The likely appointment of Mario Draghi as Italy’s next prime minister has been widely, if nervously, greeted as a necessary step. Draghi, an esteemed economist and central banker, will be the fourth unelected technocrat to fill the post in Italy in the last 30 years. As the Guardian concedes by way of welcoming Draghi’s appointment, a ready embrace of unelected leaders is “not a good look for any self-respecting democracy.”

Italy’s resort to temporary “technical governments” reflects the fact that its fractious political system, with its multitude of parties and short-lived coalitions, is vulnerable to paralysis at moments of crisis…

Many themes of the Trump presidency reached a crescendo on January 6th, when the now-former president’s supporters rampaged through the Capitol building. Among those themes is the controversy over whether we should label the Trump movement “fascist.”

This argument has flared-up at various points since Trump won the Republican nomination in 2015. After the Capitol attack, commentators who warned of a fascist turn in American politics have been rushed back into interview slots and op-ed columns. Doesn’t this attempt by a violent, propaganda-driven mob to overturn last November’s presidential election vindicate their claims?

If Trumpism continues after Trump, then so…

It has become a fad recently to find echoes of America’s religious past in its current politics. Well, the last fortnight has reminded me of nothing so much as the event known as “The Great Disappointment.”

On October 22, 1844, a major movement known as the Millerites — after William Miller, a Baptist preacher with a flair for prophecy — expected Jesus Christ to return to earth and usher in the end times. When this did not come to pass, most Millerites grew disillusioned and drifted away. Some, however, remained in the fold.

One subgroup insisted that, actually, Christ did…

Elections always seem to demand that candidates show a slightly different face to different sections of the public. Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is no exception. In his case, this dynamic has been most interesting in the realm of foreign policy, where we find two sides to the Biden program.

The first is Biden as avatar of the American worker — the everyman from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who speaks for a middle class beset by stagnating wages and declining opportunity. Biden’s strategy for counteracting this middle-class plight was described by a Foreign Policy essay as “a form of economic nationalism,” a departure…

As the world reels from the chaos of COVID-19, it is banking on the power of innovation. We need a vaccine, and before even that, we need new technologies and practices to help us protect the vulnerable, salvage our pulverized economies, and go on with our lives. If we manage to weather this storm, it will be because our institutions prove capable of converting human ingenuity into practical, scalable fixes.

And yet, even if we did not realize it, this was already the position we found ourselves in prior to the pandemic. From global warming to food and energy security…

In the digital era, political discourse is marked by a rapid circulation of symbols, concepts, and narratives — easily recognized memes with the ability to spread into diverse settings. As a result, the emergence of new political movements can create an impression of startling conformity and coordination, as though they are the product of some deep underlying structure which manifests itself in highly determined ways.

Nothing illustrates this so well as the new progressive politics which has lately been roiling Western democracies, and which is grasped at with vague terms such as “woke,” “social justice,” or “identity politics.”

In the…

This spring, I finally got round to reading Derek Parfit’s famous work, Reasons and Persons. Published in 1984, the book is often cited as a key inspiration for subsequent developments in moral philosophy, notably the field of population ethics and the Effective Altruism movement. (Both of which, incidentally, are closely associated with Oxford University, the institution where Parfit himself worked until his death in 2017). I found Reasons and Persons every bit the masterpiece many have made it out to be — a work not just of rich insight, but also of persuasive humility and charm. …

Protest is a symbolic form of politics. It is about sending messages. It turns public space — both physical and now virtual — into an arena where frustrations not satisfied by the formal political system are expressed with slogans, banners, and bodies.

But protest can only be a force for good if its aims point away from the symbolic and back towards formal politics — and, beyond that, towards material reality.

Yes, filling the streets with demonstrators and the internet with hashtags can be effective in raising awareness of issues. It can be effective in bringing new movements to life…