Sunday Newsletter: Book Review of "Age of Revolutions" – Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present

There are cultural and social reactions to recent economic and technological changes.

Mar 30, 2025

John West is the Executive Director of the Asian Century Institute.

The US, many other Western and even some emerging countries would be in the midst of a cultural and social backlash to the dramatic economic and technological transformations that have swept through the world these past few decades, according to Fareed Zakaria in his recent book, “Age of Revolutions”.

Introduction

Fareed Zakaria, a well-known international journalist, political commentator and author, was inspired to write Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by the emergence in 2009 of the Tea Party, a conservative populist social and political movement within the US Republican Party. The Tea Party’s main concerns were not economic but cultural, namely issues like immigration, multiculturalism, diversity, and assimilation.

Then the US came out of the Great Recession caused by the 2008/09 financial crisis better than any other country. However, despite this rising economic tide, President Obama's approval ratings flatlined, contrary to the historic tight fit between the economy and presidential approval ratings. Zakaria concluded that some things are happening that can't be explained by normal politics. His fears were confirmed by Brexit and the presidential election victory of Donald Trump in 2016.

Culture, identity, and the fabric of society

Zakaria’s thesis is that periods of extraordinary economic and technological change can result in the upending of culture, identity, and the fabric of society, leading to a political backlash. To sketch a framework for his argument, he explores these issues in five historical cases, namely: the Netherlands, which gave birth to the first liberal revolution around the year 1600; the Glorious Revolution in England, which borrowed much from the Netherlands; France’s failed revolution; and the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the US.

Perhaps the most interesting case is that of the Netherlands, which created modern globalization by inventing tall ships and navigation, joint stock companies and stock markets, and land and water management. This plucky country became the richest in the world in terms of income per person! Then the Dutch stopped thinking of themselves as part of the Hapsburg empire; they started to think of themselves as Dutch and as protestants rather than Catholics. But there was a backlash because the big, fast changes were uprooting traditions and customs.

Zakaria makes his argument by drawing on a vast array of sociological, cultural, economic, and political evidence rather than doing his own primary research. Based on research by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart, he portrays the evolution in societal voting patterns. During the early postwar period, working-class people from the US, UK, and Germany voted left of center, while those in white-collar jobs voted to the right.

Post-material politics

By the 1960s and 70s, with the advent of a mass middle-class society, people increasingly expressed their political identity in terms of ascriptive identities, such as gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, or skin color, rather than income or economic class. And today, the majority of American high-income citizens vote Democrat, with the majority of white working-class males voting Republican. Zakaria asserts that you can know someone's voting behavior based on their views on the “three Gs” -- God, guns, and gays. In sum, we've moved up Mazlow's hierarchy of needs to “post-material politics”.

The past 30 years of enormous economic and technological change and transformation have empowered a new meritocratic elite in much of the world. These people are educated, urban, cosmopolitan, and “liberal” with an attachment to individual rights and open markets. But a large part of society deeply resents them and their progressive social values. Indeed, the left is losing the culture wars because it pushed too far and too fast for the rest of society.

Revolt against the liberal elite

According to Zakaria, Brexit, the first Trump presidency, and the popularity of France’s far-right National Rally can be seen as a rebellion against the cultural values of the liberal elite. He quotes former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who suggested to him that when people feel deep anxiety about their world, they tend not to move left economically but to move right culturally. In a similar vein, Zakaria argues that America’s chief adversaries – China, Russia, and Iran – are more fearful of America’s liberal ideas than its hard power and are engaged in geocultural balancing. China’s Xi Jinping launched his long-running crackdown on freedom because he feared that the liberal policies of earlier leaders were undermining the Communist Party. Russia’s Vladimir Putin talks a nationalist and traditionalist narrative, emphasizing Moscow’s role as the third Rome. And as Iranian mullahs cling to power, they live in fear of infiltration of Western liberal ideas.

Zakaria concludes with an intriguing chapter entitled “The Infinite Abyss.” His point is that the freedom of liberalism does not fill the hole in our hearts left by the decline of religion, tradition, and community. According to liberalism, your pursuit of happiness is your own choice. But this can leave many feeling uneasy, anxious, and lonely, hungering for the time when they were told what to believe. Indeed, this may explain the resurgence of nationalism in many parts of the world. The key challenge is how we navigate the backlash. However, Zacharia does not really have any serious proposals for addressing this quandary other than suggesting installing a form of national service that could help improve empathy across class barriers.

Unraveling world order

Zakaria’s book was written and published before Donald Trump’s 2024 reelection as US president. More recently, Zakaria has offered thoughts on Trump’s foreign policy without suggesting that there is any such thing as a “Trump doctrine.” Trump has long been a harsh critic of the US-led world order, which he believes imposes unfair constraints on the US. For example, in the 1980s, he took out a large newspaper advertisement arguing that Japan was ripping off the US on trade while Europe’s NATO members were freeriding on defense expenditure. And these views have since remained at the heart of Trump’s worldview. Like all presidents, Trump has much greater freedom in foreign policy than domestic policy, facilitating his current flurry of foreign policy initiatives. So, we may now be seeing an unraveling of the world order.

Analysts like Robert Kagan write that, in reality, the US-led world order ushered in a unique period in world history. It brought an end to conflict in Western Europe, which had known war for centuries. Germany and Japan were transformed from fascist regimes into peaceful democracies. The order helped bring the Cold War to an end, enabling most of the former communist countries of central and eastern Europe to adopt democratic capitalism and join Western institutions. Most countries living under the shackles of colonialism became independent. The world achieved economic growth and poverty reduction rates that were never before known in world history. And yet, the US seems to have lost faith in itself in the world it created.

Conclusion

Zacharia’s book is very much a speculative analysis where one could quibble with many details. However, as we seem to be moving into a new period of world history, with many aspects of the US-led world order seemingly being jettisoned, this book provides many ideas and insights into the “Revolution” we may be living through.

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