In a nutshell
- Echo chambers split societies into separate factual worlds
- The rules-based international order is rapidly disintegrating
- Geopolitics is shifting toward transactional, might-is-right power
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British historian Eric Hobsbawm identified 1914 as the true beginning of the 20th century, the moment when the long 19th century’s relative stability was shattered, and humanity entered decades of extremes that would not end until 1991. The years between 1991 and 2022, viewed through this lens, appear as an interlude – a deceptively peaceful period between eras. We might now be experiencing a similar inflection point. The 2020s could mark the actual beginning of the 21st century, as three foundational frameworks collapse simultaneously.
Within democratic societies, there used to be some social glue − shared facts, trusted institutions and a common identity − that held diverse populations together. Now, societies are polarized between liberal and traditional values, with different groups further splintering into a multitude of incompatible realities.
Between nations, there was an imperfect but stable world order defined by international law, treaties and moral constraints, which made state behavior relatively predictable and major wars rare or highly unlikely among great powers. Now, the international order (both militarily and in trade) is giving way to purely transactional, might-is-right geopolitics.
In technology, machines and software advanced rapidly, but they never challenged humanity’s fundamental position. Our superior intelligence remained unquestioned. Now, artificial intelligence is causing creative destruction on an unprecedented scale, for the first time challenging humanity’s monopoly on advanced intelligence.
These rapid and widespread paradigm shifts constitute what scholars call a polycrisis: a perfect storm in which multiple disruptions interact and amplify one another in ways that surpass the sum of their individual effects. Collectively, they pose a crucial question: Can democratic governance, inherently designed for gradual deliberation and consensus-building, adapt to an era when all the rules are changing at once?
The social glue that held democratic societies together is dissolving. Different groups not only hold separate opinions; they operate from conflicting understandings of what problems exist and what evidence is trustworthy. Immigration is seen as either an existential threat, a moral obligation or an economic tool for labor, with no common ground between the camps. Globalization is viewed as either inevitable progress or a betrayal by elites of local communities.
Digital platforms accelerate this fragmentation through algorithmic echo chambers, ensuring each tribe consumes different facts about the same reality. Economic inequality also fuels division, as those benefiting from globalization and technology inhabit separate worlds from those that have been displaced by these phenomena – geographically, economically and digitally.
As a result, trust in core institutions, such as government, media, expertise and democratic processes, is eroding across advanced democracies. In the United States, a 2026 study from the University of Cambridge indicates that divisions on social and political issues have surged by 64 percent since 1988, with nearly all of this increase occurring after 2008.
In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has gained significant influence, challenging the traditional two-party system and intensifying post-Brexit divisions over immigration and national identity. In Israel, the core question of whether the nation’s identity is mainly democratic or Jewish has deeply divided society, with each side viewing the other’s vision as an existential threat to the country’s character.
Each source of instability makes the others still more unstable, and the result may be a polycrisis before we can prepare for it.
The international order that once kept state behavior predictable is collapsing. For eight decades, rules – treaties, international law, moral constraints – bound behavior, even when imperfectly enforced. That framework is disintegrating with stunning speed.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney captured the moment’s gravity in his 2026 Davos speech, describing “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction, and the beginning of a harsh reality where geopolitics – where the large, main power – is submitted to no limits.”
Across regions, signals of this shift are becoming harder to ignore.
The Americas face instability following the U.S. military operation in Venezuela in January 2026 that led to the capture of Nicolas Maduro. Europe, and NATO along with it, has been shaken by U.S. President Donald Trump’s renewed push to acquire Greenland, including tariff threats against European allies, before a subsequent partial climbdown. The episode injected economic coercion and transactional logic into an alliance historically grounded in shared values and long-term commitments.
Meanwhile, the Russia-Ukraine war shows no signs of resolution, and China’s mounting military pressure on Taiwan keeps the risk of a major crisis in East Asia uncomfortably high.
The Middle East represents the extreme case of geopolitical instability. Since late February 2026, the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran has reshaped the regional landscape. Joint strikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, triggering Iranian missile and drone attacks not only on Israel but also on multiple neighboring states, including Gulf countries hosting U.S. forces.
What began as a shock event has become a broader regional conflict with no clear off-ramp. The conflict also pushed the Strait of Hormuz toward de facto closure, as Iranian threats, attacks on shipping and soaring security risks severely disrupted one of the world’s most critical energy chokepoints. Lebanon has been pulled directly into the war: Hezbollah has launched major attacks on Israel, and Israel has responded with widening strikes and an expanded campaign deep into Lebanese territory, including Beirut. Syria remains fragile, and Gaza’s future is still deeply uncertain. Together, these overlapping conflicts form a volatile regional system in which any escalation risks cascading far beyond its original trigger.
Geopolitics now boils down to unvarnished power dynamics, with norms obliterated by unilateral interventions, a disregard of territorial rights, the collapse of sovereignty and protracted “military operations” undertaken without legal institutional consent.
The enforcement mechanisms that once sustained the international order — from the United Nations Security Council and the International Criminal Court to traditional alliance guarantees — increasingly appear either impotent or selectively applied. Even new initiatives reflect this shift. President Trump’s “Board of Peace,” presented as a more effective forum for conflict resolution, is widely seen as a parallel mechanism outside the traditional UN framework. In such an environment, sustained international cooperation becomes difficult except when interests temporarily overlap.
In such an environment, sustained international cooperation becomes difficult except when interests temporarily overlap.
