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Dictating the Agenda examines how contemporary authoritarian regimes are undermining the global influence of Western democratic liberal ideas and advocacy. They achieve this by projecting their agendas into global arenas often considered "non-political," such as consumer boycotts, global media, transnational higher education, and international sports. While globalization-marked by economic exchange, technological innovation, and consumerism-was once believed to inevitably spread US-style liberalism worldwide, the past decade has proven otherwise. Authoritarian governments in Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia are now exploiting these very tools to discredit liberal activism, diminish the significance of liberal values in global governance, and advance their autocratic ideologies and agendas.
Sommario
- Chapter 1: Introduction: Dictating the Agenda
- Chapter 2: The 1990s Origins and the Acceleration of Transnational Liberal Influence
- Chapter 3: The Waning of Transnational Liberal Influence in the 2020s
- Chapter 4: Authoritarian Backfire Explained
- Chapter 5: Reconfiguring Media Influence
- Chapter 6: Repurposing Global Consumer Boycotts
- Chapter 7: Harnessing Global Higher Education
- Chapter 8: Rewriting the Playbook: Global Sports
- Chapter 9: Conclusion
- Appendices
Info autore
Alexander Cooley is the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science and Vice Provost for Research and Academic Centers at Barnard College, Columbia University. From 2015-21 he served as the 15th Director of Columbia University's Harriman Institute for the Study of Russia, Eurasia and Eastern Europe. Professor Cooley's research examines how international actors have influenced the governance, sovereignty, and security of the post-Communist states. In addition to his academic publications, Professor Cooley's commentaries have appeared in
Foreign Affairs, New York Times, and
Washington Post and he has testified for the US Congress, UK Parliament and the Parliament of Canada.
Alexander Dukalskis is associate professor in the School of Politics & International Relations at University College Dublin. His research and teaching interests include authoritarian politics, human rights, and Asian politics. He is also a frequent expert commentator in national and international media on these
themes. From 2022-2024 he directed UCD's Centre for Asia-Pacific Research. He is the author of two books,
Making the World Safe for Dictatorship (Oxford University Press, 2021) and
The Authoritarian Public Sphere (Routledge, 2017), and academic articles in several leading journals.
Riassunto
This is a story not just of the limits of liberal influence across the world, but of how authoritarian governments came to dictate the global agenda by repurposing the very actors, tools, and norms that once afforded US-backed liberalism such global prominence.
Following the end of the Cold War, the world experienced a remarkable wave of democratization. Over the next two decades, numerous authoritarian regimes transitioned to democracies, and it seemed that authoritarianism as a political model was fading. But as recent events have shown, things have clearly changed.
In Dictating the Agenda, authors Alexander Cooley and Alexander Dukalskis reveal how today's authoritarian states are actively countering liberal ideas and advocacy surrounding human rights and democracy across various global governance domains. The transformed global context has unlocked for authoritarian states the possibility to contend with Western liberal soft power in new, traditionally "non-political" ways, including by plugging or even reversing the very channels of influence that originally spread liberalism. Cooley and Dukalskis ultimately advance a theory of authoritarian snapback, the process in which non-democratic states limit the transnational resonance of liberal ideas at home and advance anti-liberal norms and ideas into the global public sphere.
Drawing from a range of evidence, including field work interviews and comparative case studies that demonstrate the changing nature of consumer boycotts, a database of authoritarian government administrative actions against foreign journalists, a database of global content-sharing agreement involving Chinese and Russian state media, and a database of transnational higher education partnerships involving authoritarian and democratic countries, this book doesn't just reveal the limits of the liberal influence taken for granted across the world. It offers a novel theory of how authoritarian governments figured out how to exploit and repurpose the same actors, tools, and norms that once exclusively promoted and sustained US-backed liberalism.
