Beyond populism and into the state: The political economy of national-conservatism

Abstract

This article argues that the crises of neoliberal globalisation since the 2000s have given rise to a new transnational political family that we call ‘national-conservatism’. Through a critical examination of the literature on the Global Right and the role of the state under globalisation, we contend that national-conservatism acts as an innovative model for acquiring and exerting power from the right today, characterised by an endorsement of the state’s economic role, an emphasis on traditional values and hierarchies such as religion, and a proactive, occasionally confrontational stance in foreign policy. Consequently, the paradigm of national-conservatism prompts the division of transnational neoliberalism into discrete national domains. These domains function as havens where the neoliberal elite is shielded both from foreign competitive pressures and radical demands of respective national societies. Crucially, national-conservatism garners legitimacy for this new order through its commitment to revitalising traditional, hierarchical models of national sovereignty.

Keywords

conservatism global right nationalism neoliberalism political economy populism the state

Introduction

In May of 2023, several figures affiliated with the UK Conservative Party, including Suella Braverman, Michael Gove, and Jacob Rees-Mogg, participated in the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) in London, orchestrated by the Edmund Burke Foundation (2023) to advance a novel mix of ‘distinctive national traditions’ and ‘sovereign national autonomy’. Over 3 days, the conference provided a platform for the exploration of subjects like immigration, the role of the state in the public sphere, and the foreign policies of sovereign states. In her address, Braverman accentuated the need to anchor the societal fabric of the United Kingdom and the United States in the tenets of Christianity, countering concepts like ‘radical gender ideology’ (Dearden, 2023). This event engendered a heightened scrutiny of the term ‘national conservatism’ (see also Abrahamsen and Williams, 2023). Where has this concept come from, and what does it mean for the future of right-wing politics?

We propose a political economy account. On the heels of neoliberalism’s global expansion after the late 1970s, an exacerbation of income and wealth inequalities manifested both globally and within national confines. In the aftermath of the GFC, these disparities surged to an alarming magnitude. The post-crisis strategy of safeguarding financial institutions at the expense of individual welfare coerced societies into accepting stringent austerity measures. The eruption of the Syrian Civil War and the ensuing transnational refugee crisis further exacerbated the strain on national security state apparatuses. Finally, the post-pandemic measures (both vaccine nationalism and anti-vaccination movements) and the rise of economic nationalism intensified the strains on the liberal international order.

In the wake of these developments, the global rise of the far-right has acquired heightened salience (Doval and Souroujon, 2021; Worth, 2019). Concurrently, International Relations (IR) scholarship has become preoccupied in recent years with the rise of populism (Hadiz and Chryssogelos, 2017). Yet by now, right-wing populists have been in power for long periods of time across the Global North and South (Arsel et al., 2021), and many of their ideas have become mainstream. Does this process of ‘normalisation’ (Bale and Rovira-Kaltwasser, 2021) signify the emergence of a new mode of exerting political power from the right? And if so, how can it be related to contemporary shifts in the international political and economic structure?

We argue that populism is but one ingredient and has acted as a transitional phase for the crystallisation of an emergent global political family that, building on the term used by many of these actors as well as scholars studying them (Varga and Buzogány, 2022), we term national-conservatism and consider a new paradigm of right-wing politics on a global scale.¹ We thus contribute to the literature on the ‘Global Right’ but extend it in some crucial ways. We go beyond an intellectual history of ideological networks (De Orellana and Michelsen, 2019; Drolet and Williams, 2021) and view national-conservatism as a phenomenon impacting on, as well as being conditioned by, the interaction between state power and party systems. We offer a genuinely global account, incorporating trajectories of right-wing politics in Latin America, Asia and the Muslim world to a debate that often claims global applicability but in practice remains focused on Europe and North America. Finally, we relate the evolution of the political right to international and structural developments, placing it within the broader setting of a changing globalised economy.

We consider the rise of national-conservatism to be internationally embedded, responding to as well as accentuating processes of crisis of neoliberal globalisation, and bringing about the territorial segmentation of transnational neoliberalism. It legitimises this transformation and helps it navigate multiple contradictions. We identify three such inflection points in the last 20 years: 9/11 and its aftermath, the GFC of 2008, and the rise of China. Using the concept of the transnational class coalition, we see these crises as posing a compounded challenge to neoliberalism, leading the transnational neoliberal class to seek in state power and territoriality (Alami et al., 2021) a shelter from class upheaval, technological and financial disruption, and Chinese state-capitalism. As the latest in a series of ‘ideologies of globalisation’ (de Wilde, 2019; Rupert, 2000; Steger, 2005), national-conservatism reconciles contradicting demands for protection from the crises of globalisation by presenting national neoliberalism as an asset to be protected and deployed against geopolitical competitors.

In practice, national-conservatism emerges from the fusion of previously dominant paradigms of mainstream right politics with their populist and radical contenders. In the Global North, this concerns the infiltration, displacement, or merger between the once-dominant neoliberal centre-right and the populist radical right. In the Global South, it concerns the adoption of populism – formerly emerging from the left (Ionescu and Gellner, 1969) or neoliberal forces (Phongpaichit and Baker, 2008; Weyland, 1999) – by conservative and religious-political movements (Tuğal, 2009). Everywhere, this new paradigm generates mass support for strategies of state adaptation to a structural environment in crisis, domesticating transnational forces and harnessing them for its own purpose (Altınörs and Akçay, 2022) while sheltering neoliberalism from external competition.

We recognise that right-wing movements have diverse lineages (Varga and Buzogány, 2022). The potency of national-conservatism consists in that it incorporates elements from multiple traditions of the right: mainstream, radical, extreme, religious/traditionalist, etc. While this is a global process, we of course acknowledge that the trajectories of the impact of populism on the mainstream right and the emergence of national-conservatism will differ between world regions, as different starting points in Western Europe, post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America will condition different outcomes in terms of policy outlook of these actors. Yet, despite these differences, national-conservatism around the world exhibits certain common traits. We identify three of those. First, national-conservatism accepts the need for economic statecraft, re-politicising activities that under the neoliberal paradigm were seen as technocratic and depoliticised. Second, it radicalises traditional hierarchies like religion, race, gender, and ethnicity to underpin its vision of an authoritarian domestic order. Finally, it adopts an aggressive foreign policy posture against, invariably, traditional enemies or international institutions, allowing it to present neoliberal sovereigntism as necessary tool against foreign adversaries.

Our analysis incorporates a burgeoning literature on populism, conservatism, and nationalism and places it in the context of the evolving debate about the paradigmatic ‘shift of axis’ in the study of the global political economy (Kutlay and Öniş, 2021). The integration of approaches across international and comparative politics and critical political economy enables a critical comprehension of national-conservatism. This allows us to surpass the conventional dichotomy pitting neoliberalism (predominant in the Global North) against developmentalism (prevalent in the Global South). National-conservatism, by its nature, does not accept correspond to these divisions. Of course, we are conscious that the policy content of national-conservatism will take very different forms depending on the regional context, from a revamped statism in post-Communist Eastern Europe to a defiant fundamentalist neoliberalism in Latin America. There is a common thread in all these varieties of national-conservatism, however, and it is the way they all emerge and become articulated as a territorialised, national-based response to the crisis of transnational neoliberal globalisation.

