Ron Hikel

Not so long ago, parties were the dominant engines of the political process in many democracies. They identified, recruited, trained, and nominated suitable candidates, then helped finance and organize campaigns for public office. This process was brilliantly analyzed decades ago by the French scholar Maurice Duverger, who described parties as “transmission belts.” More recently, after the 2008 Democratic primaries in the United…

George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 begins, “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Listen very closely: the political clocks are striking thirteen again. Voters are making strange choices. Governments on both sides of the Atlantic are gridlocked, unable to solve or even address major social problems, some of which they are themselves…