Leaders need followers. Last month, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan delivered a speech outlining the Biden administration’s international economic policy at the Brookings Institute in Washington. The “New Washington Consensus” was not directed at citizens but at capitals abroad. Sullivan’s speech took aim at the rise of global Trumpism. He addressed a question posed by social democrats the world over: Why can’t the center hold? An erosion of legitimacy, he argued, is at the core of the problem. In the face of compounding crises—economic stagnation, political polarization, and the climate emergency—a new reconstruction agenda is required.
Hegemony, however, is not the ability to prevail—that’s dominance—but the willingness of others to follow (under constraint), and the capacity to set agendas.
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