This chapter turns to the comparison of cases. By analyzing the discontented cases, a clear pattern emerges. The positive cases share few characteristics save one: democratic discontent that arose when sharp economic contractions intensified the imperfections and contradictions of the political status quo. This argument is made using paired comparisons of the positive and negative cases (Canada with the USA/UK, Portugal with Spain, Uruguay with Brazil/Chile) to evaluate competing explanations. The second section of the chapter analyzes how discontent was avoided during the Great Recession by looking for shared features of the three negative cases. It finds that escaping the initial pain of a crisis was not a necessary condition for avoiding discontent. Instead, the key to maintaining democratic legitimacy lay in the political response to the crises, and in the adaptability and health of left-wing parties. In all three negative cases, center-left parties recognized crises as indictments of neoliberalism, rejected its calls for austerity. By responding to popular demands for help in difficult times, these parties deprived cultural conflicts of the oxygen needed for them to rage and avoided major upsurges of discontent.

This chapter turns to the dynamics of democratic discontent when it seizes power, focusing on Trump but referencing other cases where relevant. It analyzes the influence of Trumpism on the left and finds a mirror image to the dynamics in Spain, where the rise of left-wing populism provoked a populist backlash among the radical right. In the United States, extreme disgust with Trump’s agenda drove many further to the left, increasing leftist Democratic discontent. The second section analyzes the final months of the Trump presidency, as its response to the Covid-19 crisis faltered and Trumpism degenerated into an arcane morass of conspiracy theories. Using experiments and observational data from the PSAS, the chapter argues that pro-Trump conspiracy theories served as a coping mechanism for his followers. As the Covid-19 crisis ravaged both the lives and livelihoods of America, and as it became increasingly clear that Trump would not be reelected, the anxiety his followers felt, regarding a situation that their loyalty to the populist prevented them from accepting, became intolerable. Conspiracy theories allowed the followers to escape anxiety and embrace resentment by giving them targets for their rage.

The Introduction lays out the book. It introduces the concept of democratic discontent, explaining how it differs from milder forms of political displeasure and how it can manifest in different forms like populism, ethnonationalism, conspiracism, and antipathy to democratic regimes. It then briefly describes the conflict between economic and cultural approaches to discontent, showing that both make valid findings, yet neither hypothesis is totally consistent with existing research. To overcome this impasse, the chapter introduces the affective political economy theory of economics, emotions, and culture, where emotions induced by economic troubles prime large groups of citizens to embrace culturally discontented narratives; cultural discontent then produces various forms of discontent, based on local conditions. Finally, it lays out the book’s empirical approach, discussing the use of mixed methods to test the theory, including experiments, observational surveys, and qualitative analysis and comparison of cases; this section also justifies the case selections. This section advises different kinds of readers about which sections they might find most interesting and which might be less relevant, especially regarding statistically dense sections of the book.

This chapter analyzes the complex interplay of economic and cultural issues that provoked discontented movements on both the left and right in Spain. Initially, resentment over EU-backed austerity policies allowed the left-populist Podemos party to break into Spain’s party system. But the rise of a populist left that embraced multiculturalism, exacerbated by continuing economic struggles, provoked a powerful reaction on the other side of the aisle when Catalonia attempted to declare independence. This threat to national unity led to the reemergence of right-wing nationalism in the form of a new radical right political party, VOX. Using original data collected as part of the Political Systems Attitudes Study, the chapter shows that support for VOX was driven primarily by cultural discontent, but as argued throughout the book, cultural discontent itself was driven by the ongoing economic crisis.

Latin America differs from our other cases in crucial ways. It did not suffer as badly from the Great Recession as did many other regions, although it experienced its own crisis when the boom in commodity prices burst. And historically, cultural issues over race and ethnicity had not been as politicized as in Europe and North America. Nevertheless, we see a similar causal process in this region as in our other cases. As regional economies suffered, antagonism towards politics as usual increased. The nature of discontent, however, differed radically depending on the details of the dominant political order it opposed. In Brazil, discontent came to resemble Trumpism, with a focus on cultural issues that had been addressed by the formerly dominant Workers’ Party, while also addressing rampant corruption. In Chile, discontent centered on the elitism of Chile’s democracy, and the institutions that reinforced it, placed insurmountable barriers in the path of political outsiders and insurgent parties; as a result, discontent in Chile manifested as mass contention. This chapter uses analysis of existing datasets (including LAPOP and national election studies) to show how economic concerns, exacerbated by democratic deficits, drove discontent over cultural discontent, corruption, and elitism.

