What about Hyperpolitics

In this essay for Diggit Magazine, Ico Maly engages with Anton Jäger’s Hyperpolitics to explore the role of digital platforms in contemporary politics. His argument? We should take hyperpolitics seriously without mistaking its fleeting moments for political insignificance. The attention economy may accelerate political cycles, but the ideological and institutional consequences can last much longer.

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What is hyperpolitics?

Hyperpolitics as a politics événementielle

Hyperpolitics as digital politics?

What about political culture and ideology?

Hyperpolitics redefined

References

On this page 1 - What is hyperpolitics? 2 - Hyperpolitics as a politics événementielle 3 - Hyperpolitics as digital politics? 4 - What about political culture and ideology? 5 - Hyperpolitics redefined 6 - References

Hyperpolitics is an analytical concept (re)introduced by historian Anton Jäger in his book of the same title. He describes it as a “gravitational pole in the force field of twenty-first-century politics” (Jäger, 2026a: 5). The concept is perhaps best captured by the book’s subtitle: "extreme politicization without political consequences". First published in German, subsequently translated into Dutch and, more recently, English, the book has attracted considerable attention from the international mass media. This suggests that the concept resonates well beyond academia, capturing something many perceive as fundamental to the political landscape of the early twenty-first century. We are surrounded by mass protests, deep political divisions and politicians competing for attention. Over the past decade, there has undoubtedly been something ‘hyper’ about the political landscape.

Jäger introduces the concept of hyperpolitics to capture the political reality that emerged after the mass-political era (1917-1989) and the post-political era of the 1990s. With what sometimes reads as nostalgia, Jäger predominantly contrasts hyperpolitics with the mass-political era, when the mass party was still the defining political vehicle. In this era, coinciding with Hobsbawm's short twentieth century, the mass parties and their associated pillars were central organizing principles in democratic politics and society in general. Politics meant commitment to a party, participation in an extensive social life organized around it, and a deeply institutionalized political field. Mass politics was, in this sense, a long-term form of political engagement: Relations between competing ideologies were relatively stable, and political actors sought to transform society over time. This long-term orientation, however, also entailed a degree of stability in the power relations between the major political actors. The short twentieth century took its shape as a result of the power relations between liberalism, socialism, and the dramatic rise and fall of fascism.

What is seen as a post-WWII stability was an effect not only of the Holocaust and the success of left-wing resistance parties, but also of the relation between the capitalist West and the Soviet Union. This stability fundamentally broke down after the fall of the Soviet Empire. What among certain political scientists is known as the ‘post-political phase’ was the result of the demise of the socialist alternative and the rise of neoliberalism in the West as a new political economic doctrine. This post-political phase is, I think, more precisely categorized as the hegemony of neoliberal globalization. It is not a coincidence that the dominance of the neoliberal ideology in the 1990s coincided with the definite decline of the mass party. This decline already started decades earlier as a result of the welfare state's success, but it was only in the neoliberal era that the mass party became a marketing vehicle for politicians. The welfare state and the post-war economic boom introduced a process of depoliticization of the citizen. Jäger describes this as the retreat of “citizens [...] from collective life into the private sphere” (Jäger, 2026a: 6). Greed was good and a big state was increasingly seen as a problem in those years. Society needed to adjust to the new times. The idea that there was no alternative to neoliberalism became accepted across mainstream political parties. The language of democratic politics was increasingly replaced by the language and practices of good governance, safely embedded in transnational institutions beyond meaningful citizen control. This post-political era—the very long 1990s—came to an end with the 2008 financial crisis, giving rise first to anti-politics and later to hyperpolitics.

Jäger emphasizes that hyperpolitics is a “tendency” of the current era rather than a “totalizing style,” but he does categorize a remarkably broad range of parties and movements as hyperpolitical actors. Trump may epitomize the hyperpolitical era, but “Syriza, Podemos, Corbyn, Sanders, Black Lives Matter, La France Insoumise on the left; on the right, Golden Dawn, Vox, Farage, MAGA and Le Pen” (Jäger, 2026b) are all presented as manifestations of this mode of political action. Jäger’s assessment of hyperpolitics is explicitly negative: It is an abidingly "low form" of politics, characterized by "low-commitment, low-cost, and all too often, low value" (Jäger, 2026a: 8). Even though Jäger primarily conceptualizes hyperpolitics as an outcome of the post-political era and a reaction to the anti-political era, he also identifies digitalization as an important factor in explaining both the emergence and distinctive characteristics of hyperpolitics. He (2024: 21) draws on digital technologies and digital culture to describe it, emphasizing the parallels between hyperpolitics and the digital environment. This environment, he argues, fuels the hyperpolitical condition, a mode of politics characterized by instant reactions and limited commitment: "the life-worlds of the online are the primary environment for this sort of deinstitutionalized, impermanent engagement, offering repertoires of social expression that require little to no long-term obligation" (Jäger, 2026a: 10).

