What does the New Right want from international relations? In this article, we argue that the philosophy of the New Right is not reducible to a negation of internationalism. The New Right coalesce around a conceptualisation of the international driven by analytics and critiques of specific subjects, norms and practices, that should be treated as a distinct international theoretical offering. We refer to this vision as Reactionary Internationalism. This article examines and locates this vision within the intellectual history of nationalism and internationalism by drawing on poststructuralist approaches to intellectual history and drawing evidence from a discourse analysis of recent Lega, Front National, Brexit, and Trump campaigns. We find that, rather than advocating for the end of internationalism, the New Right seeks to reconstitute its normative architecture on the basis of inequality among identities. This entails dismantling liberal economic and rights-based norms and reframing them around transactionalism and power grounded on identity. Reactionary Internationalism emerges as a distinct philosophy that identifies a hegemonic normative bind and advocates its unravelling so as to liberate subjects understood as defined by their birth-cultural identity.
Revisionist studies have shown that stories about International Relations’ (IR) supposed disciplinary birth in 1919 function to obfuscate the history of international thought. 1919 has nonetheless cast a long shadow over how the usefulness of professional scholarship in International Relations has been conceptualised. In this article, I trace how the 1919 birthstory orientated disciplinary constructions of the usefulness of the field as they relate to pluralist approaches to truth-seeking in IR. I argue that the centenary of 1919 reminds us of the publicist as well as pluralist scholarship of the inter-war years. Our discipline's supposed centenary should therefore foster a drive towards better communication with global IR's publics and, in this way, ensure that we are better equipped to deal with the so-called post-truth era.
Communication has long been accepted as integral to the conduct of international affairs. The role that discourses, ideas, norms, and narratives play at the systemic level of world politics has been examined extensively. Scholarly interest has now turned to how international actors use political communication tools to create and counter threats, such as propaganda, hybrid warfare, fake news, and election tampering, and it is often taken for granted that states are inferior to their challengers in these domains. To address this, ‘Strategic Communications’ has emerged as a mode of thought and practice promising to enhance state communication; encompassing long-established activities including public diplomacy, public relations, nation branding, and information operations. In this developing field, private sector professionals are increasingly being called on to support and advise governments. Particular attention has been paid to the ‘Big Data’ private companies may have access to, but there has been little IR research examining the experts seeking changes in how strategic communications is practised. Informed by elite interviews with communication professionals across the public-private space, this article sets out a research agenda to fill this gap, enhancing understanding of the expert relationships that shape international strategic communications.
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