Abstract
This article offers reinterpretation of the current economic and political crisis through the lens of Gramsci’s concept of “interregnum,” departing from the model of “punctured equilibrium” to analyze the specific political dynamics of nonhegemonic periods between the breakdown of one ideological order and the emergence of a new one. Although political science has a range theories about periods of hegemony and paradigmatic stability, the periods between stable hegemonies remain distinctly undertheorized. A theoretical concept describing periods of interregnum is offered and applied to the changes in economic ideology and political alignments that followed the breakdown of the liberal order in the interwar period and the postwar Keynesian consensus of the 1970s. The concept is then applied to the current juncture, in which the hegemony of neoliberalism has been shaken by the 2008 financial crisis but no clear successor has emerged.
Ten years after the 2008 financial crisis, the Western world is still in a situation of turmoil and political instability. Since 2011, we have seen a wave of anti-establishment discontent from the left and right, manifesting itself in protest movements and electoral campaigns. The rise of left and right anti-establishment figures, from Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen to Pablo Iglesias and Jeremy Corbyn, has led to a significant weakening of the political establishment throughout the world.
At the same time, the global economic elite seems to harbor growing doubts about economic orthodoxies. The annual summit of the World Economic Forum in Davos is now discussing inequality and political instability every year, and even traditional bastions of neoliberal orthodoxy such as the IMF or OECD have started to warn against inequality and to advocate for greater public spending. Neoliberalism might not have lost its position in the day-to-day formulation of policy, but the days when it was undisputed common sense seem to have gone. Old certainties are crumbling; there is no clear sign, however, that a new order is emerging out of the chaos and turbulence
This unclear situation is reflected in the intellectual debate around contemporary politics, in which every month seems to bring new books heralding the demise of democracy or the liberal order, 1 without any clear consensus about what is to follow. This uncertainty has been mirrored in two distinct waves of scholarly literature on the political impact of the crisis. In the years immediately following the 2008 financial crisis, the end of the ideational hegemony of economic liberalism that had characterized the period since the 1980s was widely anticipated.
The first wave of scholarship on the crisis tended to emphasize that expectation. As the material and ideological foundations of neoliberalism were shattered, we were witnessing the beginning of the end of neoliberal hegemony. 2 The idea of neoliberalism’s ideological collapse was based on the doctrine’s apparent contradiction with the massive government interventions with bank packages and the creation of state credit and guarantees. This view was strengthened by the apparent return to Keynesian countercyclical policies in many countries in the years immediately following the crisis. 3 However, the short “Keynesian window” of 2008–9 quickly closed. As it became clear that the largesse shown in the bailout packages to the banks would not be shared with the unemployed, a new dominant narrative emerged: the persistence of neoliberalism despite the crisis. The main theme of the literature now shifted to explain the persistence, or the nondeath, of neoliberal ideology and policies. 4
This article offers an alternative to both these waves of literature through an engagement with Gramsci’s concept of the interregnum, from the oft-cited but seldom analyzed quotation about the situation when “the old is dying, but the new cannot be born.” By abandoning the expectation that we have already seen the resolution of the crisis, the article will use the concept of the interregnum to describe the current era as one of sustained political crisis and confusion, with the old hegemonic equilibrium shattered but no new hegemonic project able to take over. It is a situation parallel to the interwar period that Gramsci described in the Prison Notebooks and the instability of the 1970s. Using Gramscian political economy to combine the economic and political level, the article will develop a theoretical framework for understanding the complex interplay between economics and politics in sustained periods of nonhegemony.
The article begins, in the section below, with a look at the understanding of crisis within the literature of political economy and political science and the problems with the widely used metaphor “punctuated equilibrium.” The section following outlines a theoretical model of interregnum with inspirations from Gramsci as well as Jessop and the neo-Gramscian tradition. I will then discuss the alternations between interregnum and hegemonic equilibrium in the twentieth century and the analytical consequences of looking at the post-2008 world as an interregnum. The final section offers some concluding remarks.
Transcending the “Punctuated Equilibrium” Model
The concept of the interregnum offers a new way of looking at the impact of crisis on structural change in the political economy. The idea of crises as turning points, whatever the concrete theoretical formulations, is generally associated with a model of punctuated equilibria, a model borrowed from paleontology. 5 The central idea behind the metaphor is that history does not move forward at a steady pace. It moves rather in plateaus of stability punctuated by short periods of rapid change in which the conditions are created for a new equilibrium to emerge. A similar model can be seen in Thomas Kuhn’s work on scientific paradigms, in which periods of stable paradigms allow normal science to go on, until punctuated by sudden periods of scientific revolutions. 6
This model can be found in several theoretical traditions of political economy. In the Marxist and regulation school tradition, capitalist crises stand as central pillars in the transition from one mode of regulation or form of capitalism to another. 7 In the institutionalist tradition, especially historical intuitionalism, there has been a decade-long theoretical debate about the roles of crisis-driven sudden change and forms of incremental change. 8
The model of punctuated equilibrium, however, presents some problems. By their very nature, punctuations must constitute relatively short and unusual periods. Such periods do sometimes happen—revolutions, coups, or what can really be described as “weeks where decades happen,” where regimes change overnight. In studying the impacts of economic crises, however, this model does not seem to be typical. The punctuations between periods of equilibria seem rather long. Not until 1945 did the hegemony of Keynesianism find its institutional form, more than fifteen years after the onset of the Great Depression. It took almost a decade from the breakdown of Bretton Woods in 1971 until the neoliberal revolution emerged in force in the early 1980s. Such periods of confusion are not trivial in comparison to the historical periods of hegemonic equilibrium: twenty-five years of Keynesianism hegemony in the postwar era, twenty-five years of neoliberalism before the 2008 crisis. What follows the breakdown of ideological hegemony generally seems not to be a fully fledged new system of hegemony but rather a prolonged period of confusion and political chaos. It is exactly these periods of confusion that can be labeled interregnums; they cannot be conceptualized as mere transitions but must be understood as periods in their own right.
By engaging with Gramsci’s concept in its theoretical and historical context, this article will try to develop a systematic concept of interregnum and demonstrate the new light it can cast over the historical shifts between periods of hegemonic equilibrium.
