The Populist Wave and Its Discontents
Quite possibly, the type of reform Western democracies require is more radical than anything either populists or their critics are willing to contemplate. For what is required is far-reaching decentralising reforms that anchor political and economic power not in a centralised state, but in a federal pact among municipal and regional governments and grassroots institutions such as local citizen assemblies, professional associations, and worker co-operatives. Under such reforms, the old national political establishment would lose much of its power. But so would national populist leaders and movements.
