Is liberal democracy running out of answers?
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Why do people feel liberal democracy has failed its promise of freedom and prosperity?
I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to 7am. For decades, liberal democracy came with a promise that with each generation we would feel freer, wealthier and have more control over our lives. But after years of economic shocks, war and political upheaval, more and more people seem to have stopped believing that promise. And in its place, we're seeing political movements emerge that don't just want different policies. They're questioning some of the fundamental ideas our democracies were built on. In his new quarterly essay, Time of Monsters, writer and broadcaster Waleed Ali argues this is part of something bigger, a crisis in liberalism itself. Today, Waleed Ali, on whether we're entering a post-liberal age and what might replace the old order.
It's Saturday, September 26th. Wale, good to see you again. Let's start with what prompted this essay, the bin fire that is the current state of the world. How did we get here? What makes you think that this is more than just a rough patch?
Look, it's a massive question and we could talk for weeks about how we got here. I mean, I suppose the most efficient way to answer that would just be to say the Look at this century. I mean, it's been a hell of a century. We start with September 11, the war on terror, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against Al Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Then you go into homegrown terrorism and the London bombings. It's not very long after that that you have climate change really emerging as an issue in the public imagination when Al Gore releases his film.
If you look at the 10 hottest years ever measured, they've all occurred in the last 14 years. And the hottest of all was 2005. Then you
have the global financial crisis.
Wall Street, it crashes and, you know, people starve, people lose their jobs, things like that.
How did the cascade of wars, climate alerts, and financial crises erode trust in liberal institutions?
We're very angry at Wall Street. It's part of capitalism, American capitalism, especially. That's why we're here today at Wall Street.
And after the global financial crisis, you have the start, really, which we ignore, I think, but the start of capitalism. a lot of populist right politics, beginning with Viktor Orban's election in Hungary in 2010, Golden Dawn emerged in Greece. You've got the AFD in Germany, basically an inheritor of, let's call them neo-Nazi adjacent. We've got the whole tech thing. So you've got social media starting to develop. The algorithm starts to dominate these apps as well. Artificial intelligence hasn't really started at that point, but that's okay because COVID's on the horizon. So we have COVID.
WHO has been assessing this outbreak around the clock and we're deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction. We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.
And then in the aftermath of that, that's when we enter the Ukraine-Russia war. You have Israel-Gaza, you have inflation exploding all around the world, partly because of COVID and the The money that government's pumped into economies, but then also what happened in Russia and Ukraine and what that does to energy markets, then AI takes off. I mean, I don't know if you need me to go on, Daniel, but there's been
a hell of a lot
going on. Please don't.
Just stop right
there. When you add those things up, it's the fact that these are relentless and it's the fact that they don't stop. Frankly, when you put it together like that, it would be remarkable if there weren't people who were saying, whoa, something is seriously wrong. Not that it's a moment, a rough patch we might get through when, you know, a different government comes in, but that there's just something deeply wrong. And so you get this kind of anti-systemic politics.
So we've seen the rising backlash in the wake of the myriad of events you just laid out for us.
What evidence shows that disillusionment with liberal democracy runs deeper than a temporary crisis?
And that's sort of led to people feeling as though they've got less control over their own lives than ever before.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do people feel liberal democracy has failed its promise of freedom and prosperity?
0:01–2:17
2
How did the cascade of wars, climate alerts, and financial crises erode trust in liberal institutions?
2:17–4:19
3
What evidence shows that disillusionment with liberal democracy runs deeper than a temporary crisis?
4:19–6:37
4
How does Waleed Aly define liberalism and its core philosophical commitments?
6:37–9:41
5
Why does the author argue that liberalism’s focus on individual freedom limits its response to modern harms?
9:41–11:44
6
What are the post‑liberal ideas emerging from philosophers and politicians seeking a common‑good alternative?
11:44–13:53
7
How might a post‑liberal regime restructure power and individual rights according to the discussion?
13:53–16:18
8
What hopeful paths does the episode suggest for rebuilding a shared sense of the common good after liberal decline?
16:18–18:35
Speakers
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