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NUPI skole
Bildet viser flagget til det høyreekstreme partiet Den nasjonale bevegelsen i Polen foran den amerikanske ambassaden i Warszawa
Foto: NTB Scanpix

Research Project

World of the Right: Alternative visions of global order

The project looks deeper into the conservative New Right in Russia, the US, and Europe, examining in particular the alternative visions of Western civilisational order that these movements harbour, and their relationship to liberal (international) ideology in its post-1989 and post-1945 forms.

Themes

  • Defence
  • Security policy
  • Terrorism and extremism
  • NATO
  • Diplomacy
  • Foreign policy
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • North America
  • Humanitarian issues
  • Conflict
  • Governance
  • International organizations
  • The EU
  • United Nations

In the US, Russia, and several EU-countries the nationalist, radical and often populist Right is becoming increasingly influential. While we know quite a lot about how these ideologies shape domestic politics, and what thoughts they harbour on topics such as the nation-state and immigration, we know surprisingly little about their visions and ideas for global order. Whilst often labelled as 'anti-liberal', this project challenges that, seeing them as far more hybrid in visions; also in how they relate back to the post-1945 order. 

The project at NUPI looks deeper into the international ideology of the conservative New Right in Russia, the US, and Europe, examining the increasingly stronger conservative reaction to the liberal world order after 1989: what are their alternative visions of the international, and how this impact their visions of topics such as the family, the national, and the borders of what an international community can do? The policy component of the project will look at the implications of these visions for Norwegian and European foreign- and security policy. Theoretically, the project aims to i) expand how we think about liberal ideology in IR and reactions to liberal ideology, ii) explore and discuss the commonalities between the New Right's stated anti-liberalism and realism and conservatism in political theory. 

The 3-year project at NUPI is in part funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Defence (MoD), and is lead by Research Fellow Minda Holm. She is in paralell with the MoD-project writing a PhD on the topic at the University of Copenhagen, Department of Political Science (supervisor Prof. Ole Wæver), and is also affiliated with the Danish Institute of International Studies (DIIS). Her PhD project is preliminary titled Theorizing (liberal) international ideology and counter-ideology: The post-1989 liberal script and the New Right’s critique.

The project is part of and also funded by a wider international research project on the World of the Right funded by the Danish Velux Foundation, lead by Dr. Vibeke Schou Tjalve (DIIS) and in cooperation with Professor Michael C. Williams (University of Ottawa) and senior lecturer, Jean Francios Drolet, University of Queen Mary, London.  Schou Tjalve will contribute to the project at NUPI with her expertise on the American New Right. More information on the Velux project here.

Project Manager

Minda Holm
Senior Research Fellow

Articles

Articles
Articles

Orbán’s racism shouldn’t come as a surpise

This op-ed was published 10.09.22
  • Europe
Screenshot 2022-09-27 at 10.48.03.png

New publications

Publications
Publications

Myter om ytre høyre

They are called populists, anti-liberal and pro-Russian - but is it that simple?

Publications
Publications
Report

Brothers in Arms and Faith? The Emerging US-Central and Eastern Europe ‘Special Relationship’

In this policy note, we explore the nature, strength and tensions of the contemporary US-Central Eastern Europe relationship. We describe the expanding US-CEE ‘brotherhood in arms’: growing trade relations, intensified military cooperation, and rekindled diplomatic ties. Further, we unpack the striking and largely ignored dimensions of the US-CEE ‘brotherhood in faith’: the many ways in which the United States and Central and Eastern Europe are tied together by overlapping ideologies of national conservatism and a particular version of Christian ‘family values’. This involves addressing the complexities of an increasingly influential and ambitious Visegrád Group, whose key players – Poland and Hungary – may be brothers, but are by no means twins. It also means raising some broader, burning discussions about the future of NATO and the meaning of ‘Europe’. Universalist, multicultural and postnational? Or conservative, Christian and sovereigntist?

  • Security policy
  • NATO
  • Diplomacy
  • Europe
  • North America
  • Nationalism
  • Governance
  • Security policy
  • NATO
  • Diplomacy
  • Europe
  • North America
  • Nationalism
  • Governance
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Drømmen om å gjenkristne Europa

The political leadership in Hungary, Poland and Russia talks of protecting Christians abroad - and about saving Europe from itself.

  • Europe
  • North America
  • Nationalism
  • Europe
  • North America
  • Nationalism
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Står den liberale epoken for fall?

30 years after the fall of the wall the world is more about continuity than change.