An interregnum may be defined as a period of uncertainty, confusion, and disagreement among the dominant elite, in which former ideologies, although they still have institutional power, lose traction and become disoriented. In such a fluctuating landscape, governments still must react. The orthodoxies of former times are still dominant in the bureaucracies and apparatuses of the state, but the traditional institutions are no longer as effective as they once were. In periods of interregnum, several ideologically conflicting hegemonic projects struggle for potential hegemony, each with its own solution to the crisis of the previous system. Despite their historical weight, these periods are distinctly undertheorized in the literature. Might periods of institutional and ideational confusion not only be characterized by an absence of hegemony and consensus but also have dynamics that must be appreciated on their own terms? Instead of the tacit assumption that periods of stable hegemony are the “normal” state of capitalist economies, we might have to accept that we inhabit a world where hegemonic equilibrium is not the norm.
This article draws from the substantial literature on Gramsci’s notion of hegemony and crisis that has developed in recent decades and makes several contributions to that literature. Primarily, the concept of the interregnum offers a new theoretical tool for understanding the current conjuncture and the lengthy drawn-out processes that generally follow the breakdown of an ideational hegemony, specifying some common dynamics that have characterized such periods historically. Here the concept of crisis, with its notion of urgency and resolution, does not seem adequate. In his work on the conceptual history of the term, Reinhardt Koselleck reminds us that “crisis” originally derived from medicine and signifies a turning point, a “definitive, irrevocable decision.” 9 The interregnum concept is different in that it offers no tendency to resolution but can rather continue for expanded periods. I thus seek to redefine and nuance the idea of punctuated equilibrium that dominates much of the thinking on crisis and regime change within both political science and political economy.
Second, the article represents the first systematic attempt to operationalize Gramsci’s concept of interregnum. By putting Gramsci’s definition in the context of the broader themes in his theoretical work, as well as the work of later writers in the tradition, I argue that it is possible to develop a fruitful analytical concept of the situation of a capitalist economy without functioning ideological hegemony. The concept of the interregnum developed out of that process speaks not only to the neo-Gramscian literature but to broader questions in historically oriented social science. Focusing on temporally substantial periods of hegemonic struggle and unsuccessful hegemonic projects, the concept draws attention to the openness and contingency of historical process, in contrast to the teleological perspectives that can easily follow when we tell the stories only of successful hegemonic projects without considering the alternatives.
A Theory of the Interregnum
Interregnum was originally a monarchical term denoting the periods between the death of one regent and the ascension of the next. Antonio Gramsci first developed the idea in a theoretical context in his Prison Notebooks. As part of his analysis of the state and creation of hegemony, he speaks of the interregnum as defined by a “crisis of authority”: If the ruling class has lost its consensus, i.e. is no longer “leading” but only “dominant,” exercising coercive force alone, this means precisely that the great masses have become detached from their traditional ideologies, and no longer believe what they used to believe previously, etc. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
10
Gramsci’s words have been quoted widely, but as Gramsci never fully developed his thoughts on the interregnum into a theory, the notion has rarely been discussed in depth within the political economy literature. The best attempt in this direction has probably been made by Stephen Gill, who briefly discusses the concept in his works on disciplinary neoliberalism and organic crisis in the 1990s. 11
In recent years, however, several writers have started to use the concept of interregnum to characterize the current moment. Chantal Mouffe describes as an interregnum the juncture in which the rise of left populism takes place. 12 In a 2010 article on the perspective of a new Bretton Woods system, Eric Helleiner used the concept in a model of the establishment of a new global financial system. 13 Zygmunt Bauman employed the concept in 2012 to denote the general condition of crisis in Western societies arising from economic crisis, climate crisis, and migration, 14 and Wolfgang Streeck has recently said that we are in a “postcapitalist interregnum” that signals the coming breakdown of the capitalist order. 15
All these authors quote Gramsci, but there have been few attempts to think systematically about what the concept of interregnum signifies within the broader themes of Gramsci’s works. Such thinking will require some reconstructive work, as Gramsci never developed his idea theoretically. 16 To develop it into an analytical concept therefore requires putting Gramsci’s definition of the interregnum in the context not only of his theoretical work and political time but also those of later writers within Gramscian and neo-Marxist theory. That does, of course, imply going well beyond Gramsci’s own work. I do not claim any sort of authoritative reading of the Prison Notebooks or Gramsci’s original political and theoretical intentions. My aim is solely to develop the concept as an analytical tool, and I will argue that it is possible to develop Gramsci’s observations into a fruitful analytical concept of the situation of a capitalist economy without a functioning ideological hegemony.
The theoretical concept of the interregnum, like the concept of crisis, does not in itself contain any geographical or historical specification. Its application in this article is focused on the developed capitalist democracies of Western Europe. The temporality and periodization would obviously be different if the focus were on other regions, such as the Global South or the emerging markets of East Asia. However, as the focus countries form the core of the capitalist world economy, political developments there of course have global consequences. The historical scope of the analysis, running through the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, does not imply the ambition to provide a comprehensive analysis of the actors or structure of the global system. History in this article should rather be seen as a medium through which the conceptual work is developed. The article does draw, however, inspiration from such undertakings as Giovanni Arrighi’s work on shifting hegemons 17 or Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin’s on the central role of the American state in the shaping of global capitalism. 18
Organic Crisis
The concept of the interregnum in Gramsci’s work is tied to the idea of the organic crisis. This is the notion that the ruling class has lost its ideological and political legitimacy and is, therefore, unable to provide the moral and ideological leadership that can secure hegemony. The organic crisis is not only an economic crisis but also a wider political and ideological crisis of legitimation that reveals “incurable structural contradictions” of the political order. 19 The interregnum can thus be seen as the political form of an organic crisis.
An interregnum is not a lack of order but rather a semiordered system. There is no total confusion out of which emerges a new, fully formed system of hegemony but, instead, a period of competition between different strategies backed by different alliances, potential or realized, of social forces. The concept of interregnum points to the natural integration of periods of greater confusion in the functioning of capitalist economies. Stuart Hall lays out the difference between the organic and conjunctural aspects of crisis. 20 Conjunctural aspects of crisis imply urgency. It is a state of exception in which a political order is either able to overcome the crisis or is thrust into terminal decline. In contrast, a period of organic crisis has no such urgency or sharp temporal boundaries. The period is characterized by the dysfunction of central institutions that previously kept economic and political contradictions in check; but as long as several viable political and economic strategies exist, there is no necessary drive toward a solution. The process is not necessarily fast, as Gramsci describes it.
A crisis occurs, sometimes lasting for decades. This exceptional duration means that incurable structural contradictions have revealed themselves (reached maturity), and that, despite this, the political forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure itself are making every effort to cure them, within certain limits, and to overcome them.
