Globalisation and the ‘Far-right’ Turn in International Affairs

The year 2016 saw a number of developments within international society, where right-wing populism gained considerable ground. The victory for Donald Trump followed the success of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines in a year that also saw Putin and Erdogan continue their authoritarian hold in Russia and Turkey respectively, and far-right movements make further advances across Europe. Yet, in terms of the wider effects on the nature of world order, the Brexit vote was even more significant. Whatever the long-term consequences are of British withdrawal from the EU, the form and content of the campaign itself saw populist and nationalist sentiment challenge the legitimacy of regionalism and globalism—two cornerstones of governance in the contemporary era. This article will look at the significance of these moves in relation to world order and suggest that while the current turn towards nationalism and against globalism is significant, it will not necessarily lead to a significant change. This paper was originally presented at the annual conference of the International Affairs Standing Committee of the Royal Irish Academy, titled ‘Retreat from Globalisation? Brexit, Trump and the New Populism’, which took place at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin on 31 May 2017. This work is part of a set of wider, long-term international projects on the far-right, which was partly supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2015S1A5A2A03049866).