age.
But, of course, the list of Western democracies experiencing popular and populist backlashes to establishment parties does not end there, despite relatively solid economic fundamentals in many of these countries. This raises the questions of why this phenomenon is so widespread, and why now, when by the conventional indicators—economic growth, employment and even wage gains versus inflation—things just aren’t so bad.