Description
The ‘Liberal International Order’ faces challenges not only from authoritarian powers but from within multi-party democracies. Even in states deeply embedded in Western political, economic and security architectures, radical and populist parties resist liberal internationalism. In non-Western multi-party democracies as well as liminal states on the margins of the West, there is ongoing debate about how to relate to the modernising and secularising influences of liberalism, which challenge traditional values and hierarchies. How resilient is the Western-led international order in the face of these internal challenges? This paper draws out insights from a workshop and journal special issue recently co-convened by the author, which brought together national level analyses of party contestation of policy responses to the war in Ukraine, in a range of multi-party democracies. The Russia-Ukraine war is a seismic event presenting every country with comparable dilemmas about how to align in relation to a US and European led campaign to punish Russia and support Ukraine. It is a powerful lens to examine the features of a two-directional relationship: the impact of polarised party politics on foreign policy, and the impact of the contested global order on the dynamics of domestic party contestation.