New conservatives and the attack on multilateralism

Centre-right conservative parties were at the forefront of the construction of a new international multilateral order in the post-war period. In recent years however there has been a radical redefinition of the ideology of conservatism. Under pressure and contagion from right-wing populism, the practice and meaning of mainstream right-wing politics has been changing around the world, with a growing number of actors reclaiming and rearticulating the purpose of conservatism. This transformation is closely linked with changing patterns in the contestation of international multilateralism. In this paper we aim to explore this link by combining insights from the comparative politics and international relations literature. On the one hand, we develop a new typology of conservative ideology that accounts for the diversity of positions on international multilateralism between mainstream and new illiberal conservatives. We differentiate in particular between notions of preservation, reaction and restoration as three distinct (although sometimes overlapping) purposes of conservative ideology. We argue that while in the post-war period the moderate goal of preservation (usually defined in opposition to reaction) dominated the mindset of centre-right conservatives, the last decade has seen the growth of the idea of restoration (of traditional values and social hierarchies) as the main conservative goal. This has specific repercussions about how these actors understand international multilateralism and which aspects of the international order they choose to challenge. On the other hand, we link this transformation in the form and character of conservative politics to international developments, in a second-image reversed dynamic. Building on the concept of ‘post-national liberalism’ (Börzel and Zürn 2021), we argue that the progressive rights-based evolution of international multilateralism in recent years has served as a resource for new right-wing actors, who targeted international organizations, regimes, norms and liberal values as threats to traditional social hierarchies. While populism expressed frustrations with the loss of national sovereignty under conditions of globalization, the ideological character of the liberal international order created the space for the articulation of a rival and consistent conservative vision of sovereign political order that combines reference to traditional social values, authoritarianism and constant mobilization against internal and external foes. We demonstrate this process in cases of this new form of populist illiberal conservatism from both the Global North and Global South, and inquire whether this political transformation can affect the functioning of international multilateralism.