Such sweeping categorizations of major historical periods inevitably fall short in some respects. We could point out, for instance, that the individualization of society and the decline of the mass political party had already begun in the 1970s, that anti-politics emerged alongside post-politics, or that the post-political era itself was deeply political and met with considerable resistance. But doing so would mean getting lost in the details. And that would be a shame, because one of the merits of Jäger’s book is precisely that it invites us to think about broader historical developments and alerts us to their significance. Jäger attempts to capture a particular historical era, and this requires painting in broad strokes. It also inevitably brings certain developments to the foreground while pushing others into the background. That is not a weakness. Jäger is at his strongest when he shows how the mass party has been replaced by affect-driven politics. How we too often, and with little awareness, follow the mood of the day, only to jump on another bandwagon the next day.

In what follows, I enter into a dialogue with Jäger’s theory by examining the concept of hyperpolitics more closely. More specifically, I focus on two elements where I hope to make a contribution: (1) the role of digital media and (2) the question of hyperpolitical effects. I begin with what I consider one of Jäger’s most important observations: his conceptualization of hyperpolitics as a politics événementielle.

In contrast to the longue durée of the mass-political era, hyperpolitics, according to Jäger, constitutes a politics événementielle, driven or at least influenced by the algorithmically structured attention economy of the present. Jäger’s use of Braudel’s famous distinction between different historical temporalities to make sense of the political field is both useful and illuminating. At least at the surface level, twenty-first-century politics does indeed seem increasingly organized around the here and now. The hype of the day can mobilize large numbers of people for a day, a few weeks, or perhaps several months, only to disappear from the media radar and give way to the next attention-grabbing issue. This hypermobilization is often affect-driven and appears less institutionally embedded.

At the same time, it is important to recall another lesson from Braudel. He argued that we should not focus exclusively on the short term (Braudel, 1980: 38). Le temps événementiel, le temps conjoncturel, and the longue durée are interdependent, and the analyst’s task is ultimately to bring these different temporalities back together (Braudel, 1980: 48). The increasingly prominent role of the here and now in contemporary politics does not preclude broader conjunctural dynamics or longue durée effects. Once we take these layered temporalities seriously and adopt a more empirical approach—complementing broad historical narratives with attention to detail—it becomes clear that the apparent immediacy of hyperpolitics is itself shaped by new central social and political institutions.

To capture the long-term and structural effects of hyperpoliticization, I would argue that deinstitutionalization, which Jäger identifies as central to hyperpolitics, may not be the most useful analytical lens. Digital platforms are central institutions that operate on an unprecedented scale, shaping our life outlook and behavior. They are powerful institutions whose logic permeates every domain of society. In doing so, they introduce not only a technological logic into these domains but also platform ideologies (Maly, 2023) that shape how they operate. Note that these institutions are not just technical, they emerge through the interactions between humans and platforms, including their affordances and algorithms. It is through these interactions that platforms acquire an institutional and political significance, shaping the world around us. Goffman (1961: 4) argues that "Every institution captures something of the time and interest of its members and provides something of a world for them; in brief, every institution has encompassing tendencies." Digital platforms are no exception. CEOs, programmers, moderators, advertisers, and users occupy different roles, but their interactions collectively shape these new institutions. Hyperpolitics is at least partly an effect of these new digital institutions. Digital media should not be seen merely as facilitating ‘deinstitutionalization’, they enable ‘reinstitutionalization’ of political parties and movements. Digital platforms have become central infrastructures of political life and, more than that, central political institutions that reorganize the political field in multiple ways. This means that we move beyond some of the generalizing assumptions about digital media enabling digital swarms and slacktivism and adopt more mature and complex theories.

If we want to see the long-term effects of the contemporary ‘politics événementiel’, we also need to acknowledge how culture and ideology are political forces. We cannot understand politics, and thus assess political consequences of new forms of politics, if we do not analyze the ideological changes. Politics is about more than just about political parties that gain institutional power and subsequently implement particular policies. When we ignore ideology and culture, hyperpolitics becomes a superficial perspective, one that uses the hyperpolitical lens to understand politics. Politics i