40. Böhm-Bawerk Lecture

Globalization, The Rise of right-wing Populism and the End of the Liberal International Order?

Helen V. Milner is the B.C. Forbes Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and the director of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. She was the chair of the Department of Politics from 2005 to 2011. She was president of the International Studies Association (ISA) for the 2020-2021 term and was president of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) from 2012-14. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Council on Foreign Relations. She has written extensively on issues related to international and comparative political economy, the connections between domestic politics and foreign policy, and the impact of globalization on domestic politics. She works on topics related to globalization and development, such as the political economy of foreign aid, the "digital divide" and the global diffusion of the internet, the resource curse and non-tax revenues, and the relationship between globalization and democracy, in Africa and the Middle East. She was a fellow in 2021-2022 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She is currently working on a book about globalization's challenges to democracy, and another book about the politics of climate change.

Abstract:
What are the political consequences of economic globalization? Globalization has brought many economic benefits. Its political consequences have often seemed less benign. In particular, globalization may pose a threat to liberal democracy. How has globalization - that is, the increasing flow of goods, services, people, technology, and capital across borders - affected long-standing democratic countries? A long literature has noted that global capitalism and democracy may create stresses for each other (e.g., Marx 1890, Polanyi 1957, Piketty 2014). Capitalism is a dynamic system with large distributive effects that can cause “creative destruction” (Schumpeter 1942) and pose threats to democracy (Polanyi 1957). Rapid changes in people's economic situations can shake support for governments and ultimately their faith in democracy. Since the 1990s, scholars have noted the rise of extremist parties, especially right-wing populist ones. If extreme right populist parties promote more authoritarian politics, their rise may signal trouble for liberal democracy. Progressive tax systems, social welfare policies, and restrictions on international economic flows-i.e., protectionism- were used to help democracy accommodate capitalism, as theories of “embedded liberalism'' noted (Ruggie1982). In this time of very open global markets, concern exists that these policies are no longer effective. If so, is globalization promoting political parties that challenge liberal democracy and undermine the liberal international order (LIO)? Much debate exists over what is causing the rise of the far right populist parties. The central question here is what role does globalization play.