21
Although the organic crisis is often tied to economic troubles, there is no mechanistic connection between the two. An economic crisis might translate into political crisis, but the system might be able to overcome an economic crisis within the hegemonic order. It is quite possible to speak of relatively significant economic crises, in the early 1990s in the United States and Europe or after the dot-com bubble in 2000, that did not trigger political crises. On the other hand, the growth and unemployment rates of the 1970s that plunged the political ruling elites into a deep crisis of legitimation would have been considered magnificently fine in 2008 or even in the 1990s in most countries.
The “morbid symptoms” Gramsci points to as characterizing the interregnum are associated with the loss of faith in the governing ideologies and thus the loss of the main legitimating instruments available to the governing elite of the state. The loss of ideological cohesion can be seen not only in popular ideological disaffection but also within the dominant “political forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure.” 22 Such a twin legitimation crisis—loss of public support and internal ideological division—leads to deep political dysfunction. In contrast, a well-functioning political order is capable of small-scale adjustment to changing circumstances, within the acceptable bounds of the ruling ideological hegemony, by rules that are effectively depoliticized. However, when the political elite is weakened and fractured, such low-tension, depoliticized policy changes become harder. The system faces a situation of gridlock as several competing strategies offer differing solutions, none able to emerge as hegemonic.
Gramsci and the Interwar Interregnum
In Gramsci’s work, we find the kernel of an analysis of the ongoing unraveling of the liberal world order that emerged, riddled with crisis, out of the First World War.
Gramsci never viewed that liberal economic order as merely the necessary political superstructure of capitalism but as a specific state form or political regime. In his critique of “economism” as a reductionism that ignores political and ideological changes, he describes the laissez-faire system that dominated the prewar capitalist world as an inherently political and ideological form of state power, expressing a certain way of regulating the capitalist order via the state as an apparatus: “Laissez-faire too is a form of state ‘regulation,’ introduced and maintained by legislative and coercive means. It is a deliberate policy, conscious of its own ends, and not the spontaneous, automatic expression of economic facts.” 23
In his time, however, that order was in the process of disintegration. The fragments about the interregnum, written in the notebooks from 1932 to 1934, are formulated against the background of the prewar liberal order’s inability to establish a stable hegemony in the interwar years. 24 Alienated from the mass of the population and torn by internal division, the ruling classes were unable to regain leadership. In that situation Gramsci noted “highly favorable conditions” for the Marxist movement he was a part of, but he also outlined alternative solutions to the crisis-bound system.
One of those could be seen as the rise of fascism or Caesarism, 25 described as resulting from a situation in which the equality of competing class forces means that no coherent historical bloc can be constructed. 26 In such a deadlock, a charismatic individual can assume power by reconfiguring class forces and acting as a compromise between otherwise antagonistic forces.
Gramsci’s analysis of Caesarism is evidently aimed primarily at the rise of Mussolini and fascism, although prison censorship kept him from stating this directly. He did, however, include other autocratic figures such as Napoleon and Bismarck in the description. “Caesarism . . . expresses the particular solution in which a great personality is entrusted with the task of ‘arbitration’ over a historico-political situation characterised by an equilibrium of forces heading towards catastrophe.” 27
In the United States, Gramsci saw another potential future project emerging in the form of Fordism. With that term, probably originally used to avoid the censure of such terms as advanced or late capitalism, 28 Gramsci denoted a new form of industrial organization of capitalism, combining mass production with mass consumption and high wages, as well as a new centrality of finance capital in place of the traditional capitalist class. 29 Those technological and organizational developments were coupled with a new political regime and a much larger role for the state as a guarantor of a stability unknown in the earlier, laissez-faire form of capitalism, primarily through full employment policies. Posthumously, some outlines of the embedded liberalism of the postwar period are clearly seen in Gramsci’s writing on Fordism. The consolidation of the postwar world order did not materialize before his death in 1937, and in his notebooks he leaves open “the question of whether Americanism (Fordism) can constitute a historical epoch.” 30
Although he outlined three solutions to the crisis of the interwar interregnum, their differences were clear to him. He saw the Marxist labor movement ultimately overcoming the contradictions of capitalism, whereas the other hegemonic projects he described as potentialities in his time—Fordism/Americanism and Caesarism/fascism—did not. He offered, instead, a reconfiguration of the capitalist economy through the means of the state. It is this later version I will develop further in the following sections.
Hegemonic Projects
The concept of interregnum is inevitably tied to the idea of hegemony, that is, the ability of the ruling class to rule through the consent of the ruled. A rich literature on the concept of hegemony exists. 31 However, in this article I will follow Bob Jessop’s development of the Gramscian idea of economic hegemony as laid out in The Future of the Capitalist State: “Economic hegemony exists where a given accumulation strategy is the basis for an institutionalized compromise between opposing social forces.” That project involves “constructing an imagined ‘general economic interest.’” 32
To establish economic hegemony, whether by factions of capital or cross-class compromise, it is necessary to formulate a hegemonic project, to provide not only an accumulation strategy but also a “state form,” that is, a notion of the regulation and form of the state, including its role in the broader economy. 33 In this context, one can further define a hegemonic project as requiring a coherent economic paradigm or set of ideas for governing the economy combined with a set of policies capable of translating these ideas into political practice and enforcing them despite opposition. In modern liberal democracies, such a project means that the ability to govern is tied to the ability to mobilize sufficient electoral backing as well as consent from the most important social forces. As Wesley Widmaier states in Economic Ideas in Political Times, 34 the early phase of such hegemonic projects is often characterized by so-called interpretive leaders who can formulate a coherent project embodying “the general economic interest” on a normative and political level. Examples are Keynes in the 1930s or Friedman in the 1960s. Later, if the project is successful, those overall normative ideas become new institutions, such as the Bretton Woods system, or reconfigurations of existing institutions, such as the Washington consensus in the neoliberal period.
Hegemony, of course, does not mean the total consensus of society. Any modern capitalist society has antisystemic, oppositional forces intent on deep structural changes. However, as long as those are kept under control, and there is a consensus among a governing elite with a sufficiently broad social base, opposition does not hinder the stable running of the system. For Gramsci, the production of hegemony is never “free” for the dominant groups: “The fact of hegemony presupposes that the interests and tendencies of those groups over whom hegemony is exercised have been taken into account, and that a certain equilibrium is established.” 35 Thus the dominant group must be given something, however small, to secure acquiescence.
There are generally two ways of controlling dissenting forces: either through co-optation, where they are subsumed under the hegemonic consensus, or marginalization, where they are effectively excluded from power. Co-optation can be seen as the involvement of trade unions in policy formation in most Western European countries in the postwar era or in Scandinavia today. Marginalization can be seen in the exclusion of the communist parties of southern Europe in the same period or in the attitude of trade unions in most Western countries in the neoliberal era. As long as one of these mechanisms is in place, it is possible to secure a state of consensus among the governing elite.
