The hollowing of mass institutions has not reversed since the 1990s

Evidence

Two decades of political turmoil later, these testimonies feel at once familiar and strange, like one of Magritte’s domestic interiors. The individualization and the decline of collective institutions they registered have not been halted. Aside from a few outliers, political parties have not regained their members. Churches have not refilled their pews. Unions have not been organizationally resurrected. Electoral competition is still highly constrained, driven by a narrow cartel of career politicians and specialists ever at the mercy of hostile markets. Across the West, civil society remains mired in a deep and protracted crisis, with political action monopolized by NGOs, online personas, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists. At least in one abiding sense, this chapter of the postpolitical saga is not closed. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 70

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s goal of explaining why politicization without organization produces no durable change — this is the baseline state (still-hollowed institutions) hyperpolitics amplifies.