The Collapse of Global Liberalism

And the Emergence of the Post Liberal World Order

Philip Pilkington

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781509566228, 9781509566211
• eBook ISBN: 9781509566235
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In the 1990s, a vision emerged of a frictionless world of globalization in which the West would become ever richer on the basis of a tech-based service economy, all underpinned by a rules-based liberal international order. It became the basis for the mainstream politics of centre-left and right.

Philip Pilkington argues that this vision was always delusional and is now dying. It is based on a doctrinaire and unrealistic form of liberalism and has given rise to hollowed-out financialised economies and disintegrating societies that can barely even reproduce their population or meet their energy needs. The US and UK find themselves ill-equipped to compete with China and other non-liberal states within an emerging post-liberal order in which what really matters is industrial capacity, realpolitik and military strength. Only by abandoning our liberal delusions and advancing our own brand of hard-headed post-liberalism can the West survive.

No clear-sighted observer of contemporary geopolitics can afford to miss this bracing diagnosis of the West's malaise and bold agenda for renewal.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Introduction – Navigating Metahistory
• Part I Liberalism and Its Global Collapse
• Part II Liberalism’s Rotten Results
• Conclusion – Our Post-liberal Future: A Manifesto
• End User License Agreement