Daron Acemoglu on Why Liberalism Became a Victim of Its Own Success

Yascha Mounk at his own Substack:

Yascha Mounk: We started talking about many things the last time we were on the podcast, but we started talking a little bit about your thoughts on liberalism, which you had already published an article about. Now you have come out with an incredibly ambitious work on the subject that tries to unify approaches to the question from economics, from political theory, from public policy, from history, and I look forward to touching on many different aspects of this question. I promise you that we can geek out about political theory as much as you wish in this conversation. Part of what you have to do when you try to fix liberalism is to come up with a diagnosis. I think that is probably the aspect of this question that has been most debated over the last ten years, and it is probably most difficult to say something new about. In your diagnosis, why is it that after liberalism’s remarkable triumph for half a century, we now seem to be in this genuine moment of crisis for this set of ideas?

Daron Acemoglu: Well, I think that is the heart of it. In fact, despite the fact that there is a lot said about this, I still think we are far from a holistic understanding, which requires both a recognition of the proximate causes of the crisis, but also the ultimate or the fundamental causes that underpin those proximate causes. That is what I try to do.