Uganda, May 5 -- Around the world, populist nationalism is on the rise, often shepherded to power by authoritarian leaders. And yet the neoliberal orthodoxy - government downsizing, tax cuts, deregulation - that took hold some 40 years ago in the West was supposed to strengthen democracy, not weaken it. What went wrong?

Part of the answer is economic: neoliberalism simply did not deliver what it promised. In the United States and other advanced economies that embraced it, per capita real (inflation-adjusted) income growth between 1980 and the Covid-19 pandemic was 40 percent lower than in the preceding 30 years.

Worse, incomes at the bottom and in the middle largely stagnated while those at the very top increased, and the deliberate wea...