Ralf Dahrendorf and the "end of the enlightenment"

In an article published by Project Syndicate, sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf expresses his view that populism's success can be explained by a crisis of political parties. "Gone are the times in the older democracies when one could count on two major parties – one social democratic, the other more to the right of center – dominating the political scene. ... The decline of parties reflects the decline of class. The old proletariat and the old bourgeoisie are gone. Instead we see what has sometimes been called a "levelled-in middle-class society," albeit one with an important elite of the super-rich at one end and an underclass at the other. The very structure of society has come to be shaky. ... These populists promise solutions that dispense with the habits and norms of moderation, notably with centrist democratic policies and an internationalism that seeks to promote peace and prosperity. One sometimes wonders whether we are experiencing not so much the end of history as the end of enlightened history, perhaps of the enlightenment itself."

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