  • Security policy
  • Globalisation
  • Governance
  • Security policy
  • Globalisation
  • Governance
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Russland og det ytre høyre

(Available in Norwegian only): Båndene mellom Russland og ytre høyre i Europa er mer kompliserte enn man kan få inntrykk av i vestlig media, skriver Minda Holm i denne kronikken.

  • Foreign policy
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • Foreign policy
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Mutual Lack of Introspection and the ‘Russia Factor’ in the Liberal West

Minda Holm makes three claims in this article: one about the representation of Russia as an external enemy and the reflex to blame Russia for unwanted domestic developments; one about the liberal Western Self’s continuous violation of the principles it judges others by; and one about the seemingly deliberate lack of critical introspection amongst Russian and Western elites. The Western Self is largely viewed as liberal by default, irrespective of the extensive illiberal actions – seen in, for example, the post-9/11 era. Whereas politics is messy and full of contradictions, Western liberal morality is often presented as somehow standing monolithically above those contradictory actions: despite torture, a secret extraordinary rendition and detention program and wide-ranging breaches of international law, the US Self under Bush Jr. remained decidedly ‘good’. Whilst the Self’s identity as liberal persists despite violating those liberal principles, states such as Russia are stigmatized for the same types of violations. That this creates frustration with those defined as standing on the outside or, better, denied access to the true inside, should not come as a surprise. But, Russia’s continuous denialism and whataboutism, and the role of academics in this negative cycle, doesn’t bode well for the future of Russia-West relations.

  • Russia and Eurasia
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  • Russia and Eurasia
Publications
Publications
Report

Visions of an Illiberal World Order? The National Right in Europe, Russia and the US

The rise of a national Right in both Europe and the US is disrupting the security agendas of Western foreign– and defense ministries. Long accustomed to directing the gaze and measures of Western security only outwards – towards Africa, the Middle East, China – these centers of policy formulation now find themselves forced to confront a more introspective line of questioning: Is the identity of ‘the liberal West’ and its agenda of a rule-based, institutionalized world order under threat from within? In this brief we unpack the visions of world order espoused by the new Western Right, its ideological overlap with conservative ideas in Putin’s Russia, as well as the built-in tensions and uncertainties of that emerging alliance. Our focus is on potential implications of these political developments for i) international institutionalism, and ii) interventionism. In short, we argue that anti-globalism must not be mistaken for anti-internationalism. The most basic political agenda of the national Right – from the Trumpian US to Putin’s Russia – is one of battling globalism and its liberal vision of a trans-national or cosmopolitan world order, by defending older Western concepts of sovereignty-centred, inter-national co-existence. In contrast to the extreme Right, the current European-US-Russian alliance of national Right politicians largely want to fight this battle from the inside and through, not outside, established institutions such as the UN and the EU.

  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • North America
  • Governance
  • International organizations
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • North America
  • Governance
  • International organizations
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

States before relations: On misrecognition and the bifurcated regime of sovereignty

The symbolic structure of the international system, organised around sovereignty, is sustained by an institutional infrastructure that shapes how states seek sovereign agency. We investigate how the modern legal category of the state is an institutional expression of the idea of the state as a liberal person, dependent on a one-off recognition in establishing the sovereign state. We then discuss how this institutional rule co-exists with the on-going frustrated search for recognition in terms of socio-political registers. While the first set of rules establishes a protective shield against others, regardless of behaviour, the second set of rules specify rules for behaviour of statehood, which produces a distinct form of misrecognition. States are, at one level, already recognised as sovereign and are granted rights akin to individuals in liberal thought, and yet they are continually misrecognised in their quest to actualise the sovereign agency they associate with statehood. We draw on examples from two contemporary phenomena - fragile states, and assertions of non-interference and sovereignty from the populist right and non-Western great powers, to discuss the misrecognition processes embedded in the bifurcated symbolic structure of sovereignty, and its implications for debates about hierarchy and sovereignty in world affairs.

  • Governance
  • International organizations
  • United Nations
  • Governance
  • International organizations
  • United Nations
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Ideologenes kamp

(Norwegian only): To innflytelsesrike ideologer – en russisk, en amerikansk – bygger høyreradikale nettverk i Europa. Selv om ideologien springer ut fra like kilder, har de ulike visjoner.

