12.2: What is Alter-Globalization?

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to: 

• Understand the various alter-globalization movements
• Differentiate between alter-globalization and anti-globalization
• Comprehend contemporary populism, with a focus on national-populism

Introduction

Quite a few scholars, policymakers and activists recognize the potential benefits of globalization, but are dismayed by the contemporary insistence on the market as its most relevant characteristic. These individuals believe that interdependence can be used for more than just corporate profits and instead globalization should aim for more altruistic goals. These include the universalization of human rights, increased economic equality, and greater cooperation to address environmental challenges. Bello (2013) argues that outside of the UK & the U.S., capitalism has taken a beating. Since the Global Financial Crisis, skepticism about the spread of neoliberal policies has grown. This suspicion was only strengthened with the COVID-19 pandemic, where many wealthier countries questioned their dependence on poorer countries for their supply chains. In response to these challenges resistance has developed to neoliberal globalization.

Alter-globalizations

Alter-globalizations capture these resistance movements. Given this, alter-globalization refers to diverse social movements advocating for global cooperation and interaction to counteract the adverse social, political, economic, and environmental effects of modern neoliberal globalization (Pokhrel, 2011). Resistance movements are highly complex, contradictory and sometimes ambiguous. Where some are radically progressive, others are reactionary and conservative. Alter-globalization is often resistance from below. This includes people who feel wronged or oppressed by globalization. They seek a more democratic process of globalization and greater justice in globalization. How resistance to globalization manifests can vary dramatically. Examples include individual actions, where consumers refuse to buy global products, but can also include large scale grassroots movements. Referred to as social movements, they often involve a substantial group of individuals collaborating to achieve a common goal, such as environmentalism or consumer protection.

Much of the aforementioned resistance comes from groups promoting social justice causes, often associated with the political left in Western democracies. For example, Steger (2017) largely categorizes these movements as justice globalism, a different perspective on globalization founded on the egalitarian principles of global solidarity and distributive justice. This alter-globalization embraces alternative perspectives on a connected world that oppose market globalism. Steger also references another alter-globalization movement, religious globalism. In religious globalism, faith leaders strive to rally a religious community, envisioned on a global scale, to protect and uphold shared religious values and beliefs.

Anti-globalization

However, right-wing resistance exists as well. Before the Global Financial Crisis, there existed “frontier” groups that emphasize self-determination and isolationism, with some mixing it with religious extremism. More recently some right-wing social movements have become more anti-globalization. Anti-globalization is traditionally defined as a movement opposed to neoliberal or market-led globalization. This definition comes out of the left-wing social movements in the 1990s and 2000s where the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization (WTO) protests, or Battle of Seattle, drew over 40,000 demonstrators. This is where pies were thrown in the face of the World Bank President by activists in a moment of creative political theater. (This was discussed in Chapter Four). However, recently anti-globalization rhetoric has come from right-wing nationalist movements. These movements are not against tmarket capitalism, but rather are opposed to the more global aspects of capitalism, such as free trade and foreign direct investment.

Figure 12.2.1: WTO protest Seattle, 1999. (Flickr by Friends of the Earth International is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Deed)

Populism and National-Populism

Advocates of right-wing anti-globalism do not propose an alternative globalization; instead, they recommend nationalism and particularism as remedies for the issues arising from the prevailing form of globalization. Activists argue that the “nation” itself needs protecting from globalization. They tend to use nationalistic slogans such as “take our country back!”, or some version of “Make America Great Again!” as developed by former President Trump in his 2016 presidential campaign. Given the strong sentiments about the dangers of globalization to national identity, right-wing anti-globalization efforts have become political, with many of these politicians winning national elections since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. They movements are mostly present in Western democracies, but have also spread to other states, such as Brazil. In the aggregate, these nationalists oppose or reject liberal globalization, mass immigration and the consensus politics of recent times. They promise instead to give voice to those who feel that they have been neglected, if not held in contempt, by increasingly distant elites.

Table 12.2.1: Electoral Success of National-Populists from 2015 - 2023

Election Year	Country	Political Party	Political Leader	Vote Share	Current Status
2023	Netherlands	Party for Freedom	Geert Wilders	23.5 percent of the parliamentary election vote	In process of forming a coalition government
2023	Argentina	Libertarian Party	Javier Milei	56 percent of the presidential election vote	Current president
2022	Hungary	Fidesz	Viktor Orban	51 percent of the parliamentary election vote	Formed majority government; still in power
2022	Italy	Centre-Right Coalition	Giorgia Meloni	43.8 percent of the parliamentary election vote	Formed majority government; still in power
2019	Poland	Law and Justice Party (PiS)	Mateusz Morawiecki & Jarosław Kaczyński	43.6 percent of the parliamentary election vote	Lost parliamentary election in 2023
2018	Brazil	Social Liberal Party	Jair Bolsonaro	55.13percent of the presidential election vote	Lost presidential election in 2022

Many of the right-wing nationalist politicians that oppose globalization are referred to as national-populists. Populism pertains to a spectrum of political positions that accentuate the notion of “the people,” frequently contrasting this collective with “the elite”. The core concepts of populism are threefold (Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017): (1) it is built on an appeal to the people; (2) a denunciation of the elite; and (3) the idea that politics should be an expression of the general will. Mueller (2018) provides a similar set of concepts: (1) populists are critical of elites; and (2) they think that they alone speak for the people. This last claim is never empirical or supported by numbers, instead, the claim is always moral. It becomes a form of identity politics and can be quite dangerous for democracies.

National populism simply combines right-wing politics and populist rhetoric and themes. Populism has become a favorite word in the media to describe the current political climate. It is a label seldom claimed by others, but often ascribed to others, with a negative connotation. Populism is usually associated with other words, such as anger, frustration, and antiestablishment. Populism pushes at the edges of national politics. It is not revolutionary, but it advocates the idea of popular sovereignty above the sovereignty of institutions. National-populists often scapegoat immigrant groups, which they see as a product of globalization and who they focus on for many of society’s ills. The antagonism towards immigration centers on three “threats”: (1) the threat to one’s employment, referred to as the economic threat hypothesis; (2) the threat to one’s cultural or national identity, referred to as the cultural threat hypothesis; and since the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks in th U.S., (3) the threat to one’s personal security of physical safety, also known as the security threat hypothesis. The distrust that populists draw from is much deeper than a distrust about the functioning of the economy. It is a distrust focused on the way that politics work. For example, they do not tend to like politicians as a whole. In its extreme form, national-populists simply do not like modern democratic politics.

National populists contrast with left-wing populists, who combine populism with some form of socialism. These include Podemos in Spain; Syriza in Greece, the Bernie Sanders campaign in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, the Jean Luc Mélenchon campaign in the 2017 French presidential elections, and the continued success of leftist populist leaders in Latin America. The “worker” needs protection from globalization, and not necessarily the “nation”. Leftist-populists prioritize class allegiance over national attachment. For them, global capitalists are greedy and they exploit the global poor by moving production to developing economies just to increase their profits. Leftist-populists disagree with national-populists that immigration threatens their country. Instead they argue that immigrants are used by global capitalists to pit working class people against each other through their exploitation.