The dominant theories about the Western modernization process tend to consider the middle class as a moderate and conservative social force. The pragmatic middle class is able to marginalize political radicalism, and promote mutual support between representative democracy and capitalism. With the outbreak of new social movements in the 1970s and the rise of radical right-wing parties in the 1990s, the middle class has successively impacted representative democracy from both the left and the right. The expansion of the size of the middle class in post-industrial society has created a conflict of values between materialism and post-materialism. Since social and cultural issues,such as ecology and gender, are difficult to be adequately represented through mainstream political parties, the middle class has turned to non-institutionalized protest actions. The weakening of nationstates’ protection ability by neoliberal globalization has led to a trend of proletarianization among those middle classes, who have lost the shelter of mainstream political parties. The overlapping effects of class status anxiety and immigrant culture shock, have made them supporters of radical right-wing parties. Due to the internal and external effects of social structural transformation and globalization,middle class radicalism shows the rupture of representativeness of mainstream political parties, and plays an important impact on the reconsitution of representative democracy system.

　　Editor: Zhong Yao  Wei Xiaoxue

　　From:CASS Journal of Political Science.2025.No.1.