After Globalization: Western Power in a Post-Western World

Abstract

The crisis exploded in 2008 has been and continues to be much more than a physiological economic downturn, Indeed, it is a political and not only an economic crisis. Economic de-regulation and political re-Westphalization run hand by hand, as epitomized by the choices made by the two George W. Bush administrations (2001-2008). Economic neoliberalism and democratic imperialism were the two strategies of a project of western-dominated world order. At the end of the 2010s, both strategies failed dramatically. Their aim to foster US and its western allies’ power upon the world has been reversed. The world coming out from both failures is much less western than in the past. It is a post-western world that is shading the western power itself. Nevertheless, in the US and Europe the debate concerns alternative economic policy paradigms and not alternative projects of global governance.

Keywords: Neoliberalism, Westphalization, US political system, EU intergovernmentalism