  • Diplomacy
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • North America
  • Governance
  • International organizations
  • Diplomacy
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • North America
  • Governance
  • International organizations
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Norge, USA og folkeretten

(Available in Norwegian only): Når det gjelder USA og folkeretten, er problemet ikke så mye Trump, som at USA konsekvent bryter de verdiene de selv forfekter, skriver Minda Holm i denne kronikken.

  • NATO
  • Foreign policy
  • North America
  • Human rights
  • NATO
  • Foreign policy
  • North America
  • Human rights
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Ytre Høyre, Foren Eder!

Ytre høyre forfekter nasjonalstaten, men er stadig mer internasjonale. Båndene er særlig sterke mellom bevegelser i USA og Russland.

  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • North America
  • The Nordic countries
  • Governance
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • North America
  • The Nordic countries
  • Governance
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

What, When, and Where, Then, is the Concept of Sovereignty?

It is difficult to overstate the importance of the concept sovereignty for international relations (IR). And yet, understanding the historical emergence of sovereignty in international relations has long been curtailed by the all-encompassing myth of the Peace of Westphalia. While criticism of this myth has opened space for further historical inquiry in recent years, it has also raised important questions of historical interpretation and methodology relevant to IR, as applying our current conceptual framework to distant historical cases is far from unproblematic. Central among these questions is the when, what, and how of sovereignty: from when can we use “sovereignty” to analyze international politics and for which polities? Can sovereignty be used when the actors themselves did not have recourse to the terminology? And what about polities that do not have recourse to the term at all? What are the theoretical implications of applying the concept of sovereignty to early polities? From different theoretical and methodological perspectives, the contributions in this forum shed light on these questions of sovereignty and how to treat the concept analytically when applied to a period or place when/where the term did not exist as such. In doing so, this forum makes the case for a sensitivity to the historical dimension of our arguments about sovereignty—and, by extension, international relations past and present—as this holds the key to the types of claims we can make about the polities of the world and their relations.

  • Diplomacy
  • Diplomacy
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Det illiberale Europa

Det er klare fellestrekk i landenes politiske utvikling. Gjennom lovendringer svekker myndighetene uavhengigheten til domstolene, sivilsamfunnet og media. I tillegg deler de et konservativt politisk tankegods, hvor regjeringene vektlegger statlig suverenitet, religion, familie og nasjon som et alternativ til det liberaldemokratiske tankegodset i EU.

  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • The Nordic countries
  • Governance
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • The Nordic countries
  • Governance
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Frykten for populismen

(Available in Norwegian only): Det snakkes mye og negativt om populistenes fremmarsj i Europa. Men det er ofte uklart hva som menes med populisme.

  • Regional integration
  • Europe
  • North America
  • Governance
  • The EU
  • Regional integration
  • Europe
  • North America
  • Governance
  • The EU
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Norge, USA og det liberale verdifellesskapet

Trumps delvis anti-liberale politikk setter flere av USAs europeiske allierte, inkludert Norge, i en kinkig posisjon. Én mulig respons er å opptre varsomt, og la de amerikanske institusjonene selv «gjøre jobben» i møte med mer illiberale initiativer fra den nye administrasjonen. Samtidig kan det tenkes at flere av Trumps posisjoner vil modereres i møte med både byråkrati og allierte. Problemet med en slik tilnærming – der Norge står på sidelinjen, og eventuelt tar ad hoc beslutninger om å kritisere - er at det ikke tar utfordringene som de liberale verdiene og institusjonene står overfor seriøst nok. Problemet for verdifellesskapet er tross alt ikke bare Trump, men en internasjonal dreining mot det illiberale i både innenriks- og utenrikspolitikken til land som vi har antatt har vært en del av det samme fellesskapet. Hvor langt er Norge villig til å gå for å forsvare de verdiene som vi definerer oss gjennom utad?

  • Security policy
  • Diplomacy
  • Foreign policy
  • North America
  • Governance
  • Security policy
  • Diplomacy
  • Foreign policy
  • North America
  • Governance
Publications
Publications
Scientific article

Tryggingspolitikk sett frå Tyrkia og Russland

  • Security policy
  • Terrorism and extremism
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Governance
  • Security policy
  • Terrorism and extremism
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • The Middle East and North Africa
  • Governance

Themes

  • Defence
  • Security policy
  • Terrorism and extremism
  • NATO
  • Diplomacy
  • Foreign policy
  • Europe
  • Russia and Eurasia
  • North America
  • Humanitarian issues
  • Conflict
  • Governance
  • International organizations
  • The EU
  • United Nations

Project Manager

Minda Holm
Senior Research Fellow