William Davies

‘Liberal democracies have a creeping loyalty problem’

Comment piece in The Financial Times, on how excessive loyalty in the political arena is normalising policy failure and clientalism.

In advance of the publication of This Is Not Normal: The Collapse of Liberal Britain, I discussed the themes of the book with Katrina Forrester, hosted by the RSA.

Piece for the London Review of Books on the forces mobilising against the BBC and what they actually want.

I discussed my forthcoming book This Is Not Normal: The Collapse of British Liberalism with New Humanist, reflecting on the book’s historical perspective and political implications.

‘Anti-equivalence: pragmatics of post-liberal dispute’ , looking at the fractious and warlike character of contemporary political discourse, is now published online by European Journal of Social Theory.

Blogpost published at PERC., on how the financial crisis opened the door to attacks on ‘low value’ and ‘woke’ degrees.

Essay in the London Review of Books, on how media and new technologies are harnessed to trigger ‘culture wars’.

Article written for The New Statesman, on the problem of rules and behavioural governance in the face of coronavirus.

Guardian Long Read on how closed groups are unsettling politics and public life.

Listen here.

My new working paper on the politics and economics of inheritance, both in a public and a private sense, is now published online (and open access) by Centre for Understanding Prosperity.

My article, Anger Fast and Slow: Mediations of Justice and Violence in the Age of Populism, is now available open access in the latest issue of Global Discourse. The issue also contains a response from Jeremy Engels to my piece, plus a symposium on Nervous States, with two critical appraisals and my response.