"There has been a decoupling of politics and the social bases that democracy traditionally relied upon. In postwar political science, it was taken for granted that politics always had to consider its social bases. Yet, since the 1970s, many of these same social bases have undergone a hollowing out in post-industrial democracies. One example is the decline of labor and its share of total economic activity. Another is the dealignment of social and economic class with its expected ideological and political preferences. The same applies to religion. Amid weakened social bases, electoral outcomes are much more volatile as those identifying as 'independents' become the plurality."
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"With the hollowing out of social bases, political power obsesses more and more over its own reproduction. It may even confusingly start to view its own self-preservation as a social base in itself. In this environment, state capacity really suffers and it struggles to accomplish even the most basic of policy goals, as many are familiar with."