I saw a good video interview with Niall Ferguson, and there were comments. One of these was very good, and the person outlined a series of phases surrounding electoral systems of countries around the world in the wake of austerity measures and bailouts. It ends with the realization amongst the voting masses that their unhappiness at their circumstances is really unrelated to which party happens to be governing. It's a fundamental problem of overpopulation and resource limits that no one in government can hope to solve.
Huge swings in votes, due to the dissatisfaction of the population.
Countries move sharply to opposite political spectrum.
Phase2:
Population discovers that the recently elected political opposite spectrum is unable to solve what makes them dissatisfied at the first place. Most obvious country: USA.
Phase3:
Population will refuse to vote for traditional political parties. Population will search out unusual third parties. Countries: USA: Tea Party, Finland: True Finns.
Phase4:
Population will realize that unusual third party political forces are unable to govern or being hijacked by traditional political parties, as a front.
Phase5:
It becomes obvious, that the fundamental reasons of dissatisfaction is not a matter of which party governs.
No one in politics can solve the collision course of the following trends:
1) Resources are finite - while all the current econo-political systems are based on the assumption of unlimited resources.
2) Population is increasing *globally* - which is on collision course with the fact of limited resources.
3) While population is growing, less and less people are needed to run the economy.
Unemployment goes global, from structural unemployment ("these jobs are not coming back, there there will be new industries, which will provide new jobs to everyone" to "overpopulation unemployment".
But population is declining in many European countries, how come Spain has over 20% unemployment? True, however "Overpopulation unemployment" is a global trend, shifting work to cheaper labor cost centers (Asia currently) does not negate it. This trend is fully exploited by current leaders in economy, to increase profit, while also say to "expensive" US, European labor to take a cue at the Asian wages. None of this is solving the long-term collision course: it is profitable exploitation financially and empty political rhetoric.
4) While wages have been declining, they can never decline fast and deep enough. The solution is stepping up innovation to deploy more and more technology. In the focus of every single innovation is the desire to get something done with less human intervention. This is of course further eroding the need for labor.
Phase6:
After moving from unsuccessful and ever more expensive bailouts to bailouts, from North America, to Europe, then to Asia, there is less and less appetite for austerity measures. It will become obvious that austerity measures and all bailout packages are not designed and they are unable to solve the long term collision course trends, described above.
This realization will lead to complete political and economical collapse.
It will force to find solution how to deal with the growing population, the acknowledgement that we need socio-political economy that is built on resource-based economy, the complete radical re-thinking of how human labor, wealth creation and distribution can be ft in the world, where there are almost unlimited labor, while the need for labor is steadily decreasing - without any sign that the current models of economies and societies can create a balance of supply and demand.
Since this balance can not, will not be restored - society will have to figure out a complete reset, how humans will exist using the resources most efficiently.
It will not be market economy, as the framework of market economy offers labor market as the solution for human participation in creating and distributing goods and services, but free market economy can no longer provide a supply/demand in this field. Without it the entire system is useless, collapsing, as we are experiencing it now.