The loss of community is often seen as one of the reasons for the alienating experience of modernity. Community seems to allow for a civic-minded solidarity that counteracts the legitimation crisis of democracy by returning agency to citizens. Such a demand for a communitarian correction to liberal constitutional democracy is not without dangers, even when this demand is intended to stand in the service of a more democratic life. This chapter traces the fate of this communitarian desire in a broader transatlantic field, highlighting the uncanny connections among the philosophical debate about communitarianism, the antidemocratic and authoritarian drift in American conservative political and legal thought, and central aspects of European neofascism. These connections should make us suspicious about the democratic potential often ascribed to community. The ease with which arguments for a communitarian correction of democracy can be used against democracy suggests that community lacks an intrinsically democratic and emancipatory potential.

The conclusion unifies the book’s central theme: Mental models shape how people evaluate trade-offs, process information, and choose policies. Those with the Economist Mental Model systematically weigh costs and benefits, integrate new evidence, and ultimately favor measures that maximize aggregate welfare – even if such policies require short-term sacrifices. In contrast, those with Alternative Mental Models rely on different heuristics, often supporting short-term, populist policies that can undermine long-term prosperity. Across policy areas ranging from Brexit to AI, individuals who think like economists prove more receptive to economic information and less swayed by zero-sum narratives. Yet, these findings highlight a demographic skew in economic knowledge, skewing older, educated, wealthier, and male. The conclusion stresses the urgency of democratizing economic reasoning, showing that targeted interventions can broaden its reach. Ultimately, empowering diverse populations to think more like economists holds promise for forging consensus around policies that balance immediate concerns with long-term gains.

Chapter 4 investigates how mental models, particularly the Economist Mental Model (EMM), shape Italians’ support for globalization policies: EU membership, free trade, and immigration. Against a backdrop of economic stagnation and rising populism, the chapter shows that individuals with higher economic knowledge – those who think like economists – are significantly more likely to favor these welfare-enhancing policies. Notably, this holds even for “losers” of globalization in terms of lower income, lower education, or routine jobs, suggesting that economic reasoning can override short-term self-interest. The chapter also explores time preferences, finding that EMM adopters have lower subjective discount rates, making them more apt to weigh long-term gains over immediate costs. Additional tests confirm these findings are not driven by general education, highlighting the distinctive role of economic reasoning in shaping attitudes toward globalization.

Chapter 6 examines zero-sum thinking (ZST) – the idea that one party’s gain must be another’s loss – and contrasts it with the Economist Mental Model (EMM), which recognizes that economic interactions can be positive-sum. Historically adaptive in static, resource-scarce settings, ZST becomes counterproductive in modern, dynamic economies built on cooperation and specialization. Using survey data from the US, the chapter differentiates between generic ZST (a broad tendency to see life as win-lose) and policy-specific ZST, which can reveal partisan divides. Democrats often display zero-sum views about redistribution, whereas Republicans do so regarding immigration or trade. Crucially, people with higher economic knowledge – those more aligned with the EMM – show markedly lower generic ZST and are less inclined toward protectionist policies than those with lower economic knowledge – aligned with Alternative Mental Models (AMMs).

In 2011, Italy narrowly avoided financial collapse, prompting the formation of a technocratic government tasked with enacting sweeping reforms. Although these measures stabilized public finances, they drew fierce opposition and highlighted a broader pattern of public skepticism toward expert advice. Similar dynamics unfolded during the 2016 Brexit referendum, when voters dismissed economic forecasts, and in Donald Trump’s election, where nationalist rhetoric overshadowed warnings on protectionism. These events highlight a persistent gap between how economists and the general public evaluate policy trade-offs, often producing outcomes economists view as welfare-reducing. This book explores how mental models, particularly the Economist Mental Model (EMM), shape individual political decisions and explains why populist solutions gain traction despite longer-term harms. Through diverse cases – from Brexit and US protectionism to price controls – it argues that wider adoption of the EMM could enhance support for welfare-enhancing policies, a crucial insight in an era of heightened populist sentiment.

Parliament is the central institution of UK democracy. It is both a representative body, reflecting the diverse views of the nation, and its senior decision-making forum. In the years after the Brexit referendum, when both the public and the governing party were deeply divided, Parliament struggled to navigate these representative and decision-making roles. The arguments, both inside Parliament and about Parliament’s role, were frequently heated and controversial. Many Brexiteers had argued in favour of boosting Parliament’s sovereignty, and yet the institution emerged battered and bruised from the process – having been repeatedly maligned, shut down by a Prime Minister and reinstated by the Supreme Court, and described as ‘broken’ on the opening page of the 2019 Conservative manifesto. This chapter explores how such contradictions came about. It concludes that the blame laid at Parliament’s door by campaigners, journalists and politicians was often unfair, and damaging of public trust. The Brexit process left much rebuilding to be done.

