New conservatives and the attack on multilateralism

Centre-right conservative parties were at the forefront of the construction of a multilateral order in the post-war period. In recent years however, under pressure and contagion from right-wing populism, the practice and meaning of mainstream right-wing politics has been changing around the world. This transformation is closely linked with changing patterns in the contestation of international multilateralism. In this paper 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 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. 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 served as a resource for new right-wing actors to articulate a rival 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.