The third framework to break may, in retrospect, prove to be the most detrimental and influential: technology that challenges humanity’s place at the top of the intelligence hierarchy. AI’s creative destruction is unmatched in both scope and speed, simultaneously threatening existing structures while generating a wealth of opportunities for some.
Deployed wisely, AI could enhance governance, accelerate research, and fill labor gaps caused by demographic realities. Deployed poorly, it disrupts functioning labor markets, accelerates inequality, enables rogue actors and introduces autonomous military capabilities racing ahead of human judgment. At the extreme, it holds the possibility of artificial superintelligence, with risks resembling dystopian science-fiction scenarios. What makes AI uniquely challenging is that it cannot be contained geographically. It is software crossing borders at the speed of information, with breakthroughs propagating globally within weeks.
These three sources of instability form an interconnected system in which each amplifies the others. Geopolitical competition without rules drives reckless AI races rather than cautious cooperation. Social polarization prevents democracies from building consensus on AI governance. Meanwhile, unregulated AI may soon disrupt labor markets and democracy, accelerating inequality, deepening polarization, while shifting military balances unpredictably and exacerbating geopolitical instability.
The vicious cycle is accelerating. Each source of instability makes the others still more unstable, and the result may be a polycrisis before we can prepare for it.
Democracies are structurally designed for “muddling through,” engaging in incremental policymaking through gradual consensus-building, deliberation and compromise. This approach is sensible in normal times, when governments face at most one paradigm shift at a time and their role is to ensure stability through a measured response.
But these are not normal times. Rules are changing quickly across the three domains, and crises are piling up faster than democratic institutions can react. Their slow processes of consensus-building, deliberation and checks and balances struggle to keep up. The speed mismatch is severe: AI deployment cycles run quarterly while regulatory frameworks take years, and geopolitical shocks cascade weekly while responses require consensus-building across fractured politics.
When democratic governments visibly struggle with entrenched instability, public trust begins to fade and fear grows. History shows that this mix can lead people to turn toward leaders who promise decisive action without the constraints of thoughtful deliberation. They offer a tempting yet misleading and short-sighted trade-off: Surrender some of your freedoms in exchange for protection from a chaotic world.
The central question is whether democratic institutions can evolve or even survive while maintaining their defining characteristics. This will require:
- Speed: Compress timelines without sacrificing deliberation
- Integration: Break bureaucratic silos to address convergent challenges holistically
- Legitimacy: Demonstrate competence despite polarization
The historical record offers mixed evidence. Some democracies weathered previous perfect storms, such as the New Deal response to the Great Depression and postwar institutional reconstruction. Others failed catastrophically. The current era’s compressed timelines and nature of compounded crises make solutions genuinely harder to find and implement than amid previous challenges.
The fundamental question is whether democratic governance can navigate this polycrisis. Whether or not democracies can demonstrate that deliberative muddling through works when all rules change rapidly may determine the viability of democratic governance for generations.
Scenarios
The most probable path involves slow, uneven democratic adaptation amid mounting instability. AI disruption outpaces regulation as governments struggle to build frameworks fast enough. Geopolitical instability increases as more states abandon rule-based behavior, emboldened by the example of great powers. Social polarization deepens due to disruption and inadequate government response.
Trust continues its gradual decline. Fear grows from multiple directions but does not drive wholesale abandonment of democratic norms. Instead, there is a slow drift toward executive power, reduced deliberation and acquiescence to unilateral action over consensus-building. Some democracies prove more resilient than others, with variance depending on existing institutional strength, social cohesion and the prevalence of critical thinking. The polycrisis does not spiral into collapse but grinds societies down through accumulated failures and eroded confidence in democratic governance.
A major disruptive event – an AI accident with catastrophic consequences, a geopolitical near-catastrophe revealing mutual vulnerability, or a socioeconomic breakdown shocking the elites – creates space for institutional transformation and action that incrementalism cannot achieve.
Democracies accept compressed decision cycles, implement integrated policy frameworks addressing convergent challenges and demonstrate legitimacy through competence and delivering results, even in polarized contexts. New international cooperation mechanisms emerge, acknowledging transactional geopolitics while creating pragmatic frameworks around genuine shared interests. Democratic institutions prove they can evolve rapidly while maintaining their defining characteristics. The vector of AI implementation bends to serving humanity and not the other way around. The storm is navigated, if not tamed, through institutional innovation that preserves deliberation while achieving speed.
Democratic governments prove structurally incapable or lacking the political will for adaptation at the required speed. AI deployment without adequate governance creates cascading failures – labor market collapse, rapid deterioration of tax incomes, skyrocketing fiscal deficits and monetary crises, military accidents and malicious use of technology by state and non-state actors. Geopolitical chaos intensifies as the abandonment of international rules accelerates. Social polarization crosses thresholds from which recovery becomes nearly impossible.
Even resilient democracies face serious institutional breakdowns and external pressures. When fear arises from various sources, such as neighbors turning against one another, geopolitical threats and rapid technological changes, trust in democratic institutions can plummet to unprecedented lows. In such an environment, populations gravitate toward leaders who promise safety and quick solutions, sidelining deliberation, debate and ideals.
This authoritarian drift, should it occur, would likely enhance rather than resolve instability, as autocratic systems lack the correction mechanisms and legitimacy needed for sustainable governance. International cooperation collapses entirely. Compounded instability overwhelms institutional capacity across democratic societies.
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