Emily Chamlee-Wright — 2025 Markets and Society Conference Keynote
TL;DR
Liberal democracy faces collapse from both overt constitutional violations and the 'great forgetting' of its foundational principles. Chamlee-Wright argues that reversing this decay requires repairing liberalism's 'soft tissue'—the shared mental models, automatic norms, and cultural tools that make formal institutions function and scale.
⚠️ The Dual Threat to Liberal Order 3 insights
Overt constitutional violations
Recent months have witnessed executive decrees attempting to end birthright citizenship, emergency powers bypassing constitutional constraints, weaponized justice departments, and threats of military force against citizens and allies.
The great forgetting
When liberal principles function smoothly, they fade from civic consciousness, leaving populations unable to articulate or defend constitutional norms when they come under direct attack.
Irreversible soft tissue damage
Unlike policy failures, the degradation of values and habits that sustain formal institutions cannot be repaired through legislative action once lost.
🧬 Cultural Economy as Infrastructure 3 insights
Soft tissue framework
Liberal democracy depends on culturally embedded resources—shared mental models, generalized norms, cultural tools, and social networks—that animate formal constitutional rules beyond legal compliance.
Shared mental models provide stickiness
Beliefs such as inherent human dignity, distributed power, and rule of law provide the intuitive moral framework that makes liberal institutions appear self-evident, fair, and workable.
Generalized norms enable scaling
Automatic behavioral defaults like promise-keeping and good-faith cooperation operate without conscious calculation, lowering enforcement costs and allowing liberal institutions to expand across complex, anonymous societies.
🛠️ Strategic Renewal Through Cultural Tools 3 insights
Agency in unsettled times
During periods of crisis, reformers can actively deploy cultural resources—founding narratives, historical memory, collective identity—as strategic tools to reshape political possibilities and expand liberty.
Leveraging founding promises
Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. advanced emancipation by holding America accountable to its Declaration of Independence, transforming patriotic celebrations into platforms for justice.
Making the invisible visible
Reversing liberal decay requires strategically deploying these cultural tools to render constitutional principles vivid and defensible, countering the 'great forgetting' through active civic education and narrative engagement.
Bottom Line
To preserve liberalism, focus on cultivating the automatic norms and shared mental models that give constitutional rules their power, while strategically deploying cultural narratives during crises to make these invisible foundations visible and compelling again.
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