Elites and Ideology
A problem in the Gramscian formulation of the “crisis of authority” is that it is traditionally presented as a dialectic only between the popular masses and the ruling class. However, across large parts of the neo-Gramscian tradition, especially in the Amsterdam school, recent scholarship has directed attention toward elite dynamics inside the ruling bloc, with different factions of capital and other groups organizing a coherent bloc through powerful networks. 36
The question of the ruling elite leads us to a further problem regarding the question of ideology. In the Marxist tradition, this question is most often framed in terms of persuading the general population of the legitimacy of the system. 37 That element does not exhaust the function of ideology, however. Elites also need ideas and ideology to ensure internal cohesion and to navigate a world in which the future is uncertain. What is important in this context is that we look not just at popular common sense, as laid out by Stuart Hall, 38 but also at elite common sense. Elite common sense can be understood as a constructed consensus around a set of ideological beliefs, the acceptance of which forms the basis of the coalition building that is necessary in forming a historical bloc.
Accepting the existence of elite common sense means denying the existence of an internal secret sphere of cynical reasoning where only profits and interest reign. There is no neoclassical rational actor inside the global capitalist class, only politically mediated actions. The exact character of those who are included and excluded from the ruling coalition of the elite is specific to the formation of the concrete historical bloc. In practice, this means that the elite is composed of parties having the access to shape government policy within the current system and the organized form of the most important capital factions.
This situation points to the political character and importance of ruling coalitions. The “elite,” as employed in this article, pertains not only to the classical ruling class of Marxist theory 39 but also includes the state elite, experts (to the extent they are included as organic intellectuals), and possibly even labor unions.
Economic ideas are important here as a way of expressing economic interests as universal interests of the entire society. For such a strategy to be effective, there must be a functional consensus within a stable, coherent elite that represents a sufficiently broad base of social forces. Such a consensus can be brought about either through a persuasion of all relevant factions to the same economic strategy or through an exclusion of opposing social forces from access to the elite. The specific configuration of included parties or social forces in a ruling bloc is conditioned on the organization of the hegemony. In postwar Scandinavia, as an example, central unions and the social democrats were central parts of the historical bloc, 40 whereas in postwar France both unions and the communists were excluded. The successful realization of hegemony also means the ability of the ruling coalition to transform the institutional setup gradually in response to changing national or global circumstances.
Interregnums are periods in which such an elite consensus is lacking and thus no hegemonic strategy emerges. A modern version Gramsci’s notion of interregnum can thus usefully be reframed as a situation in which an old institutional order still exists but is not able to deliver the previous stability. The interregnum is not defined by a lack of ideological projects, but rather with several competing projects that all have sufficient backing in society, so that no single hegemonic project can gain sufficient consensus within the elite. The period of interregnum thus occurs with the advent of a crisis of the established economic and ideological order and ends when one of the strategies for the solution of the crisis is declared the victor and a new hegemony is established. For these reasons, the lack of hegemony should not be understood as an anomaly but as a natural state for a capitalist society. There is no natural tendency toward equilibrium or hegemony.
Interregnums and the State
Hegemony for Gramsci involves the state and is, in this way, an essentially political concept. However, Gramsci has an expanded version of the state that includes political and coercive institutions as well as consensual and ideological ones. He describes the state as “hegemony protected by the armor of coercion.” 41 Further, the state has a paradoxical placement in a wider social order. As Bob Jessop explains, it is only one institution among others in the social order, but at the same time it is charged with maintaining the overall cohesion of the social order. 42 It is exactly this placement of the state in the overall social order that makes it a pivotal center in the formulation of projects to reform economy and society.
In periods of hegemonic equilibrium, the different social forces are in some ways fixed into place by a dominant understanding of the economy and society, and the state can thus take on a function as just one among many other institutions. In times of uncertainty, however, the balance of social forces is no longer fixed, and the state assumes a more central role. As the state is the privileged site for a redefinition of the social order, the political issue of state power takes on an even more pivotal role in the interregnum. The alternations of different parties in government play only a minor role in periods of hegemonic equilibrium, where the main lines of political acceptability are shared among the governing elite. But in the interregnum political parties become central arenas and actors of contention, as they are the potential sources of new economic strategies and realigned coalitions of social forces. Such was the case with the UK Conservative Party under Thatcher in the 1970s and the US Democrats during the New Deal. Whereas electoral politics are of minor importance in periods of hegemonic equilibrium, 43 the interregnum sees elections take on a potentially crucial significance.
In the integrated capitalist world market, the roots of economic crises are often global in their reach, whereas the political consequences still play out mainly on a national level. In the integrated world economy of the twentieth century, the underlying conditions for the interregnum—political as well as economic—are global, but concrete political developments and the realignment of social forces play out in variegated ways in different national and regional settings.
Of course, specific outcomes in one country will interact with those in other countries, through market pressures, trade, investment flows, financial and bond markets or through political pressure from international institutions. The US government has played an especially central role in the organization of global capitalism in the postwar period, where the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank were important guarantors of both American and global capital. 44
Operationalizing the Concept of the Interregnum
As a way of operationalizing the ideas outlined above, I propose a concept of interregnum with four main elements: (1) absence of a stable consensus, (2) presence of competing economic strategies, (3) institutional continuity but decreased effectiveness of key institutions, and (4) realignment of social forces. These points are outlined in Table 1 and developed further in the following discussion.
Hegemony versus Interregnum.
Temporally, an interregnum begins when a crisis for the previously hegemonic regime becomes so severe that the prevailing methods of excluding alternatives break down. The presence of competing strategies is not in itself sufficient, if the hegemonic regime can maintain its ability to marginalize and exclude them. Only when those mechanisms break down, and cohesion in the governing coalition breaks down, can we talk about an interregnum. The interregnum lasts until one of the new competing hegemonic projects is strong enough to exclude other alternatives.
Absence of a stable ideological consensus in the elite. The consensus between the main class and interest groups in society is breaking down, and hegemony cannot be maintained. The previous consensus might have been not one of active compromise and consent, as in the postwar period, but one of class dominance and a lack of plausible alternatives, as during the neoliberal hegemony. Thus the breakdown of hegemony might take the form of either disillusionment with the ideological certainties of the previous system or, if ideological consent was never there, the abandonment of the idea that no alternative exists.
Presence of several competing hegemonic projects. There is a generalized sense of crisis in society and within elite circles. But there are widely differing ideas of how to get out of the crisis and therefore several competing projects circulating with considerable backing from powerful forces in society. Disagreements are not just along the usual axes of left and right that characterize normal politics; they often involve a deeper realignment of the constituent parts of ruling coalitions and historical blocs.
