Empathy is driving the global resurgence of liberal democracy

As a teen, Jacinda Ardern spent her after-high school hours working shifts at Golden Kiwi, a takeout store in the small town of Morrinsville, New Zealand. She always handed out takeouts of greasy fish and chips to waiting customers with a smile, according to media accounts. As a teen, she was some sort of an outlier in conservative Morrinsville — she joined Amnesty International while in high school.

The smile, warmth and empathy already visible  and on full display during her formative  years have been carried over into New Zealand’s politics, where, as the country’s newly reelected Prime Minister — and the first one with a parliamentary majority  since the 1990s  after a landslide win — she can now carry the transformational change that she failed to carry out in the previous coalition government.