Book-Projects

Problems and Tensions of the Liberal Script

Contestations are nothing new for liberalism. On the contrary, criticism and contestation are at the very core of liberal politics. Competing values and differing views about what is good, desirable, and appropriate for society lead to constant debates within liberalism. Moreover, liberalism has always competed with alternative models of society for relevance and dominance. Indeed, liberal ideas and institutions have evolved through disapproval and resistance—both within and outside liberal societies.

However, current contestations have reached a particular quality that can be captured by the terms “endogeneity” and “polyphony.” First, contemporary contestations are highly multivocal. Liberal ideas, institutions, and practices are confronted with an unprecedented diversity of challenges. The list of criticisms is long and driven by different concerns that target different facets of liberalism. For some, liberalism has become the scapegoat for “postmodern” values; for others, it is the producer of unjustified inequalities. Some regard it as ineffective, while others see it as an ideology of effective domination over the “wretched of the earth” (Fanon 1966). In any case, the current constellation of contestation differs from earlier periods in that it is difficult to identify the main competitor. During the “twenty years’ crisis” (Carr 1939), fascism was undoubtedly the principal rival, while during the Cold War it was state socialism. Today, however, none of the competitors appears clearly dominant. Is the Chinese version of technocratic authoritarianism the main challenger, or is it authoritarian populism as seen in power in Russia, India, and Hungary? Is liberalism primarily challenged from the outside by non-democratic states, or are the countless critical movements and anti-system parties from within the real danger?

Second, the crisis of liberalism is largely attributed to endogenously produced misdevelopments, which have become particularly visible after the global dominance of liberal orders following 1990. The period after 1990 is thus often portrayed as an era of broken promises. Contemporary liberal societies therefore face less a confrontation with major systemic rivals than a loss of trust in the capacity of their core institutions to find solutions to pressing societal challenges—challenges that lie at the center of the major national and international conflicts of the early twenty-first century. More than that, liberal practices themselves are widely seen as a deeper cause of some of the major crisis narratives of our time. In this sense, one can speak of (1) a crisis of democracy, (2) a crisis of equality, (3) a crisis of universalism, and (4) an ecological crisis.

Cluster of Excellence "Contestation of the Liberal Script" (SCRIPTS)

Backlash-Politics with Karen Alter (Northwestern University), a.o. 

The project builds upon a special issue published in the "British Journal of Politics and International Relations" in Winter 2020 which sets out a definition and a proto-theory of backlash politics. Our definition of backlash politics consists of three elements that are jointly necessary and mutually co-constitutive: i) a retrograde objective of returning to a real or imagined prior social condition; ii) extraordinary goals and tactics that challenge dominant scripts; and iii) a threshold condition of entering mainstream public discourse. We added the notion of frequent companions which tend to be associated outgrowth of the three necessary backlash elements: nostalgia, emotional appeals, taboo breaking and institutional reshaping. The project seeks to develop this framework further.

Federalism-Project with Christian Rauh (WZB/ Universität Potsdam) and Rahel Freiburghaus (Universität Bern)