There’s a strange paradox in the world today. Citizens in countries around the world seem angrier and are voting more—but they seem unable to effect structural changes. The political scientist Anton Jager calls this “hyperpolitics,” in which political activity increases but membership of unions and political parties is declining. Jager’s new book, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences, has become something of a cult favorite among Europe’s political and intellectual elites. But is hyperpolitics necessarily bad? Does it apply only to certain Western countries—Jager’s focus—or can it capture a broader global trend? On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Jager about his thesis, whether movements such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) could capture the broader Democratic Party, and also how societies should try to deepen political engagement.

The full video of our discussion can be accessed in the video box atop this page. There is also a free podcast version available on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and other major platforms. What follows here is an edited and condensed transcript of our discussion.

There’s a strange paradox in the world today. Citizens in countries around the world seem angrier and are voting more—but they seem unable to effect structural changes. The political scientist Anton Jager calls this “hyperpolitics,” in which political activity increases but membership of unions and political parties is declining. Jager’s new book, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences, has become something of a cult favorite among Europe’s political and intellectual elites. But is hyperpolitics necessarily bad? Does it apply only to certain Western countries—Jager’s focus—or can it capture a broader global trend? On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Jager about his thesis, whether movements such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) could capture the broader Democratic Party, and also how societies should try to deepen political engagement.

The full video of our discussion can be accessed in the video box atop this page. There is also a free podcast version available on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and other major platforms. What follows here is an edited and condensed transcript of our discussion.

Ravi Agrawal: So I want to start with a basic definition. What is hyperpolitics?

Anton Jager: The short answer is a three-word definition: Hyperpolitics is “re-politicization without re-institutionalization.” That is slightly academic and abstruse, so if you want to make it more concrete, hyperpolitics denotes a change in political culture in the West in which we see an increase in political activity on all kinds of fronts, whether it’s voter turnout, protest activity, or even political violence.

That increase in activity, however, has not gone hand in hand with an increase in institutional membership. As you see the politicization curve going up, you see another curve declining: membership rates for political parties, unions, and civil society organizations, both on the left and the right. This new K-shaped or X-shaped development—high politicization but low institutionalization—is a combination that doesn’t really have precedence in the 20th century. The term hyperpolitics tries to describe this new state of affairs, and it does so in contrast with two preceding other modes of political engagement: the mass politics of the 20th century, which could be very high on politicization but usually was also very institutionalized, and then the “post-politics” of the 1990s and the 2000s in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which was both low on political involvement and on institutional density and strength. Hyperpolitics is a product specifically of the 2010s and the long decade that came after the 2008 credit crash, and it really tries to explain this new situation through a hypothetical tentative term.

RA: Just to use a concrete example here, in the United States, voter turnout has been higher than ever before in the last two presidential elections. And yet union membership is much lower than it had been for most of the 20th century. And I think that kind of encapsulates the point you’re making of more politics but less investment, as it were, in terms of institutions. What is your sense of how we got here, and is it necessarily a bad thing? Because at some level, you could say that individuals feel empowered in the ability to be able to turn out to vote more, but without feeling that they have to be part of a doctrine of either the left or the right, or part of a party or a union.

AJ: As to whether hyper-politicization is a good or a bad thing, I hope the book doesn’t come across as rendering a negative judgment on the hyperpolitical era, despite its limitations and some of its contradictions, because I do think the fact that people are again politically involved, and that there’s an increase in turnout, is something that every democrat should be enthusiastic about. For example, in Germany, we now see a doubling of turnout in the upcoming election in Saxony. In 2006, it was 44 percent; now, it’s going over 80 percent. That is not a crisis of democracy—you can talk about the economic crisis in Germany, but to talk of a crisis of democracy is empirically........

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