Backlash Against Globalisation and the Shadow of Phobos

Abstract

This article addresses challenges to the established international order. Its critique becomes particularly discernible at the domestic level, where political and economic frameworks are contested by electorates and anti-establishment movements in Western countries, engulfed by anti-globalisation sentiments and disillusioned with the asymmetric formula of globalisation. Populism implies that the ‘social revolt’ facing the West today, regardless of whether it takes place in France, Greece, Hungary, Poland, the UK or the USA, is not a legitimate response to deep-seated problems but rather is the problem itself. The main aims of this article are to investigate what has caused this surge of support for populism in the West; what the role of the default system of economic governance is in inspiring populist resentment; and, finally, what the identity crisis, stemming from ‘hyperglobalisation’, and wrecking the social order in Western societies has to do with fear, (un)fairness and the redistributive effects of economic globalisation.