Our article seeks to not only bridge existing theoretical gaps but also provide a more comprehensive understanding of contemporary IPE’s blind spots (Best et al., 2021; LeBaron et al., 2020). We strive to illuminate marginal perspectives and overlooked trends within global political economy and to transcend antiquated dichotomies, embracing a more nuanced, inclusive, and globally informed theoretical framework. As exemplified by Helleiner’s (2021) exploration of economic nationalism, our approach aligns with the acknowledgement of gaps in political economy scholarship, particularly in comprehending unconventional manifestations like US populist conservatism or post-communist right-wing economic statism. Drawing inspiration from historical thinkers like Henry Carey and Sun Yat-sen, we also endeavour to enrich our understanding of contemporary economic nationalism by challenging methodological nationalism and viewing political phenomena through a global lens. Similarly, as elucidated by Gamble (2021), we emphasise equally economic and political dynamics. Finally, in alignment with Singh’s (2021) critique, we foreground the cultural embeddedness of historical and contemporary political economy dynamics.

The article proceeds in the following way. First, we discuss the theoretical relationship between the state and transnational neoliberalism, arguing that the current juncture of crisis in globalisation is an evolution in the role that state power always plays in the reproduction of neoliberalism. Second, we discuss the distinct role that the right plays as a mode of mass incorporation and legitimation of the priorities of state power. We then outline the international structural changes that have given rise to national-conservatism, identifying distinct trajectories for its emergence in different world regions. The subsequent section presents the main characteristics of this new national-conservatism by way of an empirical demonstration in the main states in which we claim this political family has emerged. The final section concludes.

Re-stating globalisation: The state in transnational neoliberalism

How can we understand the role of the (nation) state in neoliberal globalisation? While classical political economy advocates for a clear demarcation and a preference for market mechanisms over state intervention, the comprehension of the intricate interplay between these two entities has been far from clear. The discourse on the nature of state-market relations has not only captivated the attention of classical figures like Smith, Ricardo, List, and Marx but also contemporary voices like Hayek, Schumpeter, and Polanyi. This debate brought about the engagement of various International Relations/International Political Economy (IR/IPE) luminaries such as Gilpin, Waltz, Cox, and Strange over the course of the twentieth century.

The classical doctrine of laissez-faire espouses minimal state intervention. However, it did not preclude the role of the state in certain historical periods. Notably, the Keynesian framework underscored the state’s economic role through the implementation of the welfare state. Nonetheless, with the ascendancy of neoliberalism globally, the state initiated a ‘retreat’ from economic domains, including strategic areas such as telecommunications. Neoliberalism, at its core, champions the ideals of a free market and the unobservable forces of the ‘invisible hand’. This reflects a return to the foundational tenets of classical liberalism, with a focus on ‘the disembedding of the market from state’ (Bruff, 2014). Remarkably, proponents of the ‘hyper-globalist’ stance have contended that the state is becoming obsolete (Ohmae, 1995; compared with Bieler and Morton, 2014). Nonetheless, contrasting perspectives staunchly assert that states remain pivotal in the global political economy. According to this view, the post-1970s era has witnessed the ‘internationalisation’ of the state (Hirst, 1997), a phenomenon characterised by complex interactions that transcend national borders.

Transnationalisation is not synonymous with a departure from the inter-state system per se; rather, it accentuates intricate production processes that span the confines of at least two nation-states. As articulated by Robinson (2004: 21), ‘transnational capital has become the dominant, or hegemonic, fraction of capital on a world scale’. Notably, in the wake of the GFC, many commentators contended that there was a resurgence of the state (Alami and Dixon, 2020), particularly in light of the ascendance of emerging economies. The rise of these distinct ‘unorthodox’ political economies signalled a shift towards a model of ‘state capitalism’ epitomised by China and Russia. Here, the state assumes a pivotal role in shaping economic policy (Kutlay and Öniş, 2022). A concomitant development has been the proliferation of authoritarian populism (Jayasuriya, 2020), further underscoring the state’s evolving role. For some (Cooper and Aitchison, 2020), this transformation heralds a paradigmatic shift and a potential displacement of the previously dominant neoliberal ethos.

Despite these perspectives, our analysis contends that viewing the state and market as externally distinct and self-contained entities, engaged in movements and counter-movements between them, is problematic (see also Bieler and Morton, 2018). Consequently, seeing neoliberalism as a quintessential archetype wherein the state is perpetually detached and receding from the economy is oversimplified. We instead understand neoliberalism as a regime of capital accumulation, wherein the purported cleavage between state and market is not preordained. On the contrary, the state assumes economic stewardship along neoliberal principles. Through this more nuanced conceptual lens, we can better understand the state’s multifaceted involvement in transnational processes.

Neoliberal orthodoxy nominally advocates for depoliticisation and technocratisation of economic decision-making. Both tenets are predicated upon the presupposed separation of state and market. Similarly, the prevalent narrative posits nationalism and neoliberalism, particularly in the context of free trade, as fundamentally incompatible (Harmes, 2012). Nevertheless, notably catalysed by the reverberations of the GFC, states across the world have pivoted towards a rejuvenated repoliticised economic decision-making. A conspicuous aspect of this recalibration is the state’s endeavour to address the socio-economic predicaments of the crisis but through the prism of bolstering economic growth within the prevailing neoliberal paradigm. Intriguingly, this phenomenon underscores that the hegemonic position of neoliberalism does not emanate solely from the primacy of market mechanisms but also from the steadfast pursuit of economic growth (Arsel et al., 2021). This allows a critical understanding of strategies like repoliticisation or nationalism – that conventionally stand in contrast to the neoliberal paradigm – within the very fabric of neoliberalism itself. This highlights the ideological contradictions, most notably of the entrenched state-market dichotomy, in the core tenets of neoliberalism.

Transnationalism is not immune to this interplay either. Tellingly, Gill (1995) posited the notion of ‘disciplinary neoliberalism’, underscoring how legal reconfiguration tends to favour dominant entities, notably transnational groups. Cox (1981) highlighted the overlay of global class structures over national ones. Robinson (2004), meanwhile, propounded the notion of a pervasive hegemony exerted by transnational capital. As production processes and societal classes extend into transnational domains, a concurrent evolution is discernible in the very nature of the state, which assumes a transnational guise. This transformative trajectory, as delineated by Robinson (2003: 6), encapsulates the ascendancy of transnational capital and the subsequent eclipse of the nation-state as the organising principle of the capitalist structure.

Yet, the transnational state thesis encounters a challenge in its tendency to perceive transnationalisation as monolithic and consistent. Global processes inherently encompass diverse national and local attributes, like the intensification of radicalised religious and national identities. These localised elements, in turn, significantly impact the concept of ‘territoriality’ acting as a haven for neoliberalism’s sustenance, providing it with a spatial or geopolitical advantage against other transnational processes, such as global progressive movements, that may challenge it.

In sum, we view the state as essential in the imposition of transnational neoliberalism in previous decades and, therefore, as a crucial parameter for its restructuring and (partial) scaling back today. The state has been an essential partner, enabler and enforcer of capital accumulation and constant push for economic growth sought by the neoliberal elite; and it has allowed itself to be penetrated by, while also reconstituting elements of its power in, networks of transnational governance (Lee and McBride, 2007). This forces us to go beyond simple arguments about the ‘return of the state’ and instead explore how the always relevant and present state negotiates contradictions of both neoliberal accumulation and transnationalism in a period of crisis like today.

Mirroring the post-1929 crisis era, the recent surge in the state’s involvement nationally and globally was presented as the principal antidote to economic crisis in the aftermath of the GFC. However, this expectation was unfolding among seismic geopolitical shifts. The rise of emerging economies in the Global South, China’s ascent and the amplified prominence of development banks, state enterprises, and sovereign wealth funds spotlighted the pivotal role assumed by the state in the economic sphere (Alami, 2023). Nonetheless, our perspective contests the notion that these developments equate an absolute shift from free-market capitalism towards a state-controlled planned economy. The growing role of the state does not necessarily signal its triumph over the market; on the contrary, it may rather mean that the state acts in alliance with national capitalist interests, bolstering its resilience against global competition.

