This chapter argues that ethnic majorities are set to occupy an increasingly central place in discussions of ethno-political accommodation in western societies. These actors are not well captured by the liberal nationalism or multiculturalism paradigms, which were developed during a period of relative ethnic homogeneity. Ethnic majorities are, in my estimation, advantaged in politics, the economy and in official culture; but are disadvantaged when it comes to recognition of their ethnic identity and demographic malaise, criticism of their collective past, and the treatment of national symbols and narratives that are implicitly associated with them. An increasingly influential cultural left has sought to anathematize majority ethnic groups, which has contributed to populism and polarization as well as silencing important conversations. The cultural left has also engaged in a fallacy of composition by collapsing the distinction between majority group concern over the preservation of ethno-traditions with ethnic exclusion at the individual level. It has celebrated majority decline, producing profound alienation. In combination, this has prevented the recognition of liberal, absorptive ethnic majorities, contributing to our current moment in both political and intellectual terms.

Notwithstanding financial crises and pandemics, never have people living in Western societies enjoyed such an extraordinary combination of health, wealth, and freedom. But while liberal democracy has provided the framework for the largely peaceful management of power in Western societies, it has been supplemented in recent decades by what might be called a “liberal overreach.” The chapter identifies three policy areas of liberal overreach. First, the over-enthusiastic embrace of change and openness, from liberals of the left the embrace of mass immigration is emblematic and for liberals of the right it is the free market’s destruction of settled ways of life. Second, the promotion of cognitive-professional employment and academic training as the main route to a successful life. Third, the devaluation of family life and domesticity and the implicit rejection of any gender division of labor. This liberal overreach has provided the fuel for much of mainstream populism in the West. The chapter discusses the rise of populism as a reaction to liberal overreach and asks whether there can be a legitimate form of populism.

Multiculturalism has been turned upside down. Stated in the 1990s as a political theory and public policy of cultural minority rights, its language of cultural victimhood, oppression, and alienation has been hijacked by politicians speaking on behalf of national majorities. Some scholars have argued that liberal arguments for cultural group rights must apply to majorities as well as to minorities. I object that the notion of cultural majority rights is incoherent on empirical and conceptual grounds, and indefensible on normative grounds. The chapter suggests an alternative approach that relies on the core values of freedom, equality, and self-government. These values serve to justify cultural freedom rights for everybody, cultural rights for minorities, and powers and duties to establish a pluralistic public culture that includes all citizens. I claim that this framework covers all cultural rights that can be defended on grounds of liberal and democratic principles. There is no space left for special rights of cultural majorities.

Koopmans and Orgad argue that multiculturalism has taken a life of its own, swinging too far in one direction. The authors assert that the rapidly changing reality calls for a new majority–minority theory and argue that the moral justifications for cultural minority rights should also apply to majority groups. They present two areas in which majorities may become culturally vulnerable and need legal protection: immigration control and domestic affairs. The core of the argument is rooted in a unique framework to address majority–minority constellations. This “intergroup differentiation approach” distinguishes between “homeland majorities” and “migratory majorities,” alongside the traditional distinction of indigenous/national and migratory minorities. In doing so, they criticize the tendency in the multiculturalism literature to gloss over differences between the Anglo-Saxon classical immigration countries, where majorities are of migratory origin, and the countries of the Old World, where new minorities of immigrant origin face indigenous majorities. Koopmans and Orgad provide practical examples for the implementation of their approach and explain the different meanings of cultural majority rights. Only by a contextualized and relational consideration of groups, they conclude, can competing demands of majorities and minorities be fairly evaluated.

This chapter covers how the debate over multiculturalism has evolved over the past fifty years (1970–2020). While the twentieth century was marked by fear of minorities, the twenty-first century is marked by growing fears of majorities. The panic hovering over Europe is not concentrated on the political arrangements of the present but on a deep concern for the future of liberalism. This perception of the future turns social and cultural relationships into a zero-sum game. But is there a way out? The chapter ends with a discussion of contemporary majority and minority tensions in liberal societies and offers a common moral ground that allows managing these tensions, reaching a political compromise that is likely to leave both sides dissatisfied, but it is the most one can achieve. Perhaps the most important lesson of the last fifty years of rights-talk, the chapter argues, is that the expansion of the notion of rights offers an inclusive tool of social discourse but cannot offer a receipt for how societies should handle themselves. That remains the role of democratic process and for that they should be cherished and protected.

Populism is the most visible and controversial political form in which majority nationalism expresses itself in Western societies. A key question is whether populism is commensurable with, or even injects new life into (atrophying) liberal democracies. This chapter answers this question in the negative, because of populism’s inherent illiberalism and anti-pluralism that undermine the “liberal” pillar of liberal democracy, and thus pose a threat to democracy itself. When trying to explain its rise, the unresolved challenge is to calibrate economic and cultural factors. On the one hand, neoliberal globalization’s attack on lower middle-class prosperity and aspirations seems to be a principal cause of the populist upheaval in the West. On the other hand, this populism perceives itself less as a socioeconomic than a cultural cause, mobilizing rooted majority identity against cosmopolitan elites and immigrants particularly. The move onto the cultural terrain, and adoption of the majority–minority binary, conceals the neoliberal demolition of the social rights of all. Preempting populism by cultural majority rights is not only tangential to some of its deeper sources but it also underestimates the capacity of existing legal-political arrangements to deal with cultural majority claims.