The book concludes by drawing out the implications of the overarching theory and findings for the future of democracy. The chapter argues that laissez-faire extremism and genuine democracy cannot coexist indefinitely. The lack of security and stability of the former will continually generate cultural and democratic discontent, intensifying social conflict and creating ideal conditions for charismatic leaders to emerge. We discuss various alternatives to neoliberalism, including the internationalization of tax and social welfare policy and economic democratization. This leads to our second argument: that democracy can best save itself by making itself worth saving. Democracies should answer the challenges of populism and other forms of discontent by ignoring calls for greater democratic elitism (which would only validate discontented narratives). Instead, democratic institutions and actors, especially political parties, should reform and recommit themselves to their role as channels for citizens’ voices.

This chapter begins applying the theory to the core cases, starting with Trumpism in the USA and Euroscepticism and Brexit in the United Kingdom. It traces the evolution of the populist radical right in both countries; throughout the process, economic trauma, compounded by inadequate or imprudent political responses to the unfolding crisis, stoked and inflamed cultural tensions. Yet in both cases, discontent failed to break through the political status quo as radical right antecedents like the Tea Party and the UK Independence Party (prior to Farage’s ascension to leadership) failed to embrace their supporters’ cultural radicalism. Only when Trump and Farage began to explicitly connect economics, culture, and politics did radical right populism manage to provoke a rupture. We support these arguments using original survey data in the USA, the British Election Study, and analyses of Trump’s rhetoric.

This chapter serves two primary purposes. First, it establishes the book’s conceptual schema of political discontent. It identifies three ways in which discontent can manifest: against regime institutions (low regime support/regime antipathy), against the political elite (anti-elitism and populism), or even against reality (conspiracism). This section addresses conceptual debates in the study of each type of discontent, selecting or developing definitions according to set criteria. It also discusses the two primary ways discontent can influence behavior: through support for political outsiders and through contentious politics. Second, the chapter summarizes existing approaches to the study of discontent. It discusses shared elements of the global political order, especially neoliberal capitalism, liberal democracy, and more recently multiculturalism. Political discontent varies in form from case to case but is generally shaped by a rejection of one or more elements of this order. Reviewing the scholarship on each subtype of discontent, the chapter finds a recurring debate between economic and cultural origins. Neither approach can fully explain discontent, but neither can be ignored or disproven. As a result, the chapter concludes that a comprehensive theory must synthesize these two approaches.

This chapter describes and justifies the book’s theoretical framework, which proposes that economics influences democratic discontent by fomenting cultural discontent, with emotions connecting economics and culture. After briefly discussing the economic consequences of the Great Recession and the collapse of the commodities boom, it explains the affective intelligence theory (AIT) of emotions. AIT conceptualizes emotions as continuously operating surveillance systems, producing specific motivational and cognitive patterns that are not tied to the situation that aroused them. Given this, the chapter proposes that economic turmoil generates resentment and anxiety, which primes large groups of citizens to become aggressive, hostile toward outgroups, and hyperattentive to threatening information. Individuals so influenced gravitate toward social narratives that emphasize group conflict and prejudice against opposing social groups, thus fomenting cultural discontent. This, in turn, produces democratic discontent. The chapter concludes by discussing various contextual factors that may inhibit or intensify this theoretical process or prevent discontent from manifesting in certain ways.

This chapter tests every step of the book’s theoretical framework using survey experiments. It uses profiles of three hypothetical citizens: Left Leaner, Right Leaner, and Tuned Out. As a narrative device to show how the theory is tested, the chapter then takes these citizens through the steps of our theory using experiments, which use writing exercises, videos, and text vignettes as treatments. The results of these analyses are presented using simple graphs and figures that are relatively understandable for readers with limited statistical expertise. We find that economic discontent does significantly increase populism, regime antipathy, and conspiracism, and that these effects are mediated through cultural discontent, resentment, and (in the case of conspiracism) anxiety, as expected. The chapter further shows that economic discontent increased negative intergroup attitudes, but only among conservatives.