A similar scenario unfolds relative to the welfare state. Different from the post-war Keynesian paradigm, the post-GFC phase witnessed the state’s strategic utilisation of the welfare state, albeit with the intent of perpetuating neoliberalism. Nevertheless, the dynamics through which this interaction unfolds differ across geopolitical contexts, manifesting invariably as dependent development (Scheiring, 2021) or neoliberal statism (Tuğal, 2023). Concurrently, we claim that contemporary state-led economic paradigms materialise in an ‘uneven and combined’ manner, via interactive, multifaceted, and multilinear trajectories (Alami, 2023). It is in this context that national-conservatism serves as a vital conduit that binds the growing economic influence of states with the amplified prominence of traditional values, from which it draws its legitimacy.

The lure of tradition: Reproducing state power from the right

How does the political right affect the interaction of the state with transnational forces and international change? Generally, there are two perspectives in the study of the right. One identifies the right with specific groups, usually elites and those at the top of economic hierarchy defending their privileges (Moore, 1966; Rogowski, 1989). The second identifies right-wing politics with specific ideologies of reaction to progress and promotion of a hierarchical view of politics (Müller, 2006). While both perspectives are descriptively correct, they underestimate the distinct way that the right mediates between political power and society.

First, perspectives that view parties of the right as transmission belts of the preferences of economic elites underestimate the autonomy of conservative actors. Indeed, the rise of mass-based parties of the right cannot be understood outside of their deliberate strategies to broaden their appeal beyond the narrow demands of their aristocratic and capitalist patrons (Kalyvas, 1996; Ziblatt, 2017). Second, perspectives that identify right-wing politics with backwards-looking attitudes underestimate the ability of parties of the right to strategically choose the ideational attachments that can transform into mass political identities (Gidron, 2022). This explains why successful parties of the mainstream right have historically been able to construct large and heterogeneous coalitions beyond their core support (Gidron and Ziblatt, 2019; Wajner, 2022). In this way, they differ fundamentally from the far right, which typically remains a mouthpiece for fundamentalist sections of anti-democratic elites or for popular groups fully hostile to the democratic process.

By brokering multiple elite interests and attracting support across class barriers, parties of the right are important for legitimising the adaptation and reproduction of political and economic power, especially as they re-articulate their interests in non-material and value-based terms with broad popular appeal. Indeed, large parties of the right have historically been crucial in delivering mass support to the choices of political authority. Christian-democratic parties in post-war Europe for example were important in generating mass support in favour of European integration on the basis of transnational Christian values (Marks and Wilson, 2000). More recently, centre-right parties in Western democracies normalised both economic neoliberalism and the loss of national sovereignty under globalisation and its regional iterations like the EU (Kriesi et al., 2008).

We assume then that the relative strength and ideology of the major party of the right in a political regime largely determine the ideational terms of the bargains under which political and economic elites manage and reconcile international and domestic pressures (Katzenstein, 1984). By extension, changes in this character of the right signal the potential deconstruction of these bargains. For example, religious movements like Christian democracy in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and political Islamism and Hinduism today challenge the elites associated with secular and authoritarian state bureaucracies. This leads to the development of a new legitimating basis for the political regime on the basis of conservative and traditionalist values.

It is within this framework that we can also understand the role of the far right that has long been seen as pillar of ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ (Bruff and Tansel, 2019) or, more recently, ‘neo-illiberalism’ (Hendrikse, 2018). While most of the time, the far right indeed serves as the disciplining arm of capitalism (Saull et al., 2014), it is also a repository of alternative projects of political and economic modernity. Especially through its adoption of populism since the end of the Cold War, the far right in both the Global North and South embarked on a counter-hegemonic assault on important facets of neoliberal globalisation, especially the erosion of sovereignty. While for a certain period, this meant that far-right populism was convenient for transnational neoliberalism by undercutting emancipatory mobilisation from the left, through a prolonged period of crisis, these actors developed new ideas of organising state power and its relationship with capital accumulation (Anievas and Saull, 2023; Davidson and Saull, 2017). The injection of populism from the radical into the mainstream right resulted precisely in such a shift: the rise of national-conservatism, the ideology of territorially segmented neoliberalism.

The transformation of the right during the long crisis of globalisation

We identify three junctures in the fragmentation of transnational neoliberalism in the last 20 years: 9/11 and the ensuing ‘War on Terror’, the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and the rise of China and attendant geopolitical competition. Each juncture affected transnational neoliberalism in different ways depending on the regional and national context. It has also played out differently in political arenas depending on the specific conditions of each region. Yet the central direction of all these changes has been the convergence of right-wing politics towards a new hegemonic model of national-conservatism. We argue that this process plays out especially in the established liberal democracies of Western Europe and North America, in post-communist liberal democracies of Central-Eastern Europe (CEE), in Latin America, and in Asia and the Muslim world.

Beginning with Western political systems, the first decade of the twenty-first century saw the consolidation of both the mainstream right as the main political force and of the populist far right as the long arm of authoritarian neoliberalism. During this period, centre-right parties in Western democracies overtook the ‘third way’ social democracy as the main exponent of neoliberalism, combining free-market economics with a moderate treatment of questions of migration, multiculturalism, security and law and order (Kriesi et al., 2008), also feeding on the climate of the ‘war on terror’ preoccupied with borders and security (Coleman, 2007; Lafer, 2004). This centre-right, however, also held a commitment to multilateralism and substantial curbs on national sovereignty. This period also saw the strengthening of the populist radical right based on its ‘winning formula’ (Kitschelt, 1995) of radicalisation of the question of migration and anti-welfare neoliberalism. The populist right had an ambiguous relationship with transnational neoliberalism, helping legitimise neoliberal economics while nominally defending sovereignty against globalisation. Yet the active securitisation of the international system at the time also meant that the Western populist radical right was in many ways in tune with major global trends.

This period also saw the consolidation of a mass-based mainstream right in other regions of the world, often with a religious underpinning. In Turkey and India, political-religious movements (Muslim and Hindu, respectively) challenged the hold of secular bureaucratic and political elites and their associated economic interests, putting forward a strong agenda of economic liberalisation (Bozkurt, 2013; Gopalakrishnan, 2006). In Latin America, on the other hand, where neoliberalism had been imposed in the 1990s largely by populist entrepreneurs (Weyland, 1999), the 2000s saw the region become a hotbed of counter-hegemonic politics, with the rise of the left-wing, populist and anti-imperialist ‘pink tide’ with a quite ambiguous relationship with transnational neoliberalism. In this context, the Latin American right merely sought to survive and consolidate, accepting the rules of the democratic game in a hostile environment for its ideas (Luna and Rovira-Kaltwasser, 2014).

The GFC radically challenged the relationship of the mainstream right with transnational neoliberalism while providing new openings to populism in the Global North and South. While the mainstream centre-right stuck by neoliberal economics in the Global North, trying to counter the effects of the crisis through austerity (Lee and Beech, 2011; Scharpf, 2011), the populist radical right saw an opening to broaden its audience by addressing questions of economic, as opposed to only cultural, discontent. Without fully embracing redistribution, it started distancing itself from outright neoliberalism, while linking more explicitly its cultural chauvinism to the economic challenges of the time, for example by presenting immigration as a factor of economic injustice (Rydgren, 2013). The only remnant of doctrinaire authoritarian neoliberalism in this period was the US Tea Party, which, supported by powerful business and corporate interests, tried to revamp discredited neoliberalism as anti-statist populism (Skocpol and Williamson, 2016). The dominance of neoliberalism was even perceptible in one of its formerly safest environments, the post-Communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, where the GFC undermined the legitimacy of various elements of the transition of the 1990s and began to give birth to concerted anti-neoliberal and anti-liberal political moves (Bluhm and Varga, 2019).

