Evening Must-Read: Henry Farrell: Social Democrats in the Twin-Peaked World

behind the inability of conventional leftwing parties to challenge conventional orthodoxies…. They haven’t really relied on this constituency for a long time. Peter Mair’s Ruling the Void hasn’t gotten nearly the attention that it deserves…. Mair… makes a strong case that leftwing parties in Europe today have become profoundly disassociated from their voters… ordinary people withdrawing from political parties… elites of parties don’t rely on mass membership to provide resources…. European political parties rather than representing their constituents to the state, tend to represent the state and its imperatives to their constituents. This helps explain the extraordinary haplessness of mainstream leftwing parties faced with the politics of austerity…

I am skeptical of this explanation–largely because I remember similar haplessness from the left in Britain, Germany, and France during the Great Depression…