Neoliberal Globalization Never Abolished the Nation-State
Philip Cunliffe’s analysis of world politics after globalization takes the phony rhetoric of leaders like Tony Blair at face value instead of digging deeper. As a result, he can’t make sense of what globalism actually was or what is going to replace it.
Philip Cunliffe claims that globalization obliterated the “political basis for nationhood.” But this doesn’t match the reality of modern European politics, where countries pursued different geopolitical strategies in line with their own needs.(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Philip Cunliffe is an associate professor of international relations at University College London, an academic supporter of Brexit, and a prominent contributor to the contrarian right-wing comment site Unherd.
His new book, The National Interest: Politics After Globalization, argues that globalism has hollowed out the nation-state, stripping sovereign institutions of their domestic legitimacy and opening up a potentially terminal rift in Western democracies, with rulers (transnational elites) pitched on one side against the ruled (geographically anchored electorates) on the other.
Cunliffe’s solution to this crisis of representation is for political leaders to embrace the post-global moment to revive “the national interest” as the unifying “lodestar” of twenty-first-century democracy. But what is the national interest, precisely, and how might politicians go about reviving it?
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