Identity Politics Turns Positive-Sum Into Zero-Sum

Left-right politics is fundamentally economic and positive-sum: a growing pie lets capitalists and workers both gain, so compromise solutions are always possible; but if politics shifts to identitarian lines (ethnicity, religion, language), it becomes zero-sum—one group is on top or the other is—making agreeable solutions very difficult and threatening political stability. This dynamic, first visible in institutionally weak Bolivia, is now appearing across the West.