Institutional continuity but decreasing effectiveness of institutions and policies. The institutions of the previous hegemonic system are still in place but increasingly unable to deliver the sorts of solutions to policy problems they could formerly deliver. The presence of several competing strategies means that no single bloc or coalition can overcome resistance to its economic strategy through either marginalization or integration of opposing forces. The ensuing gridlock and political conflict might mean that there is apparently more institutional stability in some areas because the gradual, piecemeal adaptions that take place in a well-ordered hegemonic period are impossible.
Realignment of social forces. In periods of interregnum, political struggle intensifies. The presence of several competing economic strategies creates new political lines of confrontation, which can involve the realignment of social forces into a new ruling coalition and historical blocs with factional division within both business and labor. In these periods, political parties become more central. In periods of stable hegemony, political parties play a relatively minor role in adjusting the overall economic strategy. Of course, there are various ideological positions, but among nonmarginalized parties, the variations are primarily a rhetorical packaging of the same basic policies. In an interregnum period, however, political parties become the sites of struggle and potentially of the emergence of new blocs.
In contrast to periods of acute crisis, these conditions do not necessarily mean a situation of instability and fast-paced change. Some “morbid symptoms” can create a perception of increased stability as the breakdown of consensus can cause gridlock and prevent the incremental innovation and institutional tinkering that is possible in a normal system. In the interregnum, however, political parties emerge as more central battlegrounds than in hegemonic periods, with the struggle over different strategies often taking place within individual parties or blocs. Periods of interregnum begin when the previous hegemony is no longer strong enough to exclude alternative hegemonic projects and last as long as no competing strategies emerge victorious, with a bloc of support strong enough to exclude or marginalize alternatives.
A History of Interregnums
The following section will describe twentieth-century history through the lens of the interregnum, focusing specifically on the periods of turmoil and confusion that followed the breakdown of previous orders, moving onward from Gramsci’s observations on the interwar interregnum as outlined in the previous sections. It will be shown that both periods of hegemonic equilibrium that characterized the late twentieth century—the Keynesianism of the postwar period and the neoliberalism of the post-1980s period—emerged as one of several hegemonic projects in periods of interregnum and that hegemonic equilibrium was reestablished only after the competing projects were eliminated as serious alternatives. A schematic version of the story can be seen in Table 2. Of course, such neat periodizations always imply a reduction of the messy reality of the historical record. Nevertheless, it seems possible to see a distinct pattern in the historical development: following Gramsci’s observation of his own political time, it is possible to schematize a model of the interwar years as an interregnum. In the interwar period, vestiges of the liberal order persisted, having survived the destruction of the First World War and the wave of revolution. However, international institutions such as the gold standard were not functioning as before, and the order was limping along.
Stylized Timeline of Hegemonies and Interregnums.
In this chaos, several competing hegemonic projects offered solutions to the crisis—Caesarism (fascism), Marxism, and Fordism (Keynesianism). Gramsci’s position was still embedded in the political horizon of the Third International, with the expectation of the imminent terminal crisis of the capitalist order and, consequently, either the victory of the proletariat and the labor movement or the triumph of fascism. Neither of those things happened, however; instead, a new form of capitalist regulation emerged out of the chaos, and his observations can be seen as attempts at new modes of reregulation. The postwar period provided a solution to this for the core countries in the capitalist world. The United States managed to construct a global economic architecture of “embedded liberalism,” based on globalizing the New Deal liberalism of the Roosevelt administration, in which large parts of the labor movement were integrated into the governing elite in Western Europe, while fascism was suppressed and revolutionary communism confined to a number of relatively peripheral countries. This was the hegemonic equilibrium of the postwar period.
The 1970s Interregnum
The Keynesianism of the postwar period always presented a political compromise. It was not a reinstatement of the economic liberalism of the prewar period, but neither did it involve a wholesale or gradual nationalization, as many in the labor movement wanted. 45 Instead, labor and capital shared the rapid productivity gains in the form of rising wages and profits. As growth stuttered, however, the compromise and consensus started to fall apart. Economic turbulence surfaced with the breakdown of the international financial architecture of the Bretton Woods framework in 1971 and reached crisis levels with the oil shocks in 1973. 46 The problems had deeper roots, however, in some of the contradictions of the postwar compromise between big businesses and large parts of the labor movement. Those global developments had great implications on a national level. With economic balances already under pressure and the rise of both unemployment and inflation, the consensus on economic policies shattered, and different strategies emerged on the left and right of the postwar status quo. (See Table 3.)
Hegemonic Projects in the 1970s Interregnum.
Different Hegemonic Projects
The first attempts at dealing with the crisis aimed to solve the problem of stagflation within the Keynesian framework, often with the added use of income policy. By attempting to control wages but leave ownership and investment decisions in private hands, the strategy sought to retain full employment while maintaining the balance of forces and the social compromise of the postwar era.
Although income policy had been employed in some countries since the 1960s, after the oil shocks of the 1970s those policies became an integral part of economic crisis management, as seen in the United States, Britain, or Scandinavia. 47 Not only did center-left governments turn to this strategy in the early 1970s: Nixon in the United States did too, and so did the conservative Heath government in the United Kingdom after an initial unsuccessful attempt at liberalization. The strategy of curbing wages through political action was ultimately deemed unsuccessful, because governments were unable to reach deals with union leadership and union leadership was often unable to control their membership.
Alternatives, therefore, emerged on the left and right. On the right, the rise of the neoliberal movement is well described. The ideas of neoliberal economic governance had been developed since the 1940s by international networks of academics and political operators around the Mont Pelerin Society; 48 large inflows of corporate money from a new generation of business leaders and private philanthropists in the 1970s increased their prominence. 49 The strategy aimed at using a strict monetary policy to curb inflation and, through temporarily rising unemployment, discipline organized labor into accepting downward pressure on wages that would restore profitability in private business and thereby reinvigorate investment-led growth. Those ideas moved from the fringes of the political world to center stage with the election of Thatcher as Conservative leader in 1975 and the strengthening and radicalization of the Republican right wing from the 1970s onward. 50
Neoliberalism was not the only economic strategy to address the crisis. On the left, a new form of socialist reformism was also on the rise, a result either of a radicalization of main center-left parties’ demands or of the formation of new alliances that allowed for unity of center-left and far-left. The general idea of that program was a higher level of socialization and planning as a way out of the impasse of stagflation and low-level investment. The issues of ownership of industry and the role of state planning in the economy, dormant since the war, were suddenly reopened.