On a global level, the effect of the GFC was to challenge the dominance of the United States and Western preponderance. In particular, it increased the allure of state intervention, as, at the time, the so-called BRICs and emerging economies were seen as performing better than neoliberal Western economies (Stephen, 2014). However, the years after the GFC unfolded in contradicting ways in the Global South. The rise of far-right populism in the West was mirrored by the increasing adoption of populism by religious movements in India, Turkey and other Muslim countries, many of which had espoused liberal economics in the past (Hadiz, 2014). They sought, on the one hand, to reaffirm their links with the masses and, on the other, to renew their anti-establishment credentials, often directed against an unrepresentative Western-led international order. In Latin America, on the other hand, global shifts ultimately undermined the formerly dominant anti-neoliberal left and its extractivist economics. With the exhaustion of left-wing populism, the space opened for the right to adopt populism to absorb popular frustrations (Weld, 2020: 63–64).

These trends reached an inflection point in the second half of the 2010s, which saw a radical reversal of the balance between the formerly mainstream and the populist right. In English-speaking democracies, populist insurgencies swept aside the establishment of two neoliberal conservative parties in 2016, leading to the imposition of formerly marginalised ideas like economic protectionism and tariffs for Trump in the United States (Lamp, 2018) and emphasis on state-led regional policies in favour of ‘left-behind’ areas for post-Brexit Conservatives in the United Kingdom (Peele, 2021). In both cases, heterodox and post-neoliberal economics translated into the economic field a strong preoccupation with national and cultural sovereignty (Eatwell and Goodwin, 2018). Similar regimes have been erected in Poland and Hungary, where conservative parties adopted a strong populism (directed against liberal ‘elites’ at home and abroad, especially in Brussels) combined with interventionist and welfare-based policies (Bluhm and Varga, 2019).

In Latin America as well the mainstream right, in many cases the direct heir of authoritarian traditions and anti-democratic political, economic and military establishments (Weld, 2020), has been infiltrated by populism, which served these parties to assault the governments of the ‘pink tide’ for their failures and corruption. With Brazil’s Bolsonaro being the most prominent example, but cases also in Argentina and Chile, the populist right is imposing itself as the new paradigm of right-wing politics in the region, drawing heavily on the 1990s Western European ‘winning formula’ of cultural authoritarianism and populist economic anti-statism (Kestler, 2022).

While populism is commonly presented as a threat to the consensus of transnational neoliberalism and the liberal international order (Broz et al., 2021), one can wonder, on the other hand, whether this so-called ‘consensus’ is anymore dominant in a world fragmented by geopolitical strains around the rise of China and military crises like Russia’s war on Ukraine. These developments have fully normalised the subjection of economic considerations to the political, strategic and security priorities of states. Economic interdependence is now becoming ‘weaponised’ (Farrell and Newman, 2019) and powerful economic actors must adapt to the wishes of security establishments and concerns of elected politicians, while looking to them for protection against state-backed competitors from other countries, chiefly China (Foroohar, 2022; Miller, 2022).

In this climate, the challenges that populism posed to transnational neoliberalism in the previous decade appear no longer as aberration but as precursor of a new equilibrium, where states reassert control over parts of neoliberal capitalism while still pursuing capital accumulation as crucial parameter of national strength and security. Fusing ideas and forces of the previously mainstream neoliberal centre-right with its right-wing populist challengers, national-conservatism emerges as a new model of right-wing politics in a new phase of neoliberal globalisation. Table 1 demonstrates the different trajectories by which the mainstream right has morphed, under the influence of populism, into national-conservatism in various world regions.

Table 1.

Trajectories of emergence of national-conservatism.

	Pre-crisis mainstream right	Populist interjections in response to global crises	The emergence of national-conservatism
Western Europe and North America	Conservative-liberal centre-right; economically neoliberal and socially moderate; heavily pro-globalisation	Populist radical right; mobilises chiefly around the question of migration; originally neoliberal but since GFC adopts social and protectionist profile	Populism takes hold of established conservative parties (United States, United Kingdom), PRR displaces centre-right as mainstream force of the right (France, Italy); merging territorial and neoliberal mindsets; targeting new social issues (‘woke’) against ‘liberal elites’
Central and Eastern Europe	Post-Communist centre-right; heavily neoliberal, pro-globalisation and pro-Western	Mobilisation of traditional conservative forces against ‘liberal elites’ that dominated transition; attract ‘transition losers’	Conservative-populist fusions; against neoliberalism of transition elites, use state tools to regulate national economies; anti-Western, anti-liberal discourses
Asia, Middle East	Religious-political movements opposing secular state elites; economically liberal and pro-globalisation; anti-statist	Populism adopted by religious-political actors in light of weakening of the West after GFC; targeting secular state elites in order to attract disgruntled strata	Formerly moderate religious parties adopt populism and nationalism; posture of defiance towards Western powers and institutions; use of traditional religious values to legitimise increasing authoritarianism
Latin America	Neoliberal right; strong emphasis on economy and law and order; pro-US geopolitical orientation	Populism initially used by the left (‘pink tide’); however, failures of the left allow the right to present itself as opponents of the ‘system’	Rediscovery of authoritarian, militarist, anti-democratic traditions; neoliberalism as defiance against new international mainstream (climate and human rights); accent on ‘traditional values’, esp. religion

What national-conservatism stands for

We see national-conservatives forming a global political family, conscious that this concept does not imply completely similar policies across all cases (Mair and Mudde, 1998). The notion of political family was developed to analyse ideological similarities between parties primarily at the regional level, so a novelty of our approach is that we use it here in a cross-regional scale. Rather, we outline the profile of national-conservatism in terms of three broad ideological categories whose application will differ based on regional context, institutional setup, and the specificities of a state’s geopolitical location. We acknowledge that this section has illustrative purposes and serves as an empirical probe and demonstration of the processes we highlight, rather than identify an end-point of the policy outlook of these actors. We do argue, however, that there is a striking similarity in these three ideological categories that national-conservatives around the world use. Our examples draw from the four core regions/trajectories of national-conservatism we identified (Western liberal democracies, post-communist CEE, Latin America and Asia). They generally demonstrate an interesting dynamic of general similarities and local divergences spanning the global, regional and national levels.

A new economic activism

National-conservatism embraces the primacy of politics over economics. This does not mean that national-conservatives reject neoliberalism’s core objective of capital accumulation. Rather, they use state power to steer the economic process towards some pre-defined political goals, while using the fruits of capital accumulation to support them. In this sense, influenced by populism’s suspicion of technocratic elites located beyond the reach of the nation-state in international institutions and governance networks (Chryssogelos, 2020), national-conservatives are more interested in curbing neoliberalism’s transnational character than challenging its economic philosophy.

The two most prominent examples of disruption of transnational neoliberalism from inside the Western core have been Donald Trump’s tariffs and the exit of the United Kingdom from the EU. Both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, who ended up signing a very restrictive trade agreement with the EU, broke with big parts of the business community that their parties were long affiliated with. These choices were crucial for both leaders to cement their new coalition that included a disaffected working-class electorate (Gest, 2016). Trump’s tariffs and Brexit symbolised the break from ‘expert’ economic opinion, articulating domestic economic justice as protection from foreign foes.

Other national-conservative regimes have attempted to curb transnational neoliberalism as well. In Poland, the PiS government (which lost power in 2023 after 8 years in power) focused on reducing the dependency of the national banking system as well as of the press industry on foreign investors, chiefly German ones (Cienski and Tamma, 2020; see also the dependent financialisation literature, e.g. Pataccini, 2021). While PiS always agreed with the core neoliberal tenet of FDI attraction to sustain Poland’s high growth rates, it was also not afraid to antagonise foreign capital in sectors it deemed sensitive for national sovereignty. Fostering a new indigenous and ideologically loyal capitalist class helped PiS achieve more economic sovereignty for Poland and strengthen its own grip on power (Jasiecki, 2019). The regimes of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey and Narendra Modi in India are also similarly entwined with a new business class and favoured businessmen.