The concluding chapter summarizes the book’s arguments and findings and discusses their implications. Whether we seek to understand the electoral viability of illiberal forces or their behavior in power, the legacies of critical junctures of market reform remain pivotal. Crucially, as institutional developments entail the interplay between historical legacy and human agency, illiberal outcomes unfold in the probabilistic shadow of prior neoliberal deepening. The chapter closes with a discussion of (1) the study’s contributions to research in the tradition of Karl Polanyi; (2) the social bases and neoliberal adaptations of illiberal incumbents; (3) the legacies of Eastern Europe’s transition to democracy and the market; and (4) the crisis of liberalism and the Left. Although intense market reforms have failed to produce democratic stability and illiberals have kept finding ways to opportunistically exploit neoliberalism to their own advantage, the book ends on an optimistic note. Far from inevitable, the illiberal challenge can be countered – and democracies strengthened – if forward-thinking political agents learn from past experiences and progressive examples, build parties around new ethical principles, and focus on delivering economic well-being to broad social coalitions.

Chapter 7 further develops the study’s critical juncture framework and justifies its extension to cases in South America. Drawing lessons from Eastern Europe, I begin by distinguishing between varying illiberal tendencies in Slovakia and Poland, based on which I offer new theoretical insights. As I elaborate sequences linking (1) illiberals’ divergent ability to be politically dominant back to whether neoliberal reform agents were social democrats or polarizing populists, and (2) contestatory versus moderate tendencies back to whether or not anti-neoliberal protest was institutionalized during critical periods of early market reform, I elaborate the argument about the durable effects of contingency associated with postcommunist junctures. I then make the case for applying the refined framework to South American cases. Here, I note some blind spots in scholarship on Latin American populism and highlight important commonalities between dynamics in Eastern Europe and the Andes. Next, I review the advantages of analyzing developments in Ecuador and Peru from a comparative perspective that is sensitive to both cross- regional and intra-regional patterns of similarity and difference. Ending with a discussion of the insufficiency of standard explanations of illiberal trends, the chapter sets the stage for the paired comparison that follows.

Chapter 1 introduces the study’s core puzzle and overall logic of inquiry. It discusses main themes, locates arguments relative to relevant scholarship, and establishes the analytical framework. Early in the chapter, the puzzle of varying illiberal electoral outcomes is presented and contextualized. Captured by two distinct yet related indicators – illiberal voting and post-neoliberal populist magnitude – illiberal electoral outcomes not only varied persistently across countries but also signaled the high salience of economic issues in postcommunist Europe. The next section establishes the rationale for explaining outcomes by drawing insights from Latin America – another semi-peripheral space that experienced consequential neoliberal junctures. Having argued, based on key economic and political parallels between the two regions, that a critical juncture approach is appropriate also for making sense of developments in Eastern Europe, I spell out the work’s central propositions and highlight theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions. The final sections discuss matters of research design and evidence – namely, the mixed method approach, case studies, and quantitative and qualitative data, including 100 interviews – as well as the book’s organization.

Chapter 5 examines path dependencies in Slovakia and Poland, where postcommunist junctures produced powerful illiberal reactions in the 2000–20 period. It does so by unpacking political and societal dynamics and emphasizing how illiberal forces reaped considerable electoral benefits. In both countries, mainstream leftist parties embraced the neoliberal agenda and (eventually) failed, with many of their former supporters becoming available for subsequent populist mobilization. As the Left’s failures occurred amid the rising salience of economic concerns, adaptive illiberals gained at the ballot box. While it stresses key similarities in terms of the core mechanism linking postcommunist junctures and illiberal electoral outcomes, the chapter also identifies important distinctions between reactive sequences in Slovakia and Poland. Indeed, bait-and-switch tactics may have defined junctures in both cases, but political configurations featured more nuanced distinctions specifically in terms of agency, which, in turn, conditioned important differences between illiberals in the two countries. Overall, whereas the patterns of similarity substantiate the book’s core theory linking early market reform legacies and illiberal electoral outcomes, the differences suggest that the critical juncture framework can be further refined – to which I return in the book's final part.

Chapter 5 analyzes contemporary societal transformations through the lens of emerging technologies, political trends, and cultural shifts. It emphasizes how social media and artificial intelligence (AI), especially large language models, are reshaping communication, public perception, and decision-making processes. Social media amplify discontent, promote self-organization, and facilitate both progressive movements and misinformation. A concerning trend is the apparent societal shift from rational, collective discourse toward more intuitive, individualistic, and emotionally driven communication. This is evidenced by linguistic analyses of books, search trends, and journalistic styles. The chapter also explores the effects of neoliberal economic policies, which have fueled inequality and stress, potentially impacting cognitive function and social cohesion. Concurrently, a rise in populism and democratic backsliding is observed, driven by perceived grievances, xenophobia, and manipulation of public opinion. Together, these interconnected developments suggest humanity is at a critical juncture.