Reformism followed several different models. Some, such as the Eurocommunist of Italy or Mitterrand’s Programme commun in the 1981 election, proposed using nationalization to secure a higher level of investment in key industries, while a form of “redistributive Keynesianism” would secure full employment. 51 In the United Kingdom, the Alternative Economic Strategy was based on securing a higher level of productivity growth in key industries through nationalization and government direction of investments, 52 whereas Scandinavian labor movements pushed wage-earner funds as a way for labor gradually to take ownership of industrial enterprises, as stipulated in the Meidner plan adopted by the Swedish Trade Unions in 1978. 53 In some countries, however, such programs remained marginal—most notably in the United States and Germany, where labor was never sufficiently strong or radical. Labor’s weakness in the United States proved especially critical because of the central role of the US government in the postwar period.
The Eventual Triumph of Neoliberalism
In most countries, the immediate policy reaction to the economic downturn of the 1970s was to employ the conventional instruments of Keynesian demand management and to use income policies of varying strictness to keep wage and price increases in check. These strategies, however, became increasingly untenable as coordination and compromise between labor and capital became harder to reach. In Britain, for instance, the strategy effectively died in 1976 when the Labour government surrendered to IMF demands for monetarist policies. 54 In other countries, these attempts proved more long-lived, but with the US turn to monetarism, and increasing pressure from international organizations such as the OECD and IMF for financial liberalization, it proved harder and harder to sustain national Keynesian policies. 55
It is interesting that the radical alternatives of socialist reformism proved more enduring in many places than the centrist models. Especially in Scandinavia, Britain, and France, the 1970s saw a radical turn of central parts of the center-left. However, those national strategies eventually faltered. In hindsight, 1983 was a decisive year in which the last advocates of alternative strategies to neoliberalism within political elites were defeated in Britain and France. That same year, Mitterrand, under pressure from capital flight and the international financial markets, abandoned his policy of redistributive socialism in favor of a program of austerity and liberalization. That development was cemented by later socialist governments. 56 In Britain, the interregnum ended after the 1983 election with Labour’s defeat in the polls, and any ambition for industrial policy and the Alternative Economic Programme was subsequently abandoned. In Scandinavia, the early 1980s signified the end of all programs of wage-earner funds as economic strategies. In Denmark, the project was buried by the ascendant conservative government, while the wage-earner funds in Sweden were implemented in a watered-down version with little impact on the economy. 57
It is possible to see similarities between the interwar period and the 1970s in the inability of the institutional order to solve the contradictions it faced and the division among elites concerning what strategy to take in dealing with the crisis. According to the definition laid out above, the 1970s have all four characteristics: lack of consensus, political dysfunction, realignment of social forces, and the presence of several competing projects. That situation of interregnum meant chaos and crisis but also increasing political openness following the slow collapse of previous hegemonic ideologies. Moreover, the fact that the neoliberal hegemonic project ended in success did not mean there were no viable alternatives in the period. Looking back from the present day, Rudolf Meidner and Stuart Holland do not seem to have provided less credible solutions to the crisis than Milton Friedman and Patrick Minford. An examination of those defeated alternatives reveals the contingencies for the current era.
The Post-2008 Interregnum
The end of the 1970s interregnum ushered in a twenty-five-year period of neoliberal dominance. With the defeat or domestication of organized labor in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of the pro-business leaders of the third-way social democracies, 58 no alternatives could muster major support in the period. The situation, of course, changed with the financial crisis of 2008. As described in the first section above, a large body of postcrisis literature argues that the crisis was solved within neoliberal parameters and that the hegemonic equilibrium was reestablished in its wake. I will argue, however, that in the apparent institutional stability it is possible to see indications of deeper problems and that the current period can more productively be analyzed as a new period of interregnum. The start of the interregnum can plausibly be set at the 2008 crisis, which marked the beginning of the legitimation crisis of neoliberalism and the point from which the system started losing the ideological legitimacy to exclude and marginalize alternatives.
On the material level, the recovery after the crisis has been anemic at best, furthering a trend toward stagnating growth rates that has been evident for decades, pointing to an increasing institutional dysfunctionality and inability to produce earlier results. 59 Another sign of problems for neoliberal globalization is that the rise of global trade and capital flows is facing a secular slowdown. 60 On the ideological level, we see a growing division among ruling elites in which the neoliberal consensus has been superseded by increasing disagreement and confusion. In the institutional sphere, negotiations around international trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, formerly seen as means of invigorating trade and growth, have stalled. 61 Intellectually, the growing uncertainty is reflected in recent warnings about rising inequality from the IMF and OECD research groups or talks at the World Economic Forum in Davos. 62 Uncertainty is especially evident in the 2016 IMF publication “Neoliberalism: Oversold?,” which suggests that two main tenets of the neoliberal agenda—unrestricted capital mobility and the purposeful attempt to limit the size of government through privatization and fiscal orthodoxy—have not brought growth but rather increased inequality and instability. 63
At the same time, the rise of anti-establishment politics across the developed world has ushered in a new period of political instability and loss of establishment legitimacy. The anti-establishment wave started in 2011, when the Arab Spring protests launched a cycle of popular mobilizing with a global reach. 64 The intensity of these movements peaked in the 2011–13 period, with the anti-austerity protest in Southern Europe and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States. Many activists have since moved into new electoral formations, such as Podemos and La France insoumise, or new movements within existing parties backing such figures as Corbyn or Bernie Sanders. Shortly afterward, the 2015 refugee crisis saw the rise of popular mobilization on the right as well, with the Pegida protest, 65 and new momentum for the radical right, as in the recent rise of Alternative für Deutschland. In late 2018 the “Yellow Vests” (gilets jaunes) in France reignited the sort of economically focused protest from the peak of the Euro crisis, in a movement that has shaken the Macron presidency.
I will argue that it is possible to outline three distinct hegemonic projects in this increasingly volatile political landscape and that each points to different solutions to the increasing contradictions. Those projects are left populism, economic nationalism, and austerity neoliberalism. (See Table 4.)
Hegemonic Projects in the Post-2008 Interregnum.