Tampering with independent economic institutions is something national-conservatives are much more comfortable with than orthodox right-wing neoliberals of the past. Soon after his return to power in 2010, for example, Viktor Orban strengthened his government’s control over the central bank of Hungary (Johnson and Barnes, 2015). Erdogan has famously clashed with Turkish central bankers (sacking four governors in 3 years), economic experts and his own ministers because they challenge his efforts to gear the economy ahead of elections. In India, Modi undertook a disruptive currency reform that was framed as a popular struggle against elites (Safi, 2017).

Perhaps the biggest challenge to neoliberal orthodoxy has been the return of once-discredited industrial policy as a tool of economic statecraft. Many national-conservatives view industry and business as an instrument of national power and security in light of both the experience of the GFC and competition from state-backed Chinese companies. In the United States and the United Kingdom, industrial policy has been endorsed by national-conservatives as ex post response to the disruptions of trade and investment that decoupling from China and the EU would cause, respectively. In the case of the United States, this initially inchoate and incoherent policy by Trump has subsequently been formalised and implemented rigorously by the Biden administration. In other states, industrial policy is part of a well-developed project of bolstering national economic sovereignty. In Poland, PiS supported the creation of a ‘national champion’ in the energy sector (Notes from Poland, 2022), as does the AKP in Turkey in the arms industry (Oxford Analytica, 2019).

While national-conservatives leave neoliberal arrangements at home largely intact (Szabolcs, 2020), some of them have taken the question of welfare and redistribution more seriously than others. This was especially the case with PiS in Poland that aimed to reverse the inequalities of the post-communist transition (Jasiecki, 2019: 141–142). Having said this, the policies of PiS revealed a strongly conservative ideological agenda whereby the counter-movement against neoliberalism also aimed to strengthen the traditional family, emphasise women’s traditional role as a mother and wife and imbue conservative values in a modern capitalist political economy (Wierzcholska, 2019). This is in line with many other national-conservatives, who may accept the core premises of neoliberalism but also try to re-appropriate it and transform it from a force of disruption of traditional social bonds and mores (as many social liberals celebrated it in the 1990s) to a tool to re-introduce traditional conservative values (Fischer, 2020; Orenstein and Bugaric, 2022).

Mobilising tradition

National-conservatives express a reinforced emphasis on traditional social and conservative hierarchies along national, ethnic, religious or racial lines. National-conservatism combines in varying ways mainstream conservatism’s effort to preserve traditional hierarchies and use them to construct large cross-class coalitions with the far right’s radical exclusionism and targeting of specific groups deemed ‘deviant’, ‘threatening’, etc. There is a double movement in the fusion of national-conservatism: as conservative parties, movements or personalities strategically adopt populism to present traditional hierarchies as threatened, the far right, after years of posing as self-consciously modern (Minkenberg, 2000), re-discovers traditional hierarchies with broad popular appeal as it becomes mainstream.

Characteristically, many far-right parties in recent years posed as socially progressive, for example, by appropriating feminism and gay rights as values threatened by Islam (Duina and Carson, 2020). Similarly, Trump entered the 2016 presidential race focused on the question of immigration, declaring himself agnostic on questions of the traditional conservative agenda like abortion (Timmons, 2019). Yet in both cases, as these actors moved to the mainstream, they became loud advocates of religion, moral conservatism and traditional values presumably under threat by international and domestic elites. In Latin America, on the other hand, actors of the economically neoliberal/libertarian right find in traditional values and hierarchies (religion and race) a way to reach out to broader audiences (Kestler, 2022).

In the opposite direction, established conservative parties (like the Republicans and the Conservatives) or ideological religious movements (like in Turkey and India) have adopted populism’s binary and polarising logic as a response to the crisis of globalisation. For example, in the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections in 2023, anti-gay (anti-women to some extent), anti-Kurdish and anti-refugee rhetoric dominated the political arena for both the government and the opposition, with far-right and ultra-Islamist parties strengthening in power.

Once established in a party system, national-conservatism uses moral hierarchies to attract cross-class support for a new form of renationalised neoliberalism under the tutelage of activist states. National-conservatives accentuate demands once put forward by classical social conservatives, like anti-abortion positions in the US and Poland or religiosity in Latin America, while taking on board the radical identity politics of ethnicity and race that the far right had mobilised. Often, as nod to conservative elites, these leaders opportunistically adopt morally conservative and traditionalist tropes, like Trump and Bolsonaro aligning with the Evangelical movement, or Viktor Orban adopting a Christian civilisational discourse, even though religion featured very little in his rhetoric previously (Lamour, 2022).

National-conservatives adopt an intense posture and performativity of conservative values even in regions where social modernisation has advanced, like in Western Europe. Even there, they constantly re-discover conservative causes and act as last-ditch resistance against menacing new agendas like black radicalism, ‘woke’ and ‘gender’ ideology, the ‘LGBT lobby’, etc. Paradoxically, as happened in countries like Italy and France, actors of the far right who spent years painstakingly modernising their profile now find it expedient to revert to traditionalism, as they usurp the place of retreating mainstream centre-right parties played (Euractiv, 2022).

Foreign policy

Foreign policy is of major importance for national-conservative strategies, especially for fostering linkages with their audience and for the coherence of their ideological and policy profile (Varga and Buzogány, 2021). Foreign policy serves as a discourse and posture that allows the sovereigntist and conservative elements of their ideology to play out in a highly symbolic and performative way. In this way, foreign policy does not only underpin their domestic choices but also helps them overcome contradictions and frustrated promises by mobilising against outsiders.

In previous decades, populists approached the international system primarily via the lens of opposition to neoliberal globalisation and the unipolar dominance of the United States (Chryssogelos, 2011; Dodson and Dorraj, 2008). This perception informed more recent analyses that saw the emerging right-wing populism as a threat to the ‘liberal international order’. The idea was that politicians who reject political liberalism (and choose strategic autonomy to accentuate the geo-economic role of the nation-state) at home and oppose the role of multilateral institutions abroad were inherently incompatible with that order (Balfour et al., 2016). Britain’s exit from the EU, Trump’s assault on NATO and the WTO, Erdogan’s anti-Western foreign policy or Bolsonaro’s rejection of international climate commitments seemed to validate this perspective.

The role of national-conservatives, however, is more nuanced than that. While it is true that many of them oppose various facets of the liberal international order, they also at the same time engage with others, sometime even enthusiastically adopting international commitments and supporting international regimes. The activism of the Johnson government in the G7, G20 and COP settings, Modi’s interest in contributing to ‘global public goods’ (Plagemann and Destradi, 2019), and the steady embrace of free trade by almost all of these leaders bar Trump (who is an idiosyncratic case in this respect), challenge the perspective that this new type of right-wing politics is a full-on assault on the liberal international order (Varga and Buzogány, 2022). If anything, and despite increasing frictions, these leaders typically do not exit the international organisation they are part of (the major exception is the UK): Turkey is always a member of NATO, Poland and Hungary of the EU and so on. On major issues, national-conservatives even clash with each other, like once reliable allies Orban and PiS over Ukraine and Russia (Chryssogelos, 2021).

The foreign policy of national-conservatism is not uniform across cases and policy areas. What distinguishes it is a distinct method and style that combines personalisation around the performance of the leader on the international stage (Destradi and Plagemann, 2019), its active linkage with domestic networks of communication and mass mobilisation (Boucher and Thies, 2019), a repoliticisation of international regimes through a more transactional mindset, and the use of foreign policy to articulate and legitimise as part of a struggle against international foes an economic order that does not veer too far from the neoliberal paradigm.

