After Decline

• In Event: 4352 - Order and Disorder in Comparative Historical Research

Abstract

How will decline affect America’s political economy and its geopolitical role in the world. To answer that, I begin by examining what happened in the Netherlands and Britain after their losses of hegemony. Did inequality rise or decline? Did elites succeed in further advantaging themselves at the expense of everyone else? Were social reforms enacted? How did their domestic politics change? How did they assert themselves, or not, militarily abroad? Once we have answered those questions for the Netherlands and Britain, we can then honestly and realistically see the actual choices that remain for Americans, and we can determine if and how those possibilities are being narrowed and settled by the early decisions of the Trump Administration and by the degree of popular resistance his presidency so far has provoked.

Author

• Richard Lachmann, State University of New York-Albany