Left Populism
The primary surge of left populism emerged out of the wave of street movements such as M15 and Occupy Wall Street that swept the world from 2011. In recent years, these movements have increasingly developed institutionalized and party-political forms and moved once-marginal positions into the political mainstream, coming close to state power. The movement has taken two forms. The first is the rise of new parties on the far left such as Syriza and Podemos. The second is the takeover of traditional centrist parties by new leaders carried into power by a new generation of radical members, as in the case of Corbyn’s Labour Party and Sanders’s presidential campaigns. In contrast to earlier left movements such as the global justice movement of the late 1990s, which, inspired by thinkers such as Hardt and Negri, 66 kept their distance from state and formal politics, these new left formations explicitly aim to take state power by electoral means. That aim entails not only a redefined view of the state but also the ambition of constructing political platforms with the potential to build hegemonic majority coalitions. 67 The paradigmatic party of this new generation is perhaps Podemos in Spain, which has, directly inspired by the works of Ernesto Laclau, developed a political language of left populism beyond the traditional left-right cleavage. 68 The political demands of the new left populists are not especially radical in comparison to the reformist left of the 1970s. Nevertheless, these parties are a clear break from the neoliberal consensus of the last decades, and leaders such as Iglesias and Corbyn present political visions that transcend capitalism in the longer term. 69 The clearest formulation of a new economic project to transcend neoliberal capitalism probably comes from the UK Labour Party. The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, explicitly cites Marxist and post-Keynesian economics in outlining an economic strategy with such elements as wage-led growth, alternate forms of ownership through nationalizations and employee-owned firms, and openness to restrictions on capital mobility. 70 The greatest institutional successes so far have been in Southern Europe, but the exact nature of the economic strategy of the left populist is still relatively indeterminate, especially after the Syriza government’s failure to confront the Troika. If the wave of movement-based left populism is to succeed in the long run, the parties need to develop strategies for transcending their base in national politics to confront and transform the constraints of free global capital mobility and the pressures of financial markets.
Economic Nationalism
Another alternative to the neoliberal strategy, economic nationalism, 71 is emerging on the other end of the political spectrum with the rise of right populist or xenophobic parties, such as Front National in France, Alternative für Deutschland in Germany, and Lega Nord in Italy. Although these new parties have few concrete economic policies, influential factions within the parties represent a clear break with central tenets of neoliberalism. 72 Economic nationalism can be seen as an attempt at national economic revival with a focus on domestic industrial production, which has suffered under neoliberal globalization. Often these movements are described as populist, but the ideas presented can rarely be seen as an economic populism with assumptions of redistribution and egalitarian policies. 73
In contrast to left populism, the project of economic nationalism represents a clear pro-capitalist strategy, promising jobs to the domestic working class through pro-business policies. There is, however, a break with neoliberalism on several crucial issues. Most obvious is the issue of free movement of labor, where the nativist proclivities of economic nationalists lead them to suggest closing borders, as a way to shield domestic workers from wage competition with immigrants. World trade and the discretionary role of the state are two less obvious examples of divergence. Neoliberalism implies governance through laws and rules rather than government discretion—in effect the depoliticization of economic policy decisions. 74 It is exactly this depoliticization that economic nationalism challenges. Paradigmatic examples of the break with neoliberal orthodoxies are the Trump presidency and the Front National in France. 75 In both cases, there is opposition to free trade and the right of companies to relocate production, as signaled in the Trump administration’s canceling of the TPP or the opposition of the Front National to the European Union and the Common Market. Free trade and especially free capital mobility—cornerstones of global neoliberalism for four decades—are now being challenged, especially by Trump’s threats of trade and attacks on the rules-based structure of the World Trade Organization. 76 The potential turn of the United States to a more nationalist stance may prove especially decisive. Since 1945 the United States has put itself forward as a guarantor of not only domestic capital but also of international capitalism; it has stepped in to solve crises on a global and not just a domestic level. 77 By rescinding that role and explicitly prioritizing domestic over foreign capital, an economically nationalist US administration may have disruptive effects on global capital flows, potentially much stronger than any direct effect of tariffs or other overt policy measures.
It remains to be seen whether the alliance between domestic business and disaffected working- and middle-class voters can be sustained. Can the pro-business, antiglobalization platform deliver on promises of better conditions for workers or efforts mitigate the economic insecurities engendered by neoliberal globalization? Nevertheless, with the slowdown in trade and controversies around institutions such as the European Union and the global trade infrastructure, parts of manufacturing capital may find an economically nationalist strategy attractive.
Austerity Neoliberalism
Despite the loss of legitimacy and the threat from insurgent parties, the neoliberal policy framework is still in place in most countries. There is a general continuation of the structural reforms of the last few decades and strict austerity in fiscal policy, combined with unorthodox monetary policies carried out by independent central banks. 78 The results have largely been a downward pressure on wages—furthered by the growing precariousness of labor market conditions in many countries—that, it is hoped, will restimulate growth through reviving the competitiveness of industry. 79
The governing mode of neoliberalism, however, is also changing in the interregnum. The previous duopoly, with the “cartel parties” of left and right neoliberalism, is undergoing dissolution in most countries 80 due to pressures from anti-establishment parties, as with Podemos or Front National, or the defection of parties or factions from the neoliberal program, as with Corbyn or Trump. New forms of governance have emerged as grand coalitions between otherwise opposed political forces, as in Germany or in France, where Macron, in his own words, had to create a political revolution and destroy both establishment parties to push a relatively standard neoliberal policy package of labor market deregulation and corporate tax cuts. 81
Comparisons with Earlier Interregnums
The current period, as we have seen, fits the definition of interregnum laid out in this article: a lack of consensus, political dysfunction, competing hegemonic projects, and a reconfiguration of social forces. In comparison with the interregnum of the 1970s, both the crisis of the capitalist economy and the crisis of political legitimacy seem deeper in the post-2008 world. Growth rates are lower, recoveries more anemic, and the living conditions in the Western world have been much more adversely affected. 82 At the same time, however, the alternatives to neoliberalism seem to be weaker and to have less backing than was the case with the alternative hegemonic projects that emerged from the 1970s interregnum.
The question remains, however, what such a conclusion means for an analysis of the current conjuncture. There are several implications. First, the apparent lack of institutional and ideational change after the 2008 crisis does not necessarily mean the entrenchment of neoliberalism. It may rather be a sign of gridlock, an inability of the political establishment to implement the sort of gradual reforms that characterize periods of greater political stability. It may further signal both that the current political discontent will not go away anytime soon and, coupled with fissures in the governing elite, that we can expect further instability before a form of hegemonic equilibrium might be reestablished. In another crucial aspect, the interregnum in the present period is deeper than in the 1970s: we are witnessing a crisis not only of economic strategies but also of the core institutions of representative democracy. In that way the current interregnum has more parallels to the interwar years than to the 1970s, where the political institutions were relatively unchanged, although neoliberal governance in the preceding decades has gradually hollowed large parts of national democracies. 83 Now, however, constitutional elements play a central role in all emergent economic strategies. In the strategy of resilient neoliberalism, the ability to please financial markets and international institutions at the expense of popular wishes remains a central part of the success of the project. That fact has meant a narrowing of the democratic political space, in order to force economic reforms perceived to be necessary. Such a narrowing was seen in the European Union’s de facto administration of disobedient southern European governments at the height of the Euro crisis in 2010–12 and in the financial pact’s constraint on the national policy space. 84 Classical center-right and center-left representatives seem at present unable to win popular majorities for the continuation of the neoliberal program, as witnessed by the defeat of Hillary Clinton and Matteo Renzi and the current problems faced by Emmanuel Macron. These changes point to a situation in which a successful continuation of the neoliberal strategy will depend on some restriction of national democracies.