Viewed this way, the foreign policy of national-conservatives is indeed distinctive, even if contradictory. The post-Brexit Conservative governments in the United Kingdom, for example, have tried to reconcile exit from the EU with a hyper-internationalist discourse of ‘Global Britain’ that strikes trade deals, leads on climate change and encourages the Western response against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The aim here is to signal domestically that the UK has been ‘unleashed’ from Brussels (Turner, 2019), so that engaging with international issues becomes essentially a high performativity of independence. Modi’s generally mainstream foreign policy can also be viewed in the same way, particularly if placed in the long Indian tradition of seeking to elevate the country to the status of a major world power (Destradi and Plagemann, 2019).

Strongly informed by the populist mindset, national-conservative foreign policy is also an opportunity to flaunt anti-establishment credentials and keep followers mobilised against domestic elites (Wojczewski, 2020). Thus, Trump’s tariffs went against the conventional wisdom among experts and economists, acting as an opportunity to demonstrate to his base his commitment to restore sovereignty (Lamp, 2018). Similarly, articulation of various foreign policy issues in Poland, especially in terms of restoking historical rivalries with neighbours and frustrations against Brussels, helped PiS to signal to its followers how it was different from previous liberal governments (Cadier and Szulecki, 2020). The ebbs and flows of Erdogan’s foreign policy towards neighbours, the EU and the United States closely correlate as well with his efforts to polarise against or attract various domestic constituencies in Turkey, especially ahead of elections.

National-conservative foreign policy is also distinguished by a strong transnational streak. In the EU, the alliance between Poland and Hungary based on ‘conservative values’ against ‘liberal Brussels’ is well-known. Orban, Kaczynski, Le Pen, Salvini, and other right-wing leaders have by now a long tradition of meetings and transnational party cooperation, which they use as opportunities, among other things, to de-demonise their profile and adopt a less menacing and more coherent conservative outlook (McDonnell and Werner, 2019). There have also been efforts to develop policy-based cooperation based on conservative ideology, although practical results are limited. Orban and Bolsonaro, for example, discussed promoting conservative values in the UN (Hungary Today, 2017). PiS invested in its relationship with Trump to infuse Poland’s traditional Atlanticism with a shared understanding of Western conservative values (Chryssogelos, 2021).

A hostile anti-liberal and anti-institutionalist foreign policy also helps national-conservatives square the circle of their promises to elevate the ‘people’ with their persistent adherence to neoliberalism. The antagonistic posture of national-conservatives in Latin America like Jair Bolsonaro against the liberal international order is particularly useful in a region where right-wing politics still espouses an unwieldy neoliberalism. If Latin American neoliberalism of the 1990s was riding the international mainstream, today’s Latin American nationalist and populist neoliberalism is actively antagonising a liberal international order that itself tries to adapt to immense challenges by opportunistically internalising progressive ideas of individual rights, human security, fight against climate change, etc. In this context, Bolsonaro’s antagonism towards the international liberal mainstream (Paixão e Casarões and Barros Leal Farias, 2022) re-packages domestic neoliberalism as national resistance against international ‘elites’ that are now much more concerned about externalities of globalisation like the depletion of the Amazon. In a sense, the crude neoliberalism of the Latin American right today and its clashes with the evolved liberal international mainstream reveal in a magnified and grotesque way the logic behind much of the foreign policy discourse and the domestic/interplay play of other national-conservatives.

The foreign policy of national-conservatism can amalgamate and fortify disparate paradigms and interests. A prime example is the juxtaposition of Global Britain, characterised by its neoliberal and expansionist orientation, with the nationalist and protectionist mindset of many Brexit supporters. For national-conservatives, the main purpose of foreign policy is to present IR as struggle for sovereignty and security in a menacing world. This can entail cultivating allies, usually based on ideological like-mindedness, as well as engaging with some multilateral institutions while politicising or undermining the work of others. Based on this vision of IR, external policy instruments are actively presented as remedies for domestic inequalities (e.g. protectionism to help ‘left-behind’ communities), while emphasising a hierarchical, disciplinarian perspective of traditional conservative values of family, the role of women and the place of minorities in a political economy geared towards serving the sovereignty and the interests of the state.

Conclusion

We have argued that a distinctive global political family has emerged as a direct response to a sequence of structural crises in transnational neoliberal globalisation in the past two decades. This political family, which we have termed ‘national-conservatism’, is gradually crystallising into a novel hegemonic paradigm of right-wing politics with distinct trajectories of emergence and shades of policy preferences in different regions. This paradigm is supplanting the erstwhile internationalist neoliberal centre-right and becoming the preeminent right-wing ideology under the current process of globalisation. While it maintains a distinct extremeness in its stances due to its newfound structural prominence within numerous party systems, national-conservatism plays now, for all intents and purposes, the pivotal role previously occupied by mainstream right-wing forces. Fundamentally, this role entails the assimilation of society into the strategic preferences and imperatives of the state, drawing upon hierarchical and traditional values.

Of course, national-conservatism’s hegemony is not preordained – as witnessed in the electoral defeats of Trump, Bolsonaro and PiS. National-conservatives will always have to grapple with the fundamental internal tension between neoliberalism’s transnational urge and the sovereigntist promises they make to their voters. Changing structural conditions may mean that this duality, that is today a source of strength, will become an unbearable contradiction in the future. For now, however, national-conservatism is a potent remedy to many of the challenges neoliberalism faces.

From the standpoint of IR and IPE, our analysis highlights the cross-regional parallels of national-conservatism as a global phenomenon. These shared traits encompass a more proactive orientation towards economic matters, a strategic utilisation of traditional values and hierarchical frameworks to bolster domestic cohesion necessary for the state’s competitive prowess and security, as well as a performative foreign policy that vociferously champions sovereignty and security. By tempering some of the excesses and encroachments on national sovereignty that were emblematic of neoliberalism, while upholding its fundamental pursuit of capital accumulation within distinct national sovereign confines, national-conservatism effectively revitalises neoliberalism by casting it as a national asset rather than an international peril. This recalibration contributes to the restoration of legitimacy, particularly within the confines of a global landscape shaped by emerging geopolitical rivalries that span realms of technology, resources, security, and spheres of influence. In the current era, defined increasingly by fresh geopolitical competitions, national-conservatism emerges as a novel ideology of globalisation. This designation is particularly pertinent as globalisation transitions from its transnational phase into a new stage, with profound implications for world politics.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2022 EISA conference in Athens, the 2023 ISA conference in Montreal, the 2023 EISA conference in Potsdam, and the 2023 EISA EWIS workshops in Amsterdam. We thank the participants in these meetings, especially Benjamin Tallis, Marine Roux, and Sybille Reinke de Buitrago, for their helpful comments. We particularly acknowledge Owen Worth for his detailed suggestions on an earlier draft of the article. We are grateful for the thorough comments of two anonymous reviewers and the editors of this journal. The authors also acknowledge the research assistance of Carla Bilson.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Gorkem Altinors

Notes

References

Abrahamsen

Williams

(2023) Transnational nationalists: Building a global radical right. Political Insight 14(3): 28–31.

Alami

(2023) Ten theses on the new state capitalism and its futures. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 55: 764–769.

Alami

Dixon

(2020) State capitalism(s) redux? Theories, tensions, controversies. Competition & Change 24(1): 70–94.

Alami

Dixon

Gonzalez-Vicente

, et al. (2021) Geopolitics and the ‘new’ state capitalism. Geopolitics 27(3): 995–1023.

Altınörs

Akçay

(2022) Authoritarian neoliberalism, crisis, and consolidation: The political economy of regime change in Turkey. Globalizations 19(7): 1029–1053.

