The inverted postnational constellation: Identitarian populism in context

Abstract

As exemplified by the pan‐European ‘Identitarian movement’ (IM), contemporary far‐right populism defies the habitual matrix within which right‐wing radicalism has been criticised as a negation of liberal cosmopolitanism. The IM's political stance amalgamates features of cultural liberalism and racialist xenophobia into a defence of ‘European way of life.’ We offer an alternative decoding of the phenomenon by drawing on Jürgen Habermas's ‘postnational constellation.’ It casts the IM's protectionist qua chauvinistic populism as ‘inverted’ postnationalism, engendered through territorial and ethnic appropriation of universal political values. As such, inclusionary ideals of cosmopolitan liberalism and democracy purporting humanistic postnationalism have been transformed by Identitarians into elements of a privileged civilisational life‐style to be protected from ‘intruders.’ Remaining within the remit of the grammar of the postnational constellation, trans‐European chauvinism, we contend, is susceptible to inclusive articulation. Foregrounding radical emancipatory social transformation would however require not more democracy, but a principled critique of capitalism.

Editorial: The New Right’s internationalism

“…Globally these movement include actors as diverse as Bolsonaro in Brasil, Modi in India, and Putin in Russia, and in Central and Eastern Europe are exemplified by Fidesz in Hungary and Prawo I Sprawiedliwosc in Poland. So far, academic conversations have happened mostly in parallel, rather than with each other, drawing seemingly different conclusions as to both who we are speaking of, and what their global ideas entail both for world politics, and IR as a field (see Abrahamsen et al, 2020;Azmanova and Dakwar, 2019;De Orellana and Michelsen, 2019;Drolet and Williams, 2018). In this special issue, we bring together some leading voices to reflect on the transnational and international relations between these movements.The internationalism of the New Right raises key questions for the future of international relations in Europe, not least because, as various authors have argued, these movements have the potential to reconstitute the rules of the game of contemporary international order.…”

Political CSR and Populism: Toward an Information-Based Theory of Political CSR

“…To participate in governance processes, Habermasian PCSR advances that firms must be closely attuned to public discourse and engage in public will formation processes via deliberation to establish a discursive link between corporations, civil society, and the state (Scherer & Palazzo, 2011). However, the recent “populist moment” that has been witnessed globally and in a variety of manifestations (Devinney & Hartwell, 2020; Hartwell & Devinney, 2021a, p. 238) disrupts assumptions in the PCSR literature of a globalized society and its reductionist account of the state by pointing to an “inverted postnational constellation” (Azmanova & Dakwar, 2019, p. 494) and new “post globalization” context, focused on national policies and priorities (Flew, 2020, p. 20).…”

“…In many respects, then, populist disinformation and the anti-deliberative sentiment is antithetical to the spirit of PCSR, insofar as it challenges underlying assumptions of rational and inclusive democratic deliberation (Habermas, 1996). Rather it seeks to “actively instrumentalize these very communicative networks” (Azmanova & Dakwar, 2019, p. 499), rendering an “uncivil, illiberal, and one-sided public sphere” (Hameleers, 2022, p. 2).…”