The constitutional element also plays a role in the insurgent strategies, framed in left populism as defending democratic sovereignty and opposing oligarchic and elite encroachment on national democracy. Thus opposition to the Troika is of great importance for Syriza, the “billionaire class” for Bernie Sanders, and la casta for Podemos. The issue of direct democracy also plays a large role for Podemos, Italy’s Five Star Movement, and the pirate parties of northern Europe. 85 In economic nationalism the issues of the strong man and reclaiming of national sovereignty against culturally foreign influences are central. The aim is not a deepening of democracy but the restoration of what is perceived to be a lost sovereignty, as seen in the slogans “take back control” and “Make America Great Again.” Despite populist rhetoric, the idea of economic nationalism does not appear to mean a diminishing role for the current oligarchy. The Trump administration is associated with oligarchic entities such as Goldman Sachs and the Koch brothers’ political empire to an even greater extent than earlier administrations. The difference between the two insurgent strategies lies in the forms of the sovereignty they want to institute. For economic nationalism it is national sovereignty as opposed to foreign influence and competitor nations. For left populism it is popular sovereignty, as opposed to the elite, a notion that is not tied to the idea of the nation or ethnos but encompasses all inhabitants of the country.
The situation of interregnum is characterized by a more political openness and a greater possibility for political alternatives than exist under the functioning hegemonic equilibrium. The fact that non-neoliberal parties have a chance to take power in central countries in the coming years means a distinct widening of the scope of political discussion and contestation. It further suggests that political parties may play a more central role in coming years as the vehicles of new hegemonic projects—a break in the trends noted by Colin Crouch and Peter Mair related to the increasing irrelevance of political parties in the neoliberal period. 86
Conclusion
This article has described and operationalized the Gramscian notion of the interregnum from the Prison Notebooks. The concept of interregnum developed here offers a new theoretical tool for understanding the situation of a capitalist economy without an ideological hegemony. In so doing, the concept opens a new perspective on current conjunctures in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis as well as on the long processes that generally follow the breakdown of an ideational hegemony.
The concept of interregnum challenges the idea of punctuated equilibrium, which dominates large parts of the scholarship on the relationship between crisis and social and ideological change. This idea describes history as developing in plateaus of stability punctuated by short critical junctures characterized by rapid change. Instead, the article has argued that punctuations between hegemonic equilibriums often constitute lengthy periods. Interregnums must be understood as historical periods in their own right and analyzed on their own terms, characterized by political instability and competing hegemonic projects.
This approach makes possible an analysis of the current conjuncture that transcends the dichotomy between neoliberal hegemony as either in a terminal crisis or having already overcome the crisis. The concept of interregnum is an alternative lens, showing that the full effects of the crisis of the legitimacy of neoliberalism have not yet fully unfolded. The analysis points to a scenario in which a situation of instability and competing hegemonic projects can last for decades before a resolution is found.
In a broader theoretical context, the article also contributes to the discussion of the use of history in social science and especially the prevalence of the model of punctuated equilibria. Although the periodization of history into discrete epochs and periods can be useful and productive for developing clear theoretical arguments, there are also dangers attached to squeezing the historical record into a set of consecutive paradigms, epochs, or modes of regulation. Doing so often requires a retrospective way of seeing in which the focus is on tracing the genealogy of subsequently successful projects—whether Keynesianism or neoliberalism. Such an approach has yielded great insights but also tends to obscure the other potentially viable projects that were available at the time. By focusing on the specific dynamics of ideological contestation between competing hegemonic projects that characterize periods of interregnum, the article has tried to draw attention to those unsuccessful projects. They offer another view of history, in line with how the actors at the time envisaged it, and also of the openness and contingency of historical processes, in which alternative avenues were always available.
To conclude, the current interregnum seems to mirror the situation of the 1970s and the interwar years, in that the previous ideational and institutional hegemony has broken down. Central institutions are longer able to deliver the legitimacy and stability they previously delivered and have lost the ability to ensure both popular consent and elite consensus. This situation does not mean, however, that the old regime is in the process of being replaced by a new one. Instead, we see several competing strategies vying for hegemony. Despite analogies with the 1970s, the crisis of both the capitalist economy and the state seems deeper in the post-2008 world. Growth rates are lower, economic woes are greater, and the crisis of political legitimacy is more severe. What aggravates the crisis is the explosion to the surface of the brewing tension between capitalism and democracy. The political conjuncture is more open and chaotic now than it has been in decades, not only with respect to economic production and distribution but also at the very foundation of democratic representation. Some authors have asked whether the political instability of the interregnum heralds the beginning of the unraveling of capitalism itself. 87 Wolfgang Streeck specifically describes our period as a “postcapitalist interregnum.” 88 In contrast to Streeck, however, I have argued that this interregnum of economic and political instability should not be taken as signaling the end of capitalism. Although the increasing political volatility does, indeed, open greater space for alternatives, looking at the history of twentieth-century capitalism through the lens of the interregnum reveals that turbulence and instability are as natural a state for the capitalist world economy as stable hegemony. If we can draw one lesson from history, it should be the astonishing ability of capitalism to overcome crisis, transform itself, and emerge in new institutional forms.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was awarded the Robert and Jessie Cox award from the International Studies Association, a recognition for which I am both grateful and humbled. I wish to thank Laura Horn, Axel Honneth, Holly Snaith, Christine Søby, Cecilie Dinesen, Ben Rosamond, Magnus Ryner, Lars Tønder, and Matthew Watson for insightful comments on the article. I also want to thank the editorial board at Politics & Society for a very helpful and constructive review process, with many great recommendations that helped make the final article immeasurably better. A special thanks here to Erik Olin Wright, who sadly passed away while I was finishing the article. Although he is less directly visible in this article, his work has had a profound influence on my intellectual development. His rigorous and undogmatic approach to Marxist theory and social science more generally will stand as an inspiration to me and other young scholars for generations to come.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.