We are witnessing the undoing of a project, a project that has defined the contours of politics for the past four decades, and it won't, I think, be put back together.

The danger surely can be seen in the rising xenophobia, growing public support for autocratic figures who test the limits of democratic norms.

But equally alarming is the fact that mainstream parties and politicians display little understanding of the discontent.

Donald Trump and other figures like him had succeeded by tapping a wellspring of anxieties, frustrations and legitimate grievances to which the mainstream parties have no compelling answer Before they can hope to win back public support, these parties must rethink their mission and purpose, and to do so, they need to learn from the populace protest that has displaced them not by replicating its xenophobia and strident nationalism, but by taking seriously the legitimate grievances with which these ugly sentiments are entangled.

Such thinking should begin with the recognition that these grievances air not only economic but also moral and cultural.

They're not only about wages and jobs, but also about social esteem.

Now the mainstream parties in governing governing elites who find themselves the target of populist protest struggle to make sense of it.

And one of the reasons they struggle and find themselves bewildered is that they failed to acknowledge their role in prompting the resentment that led to the populist backlash.

They failed to see that the upheavals we're witnessing are a political response to a political failure of historic proportions.

At the heart of this failure is the way mainstream parties have conceived and carried out the project of globalization over the past four decades.

Two aspect of this project gave rise to the grievances that fuel populist protest.

One is the neoliberal, technocratic turn of contemporary politics by neo liberal turn.

I mean the embrace of a market driven version of globalization and the faith that market mechanisms are the primary instruments for achieving the public good.

The technocratic turn is closely connected.

It refers to the tendency of governing elites to drain public discourse of substantive moral argument, to treat ideologically contestable questions as if they were matters of economic efficiency.

The province of experts.

It's not difficult to see of the neo liberal technocratic turn set the stage for populist discontent.

The market driven version of globalization brought growing inequality.

It also devalued national identities and allegiances as goods and capital and people flowed freely across national borders.

Those who stood astride the global economy, Val arised Cosmopolitan identities is a progressive, enlightened alternative to the narrow, parochial ways of protectionism and tribalism.

The rial political divide, they argued, was no longer left versus right but open versus closed.

This implied that critics of outsourcing and free trade agreements and unrestricted capital close were closed minded rather than open minded.

Meanwhile, the technocratic turn treated many public questions as matters of technical expertise beyond the reach of ordinary citizens.

This mode of governance narrowed the scope of democratic argument, hollowed out the terms of public discourse and produced a growing sense of disempowerment.

The neoliberal, technocratic turn was joined by mainstream parties with the left and the right.

But it was the embrace of market thinking at market values by center left parties that proved most consequential for the globalization project itself and for the populist protest that followed the populist uprising in the U.

S Britain and Europe is a backlash directed generally against elites, but its most conspicuous casualties have been liberal and centre left political parties.

The Democratic Party in the US the Labour Party in Britain, Social Democratic Party in Germany who shared the vote, reached a historic low in the last federal election.

Italy's Democratic Party, whose vote share dropped to less than 20%.

Socialist Party in France, whose presidential nominee won only 6% of the vote in the first round of the last election.

Before these parties can hope to win back public support, they need to reconsider the neo liberal, technocratic approach to governing.

But they also need to rethink something else, something subtler but no less consequential.

And this has to do with the attitudes towards success and failure that have accompanied the growing inequality of recent decades.

They need to ask why those who have not flourished in the new Economy.