Western Debate Over Whether the Liberal Order Has Come to an End, a Discussion She Says Is Likely to Continue for a Long Time

The debate has been fueled by political crises combined with turbulence in the global economy. Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoğlu addresses the same question in his new book, translated into Turkish as "Hangi Liberal Demokrasi" (Which Liberal Democracy), with the English original titled "What Happened to Liberal Democracy? Acemoğlu acknowledges that the optimism about the liberal system, once thought victorious after the Cold War, has faded.

He attributes this decline to worsening wealth distribution, democratic backsliding, and technology taking a wrong turn. In short, Acemoğlu argues that liberalism must be rebuilt, and that this can be achieved through what he calls "working-class liberalism. "If liberalism is to rise again, it must do so with the working class at its center, he writes.

He believes the solution lies in cooperation between politics and technology, proposing an inclusive system instead of big tech and artificial intelligence that exclude ordinary people. Acemoğlu's broad and somewhat vague framework has drawn reactions from different quarters. Roughly three groups oppose his main thesis.

First, neoliberal market advocates, who argue that the more states intervene in markets and systems, the worse things get, and that Acemoğlu's proposal is too interventionist to offer a solution. Second, the critical left, which contends that capitalism's problems cannot be solved with liberal band-aids and views his "working-class liberalism as a project to reform the system. Third, and most importantly, big technology companies and their stakeholders.

Acemoğlu's claim that the global economic order has impoverished the masses while enriching a few major tech firms has earned him powerful enemies. Indeed, these large companies are a central focus of the book's analysis of liberalism's crisis. The debate over saving liberalism, which many consider a futile effort, appears set to continue for some time.