Anievas

Saull

(2023) The far-right in world politics/world politics in the far right. Globalizations 20(5): 715–730.

Arsel

Adaman

Saad-Filho

(2021) Authoritarian developmentalism: The latest stage of neoliberalism? Geoforum 124: 261–266.

Bale

Rovira-Kaltwasser

(eds) (2021) Riding the Populist Wave: Europe’s Mainstream Right in Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Balfour

Emmanouilidis

Fieschi

, et al. (2016) Europe’s Troublemakers: The Populist Challenge to Foreign Policy. Brussels: European Policy Centre.

10.

Best

Hay

LeBaron

, et al. (2021) Seeing and not-seeing like a political economist: The historicity of contemporary political economy and its blind spots. New Political Economy 26(2): 217–228.

11.

Bieler

Morton

(2014) The Will-O’-the-Wisp of the transnational state. Journal of Australian Political Economy 72: 23–51.

12.

Bieler

Morton

(2018) Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

13.

Bluhm

Varga

(eds) (2019) New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe. New York: Routledge.

14.

Boucher

Thies

(2019) ‘I am a tariff man’: The power of populist foreign policy rhetoric under president Trump. Journal of Politics 81(2): 712–722.

15.

Bozkurt

(2013) Neoliberalism with a human face: Making sense of the justice and development party’s neoliberal populism in Turkey. Science and Society 77(3): 372–396.

16.

Broz

Frieden

Weymouth

(2021) Populism in place: The economic geography of the globalization backlash. International Organization 75(2): 464–494.

17.

Bruff

(2014) The rise of authoritarian neoliberalism. Rethinking Marxism 26(1): 113–129.

18.

Bruff

Tansel

(2019) Authoritarian neoliberalism: Trajectories of knowledge production and praxis. Globalizations 16(3): 233–244.

19.

Cadier

Szulecki

(2020) Populism, historical discourse and foreign policy: The case of Poland’s law and justice government. International Politics 57: 990–1011.

20.

Chryssogelos

(2011) Old Ghosts in New Sheets: European Populist Parties and Foreign Policy. Brussels: Centre for European Studies.

21.

Chryssogelos

(2020) State transformation and populism: From the internationalized to the neo-sovereign state? Politics 40(1): 22–37.

22.

Chryssogelos

(2021) Is There a Populist Foreign Policy? London: Chatham House.

23.

Cienski

Tamma

(2020) Poland’s state-run refiner becomes a media Baron. Politico, 7 December. Available at: https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-pkn-orlen-press-takeover-media-government-andrzej-duda/ (accessed 3 Aril 2024).

24.

Coleman

(2007) A geopolitics of engagement: Neoliberalism, the war on terrorism, and the reconfiguration of US immigration enforcement. Geopolitics 12(4): 607–634.

25.

Cooper

Aitchison

(2020) The Dangers Ahead: Covid-19, Authoritarianism and Democracy. London: LSE Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit.

26.

Cox

(1981) Social forces, states and world orders: Beyond international relations theory. Millennium 10(2): 126–155.

27.

Davidson

Saull

(2017) Neoliberalism and the far-right: A contradictory embrace. Critical Sociology 43(4-5): 707–724.

28.

Dearden

(2023) Bible verse, conspiracies and the ‘cult of trans’: The ultra-conservative Americans infiltrating the Tory party. The Independent, 19 May. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservative-party-conference-suella-braverman-michael-gove-b2341890.html (accessed 19 September 2023).

29.

De Orellana

Michelsen

(2019) Reactionary internationalism: The philosophy of the New Right. Review of International Studies 45(5): 748–767.

30.

Destradi

Plagemann

(2019) Populism and international relations: (Un)predictability, personalisation, and the reinforcement of existing trends in world politics. Review of International Studies 45(5): 711–730.

31.

de Wilde

(2019) The making of four ideologies of globalization. European Political Science Review 11(1): 1–18.

32.

Dodson

Dorraj

(2008) Populism and foreign policy in Venezuela and Iran. Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations 9: 71–87.

33.

Doval

Souroujon

(eds) (2021) Global Resurgence of the Right: Conceptual and Regional Perspectives. New York: Routledge.

34.

Drolet

Williams

(2021) The radical right, realism, and the politics of conservatism in post-war international thought. Review of International Studies 47: 273–293.

35.

Duina

Carson

(2020) When right meets left: On the progressive rhetoric of far-right populist parties in Europe. In: Greenfeld

(eds) Research Handbook on Nationalism. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp.22–33.

36.

Eatwell

Goodwin

(2018) National Populism: The Revolt against Liberal Democracy. London: Penguin.

37.

Edmund Burke Foundation (2023) Overview. Available at: www.nationalconservatism.org/about/ (accessed 19 September 2023).

38.

Euractiv (2022) ‘Woman, mother, Christian’ guides Italian far-right to brink of power. 10 August. Available at: https://www.euractiv.com/section/elections/news/woman-mother-christian-guides-italian-far-right-to-brink-of-power/ (accessed 19 September 2023).

39.

Farrell

Newman

(2019) Weaponized interdependence: How global economic networks shape state coercion. International Security 44(1): 42–79.

40.

Fischer

(2020) The dark sides of social policy: From neoliberalism to resurgent right-wing populism. Development and Change 51(2): 371–397.

41.

Foroohar

(2022) Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-global World. New York: Crown.

42.

Gamble

(2021) Making sense of populist nationalism. New Political Economy 26(2): 283–290.

43.

Gest

(2016) The New Minority: White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press.

44.

Gidron

(2022) Many ways to be right: Cross pressured voters in Western Europe. British Journal of Political Science 52(1): 146–161.

45.

Gidron

Ziblatt

(2019) Center-right political parties in advanced democracies. Annual Review of Political Science 22: 17–35.

46.

Gill

(1995) Globalisation, market civilisation, and disciplinary neoliberalism. Millennium 24(3): 399–423.

47.

Gopalakrishnan

(2006) Defining, constructing and policing a ‘New India’: Relationship between neoliberalism and Hindutva. Economic and Political Weekly 41(26): 2803–2813.

48.

Hadiz

(2014) A new Islamic populism and the contradictions of development. Journal of Contemporary Asia 44(1): 125–143.

49.

Hadiz

Chryssogelos

(2017) Populism in world politics: A comparative cross-regional perspective. International Political Science Review 38(4): 399–411.

50.

Harmes

(2012) The rise of neoliberal nationalism. Review of International Political Economy 19(1): 59–86.

51.

Helleiner

(2021) The diversity of economic nationalism. New Political Economy 26(2): 229–238.

52.

Hendrikse

(2018) Neo-illiberalism. Geoforum 95: 169–172.

53.

Hirst

(1997) The global economy: Myths and realities. International Affairs 73(3): 409–425.

54.

Hungary Today (2017) Orbán meeting Bolsonaro: Hungary and Brazil in ‘coalition of the Sober’. 17 February, Available at: https://hungarytoday.hu/orban-bolsonaro-meeting-talks-brazil-hungary/ (accessed 19 September 2023).

55.

Ionescu

Gellner

(eds) (1969) Populism: Its Meanings and National Characteristics. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

56.

Jasiecki

(2019) ‘Conservative modernization’ and the rise of law and justice in Poland. In: Bluhm

Varga

(eds) New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe. New York: Routledge, pp.130–153.

57.

Jayasuriya

(2020) The rise of the right: Populism and Authoritarianism in Southeast Asian politics. Southeast Asian Affairs 20(1): 43–56.

58.

Johnson

Barnes

(2015) Financial nationalism and its international enablers: The Hungarian experience. Review of International Political Economy 22(3): 535–569.

59.

Kalyvas

(1996) The Rise of Christian-democracy in Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

60.

Katzenstein

(1984) Small States in Big Markets. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

61.

Kestler

(2022) Radical, nativist, authoritarian – Or all of these? Assessing recent cases of right-wing populism in Latin America. Journal of Politics in Latin America 14(3): 289–310.

62.

Kitschelt

(1995) The Radical Right in Western Europe. A Comparative Analysis. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

63.

Kriesi

Grande

Lachat

, et al. (2008) West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

64.

Kutlay

Öniş

(2021) Turkish foreign policy in a post-western order: Strategic autonomy or new forms of dependence? International Affairs 97(4): 1085–1104.

65.

Kutlay

Öniş

(2022) Liberal democracy on the edge? Anxieties in a shifting global (dis)order. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 48(1): 20–37.

66.

Lafer

(2004) Neoliberalism by other means: The ‘war on terror’ at home and abroad. New Political Science 26(3): 323–346.

67.

Lamour

(2022) Orbán Urbi et Orbi: Christianity as a nodal point of radical-right populism. Politics and Religion 15(2): 317–343.

68.

Lamp

(2018) How Should We Think about the Winners and Losers from Globalization? Three Narratives and Their Implications for the Redesign of International Economic Agreements (Research Paper 2018-102). Kingston, ON, Canada: Faculty of Law, Queen’s University.

69.

LeBaron

Mügge

Best

, et al. (2020) Blind spots in IPE: Marginalized perspectives and neglected trends in contemporary capitalism. Review of International Political Economy 28(2): 283–294.

70.

Lee

Beech

(eds) (2011) The Cameron-Clegg Government: Coalition Politics in an Age of Austerity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

71.

Lee

McBride

(eds) (2007) Neo-Liberalism, State Power and Global Governance. Dordrecht: Springer.

72.

Luna

Rovira-Kaltwasser

(eds) (2014) The Resilience of the Latin American Right. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

73.

McDonnell

Werner

(2019) International Populism: The Radical Right in the European Parliament. London: Hurst.

74.

Mair

Mudde

(1998) The party family and its study. Annual Reviews of Political Science 1: 211–229.

75.

Marks

Wilson

(2000) The past in the present: A cleavage theory of party response to European integration. British Journal of Political Science 30(3): 433–459.

76.

Miller

(2022) Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology. London: Simon and Schuster.

77.

Minkenberg

(2000) The renewal of the radical right: Between modernity and anti-modernity. Government and Opposition 35(2): 170–188.

78.

Moore

(1966) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. London: Beacon.

79.

Müller

(2006) Comprehending conservatism: A new framework for analysis. Journal of Political Ideologies 11(3): 359–365.

80.

Notes from Poland (2022) EU approves Orlen’s takeover of fellow Polish state energy firm Lotos. 20 June, Available at: https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/06/20/eu-approves-orlens-takeover-of-fellow-polish-state-energy-firm-lotos/ (accessed 19 September 2023).

81.

Ohmae

(1995) The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies. London: Harper Collins.

82.

Orenstein

Bugaric

(2022) Work, family, fatherland: The political economy of populism in central and Eastern Europe. Journal of European Public Policy 29(2): 176–195.

83.

Oxford Analytica (2019) Turkey is closing in on ambitious arms industry goals. Expert briefing. https://doi.org/10.1108/OXAN-DB249562

84.

Paixão e Casarões

Barros Leal Farias

(2022) Brazilian foreign policy under Jair Bolsonaro: Far-right populism and the rejection of the liberal international order. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 35(5): 741–761.

85.

Pataccini

(2021) Europeanisation as a driver of dependent financialisation in East-Central Europe: Insights from the Baltic States. New Political Economy 27(4): 646–664.

86.

Peele

(2021) Post brexit and post-covid: Reflections on the contemporary conservative party. Political Quarterly 92(3): 404–411.

87.

Phongpaichit

Baker

(2008) Thaksin’s populism. Journal of Contemporary Asia 38(1): 62–83.

88.

Plagemann

Destradi

(2019) Populism and foreign policy: The case of India. Foreign Policy Analysis 15(2): 283–301.

89.

Robinson

(2003) Transnational Conflicts: Central America, Social Change and Globalisation. London: Verso.

90.

Robinson

(2004) A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.

91.

Rogowski

(1989) Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

92.

Rupert

(2000) Ideologies of Globalization: Contending Visions of a New World Order. London: Routledge.

93.

Rydgren

(ed.) (2013) Class Politics and the Radical Right. London: Routledge.

94.

Safi

(2017) India’s banknote ban: How Modi botched the policy yet kept his political capital. The Guardian, 2 January. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/02/indias-bank-note-ban-how-modi-botched-the-policy-yet-kept-his-political-capital (accessed 3 April 2024).

95.

Saull

Anievas

Davidson

, et al. (eds) (2014) The Longue Durée of the Far Right: An International Historical Sociology. London: Routledge.

96.

Scharpf

(2011) Monetary union, fiscal crisis and the pre-emption of democracy. Journal for Comparative Government and European Policy 9(2): 163–198.

97.

Scheiring

(2021) Dependent development and authoritarian state capitalism: Democratic backsliding and the rise of the accumulative state in Hungary. Geoforum 124: 267–278.

98.

Singh

(2021) Race, culture, and economics: An example from North-South trade relations. Review of International Political Economy 28(2): 323–335.

99.

Skocpol

Williamson

(2016) The Tea Party and the Remaking of American Conservatism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

100.

Steger

(2005) Ideologies of globalization. Journal of Political Ideologies 10(1): 11–30.

101.

Stephen

(2014) Rising powers, global capitalism and liberal global governance: A historical materialist account of the BRICs challenge. European Journal of International Relations 20(4): 912–938.

102.

Szabolcs

(2020) How Orbán played Germany, Europe’s great power. Direkt 36, 18 September. Available at: https://www.direkt36.hu/en/a-magyar-nemet-kapcsolatok-rejtett-tortenete/ (accessed 3 April 2024)

103.

Timmons

(2019) Trump shifted from pro-choice to pro-life only as he planned a presidential run. Quartz, 20 May. Available at: https://qz.com/1623437/trump-shifted-from-pro-choice-to-pro-life-as-he-planned-a-presidential-run/ (accessed 3 April 2024)

104.

Tuğal

(2009) Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

105.

Tuğal

(2023) Politicized megaprojects and public sector interventions: Mass Consent under neoliberal statism. Critical Sociology 49(3): 457–473.

106.

Turner

(2019) Global Britain and the narrative of empire. The Political Quarterly 90(4): 727–734.

107.

Varga

Buzogány

(2021) The foreign policy of populists in power: Contesting liberalism in Poland and Hungary. Geopolitics 26: 1442–1463.

108.

Varga

Buzogány

(2022) The two faces of the ‘global right’: Revolutionary conservatives and national-conservatives. Critical Sociology 48(6): 1089–1107.

109.

Wajner

(2022) The populist way out: Why contemporary populist leaders seek transnational legitimation. British Journal of Politics and Intern. Relations 24(3): 416–436.

110.

Weld

(2020) Holy war: Latin America’s far right. Dissent 67(2): 57–65.

111.

Weyland

(1999) Neoliberal populism in Eastern Europe and Latin America. Comparative Politics 31(4): 379–401.

112.

Wierzcholska

(2019) Gender in the resurgent Polish conservatism. In: Bluhm

Varga

(eds) New Conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe. New York: Routledge, pp.198–222.

113.

Wojczewski

(2020) ‘Enemies of the people’: Populism and the politics of (in)security. European Journal of International Security 5(1): 5–24.

114.

Worth

(2019) Morbid Symptoms: The Global Rise of the Far-right. London: Zed Books.

115.

Ziblatt

(2017) Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.