3 - Deconstructing the Global Administrative State

Summary

The chapter provides a detailed analysis of global managerialism, the core ideological content of the radical Right’s understanding of the world. In this view, the essence of contemporary world politics is not the age-old story of realist power politics, the liberal tale of progress through institutions, or the corrosive spread of neoliberal capitalism. It is instead the rise to power of a global liberal managerial elite, the so-called New Class of experts and bureaucrats. Detached and unmoored from their national identities and cultures, the interests of this elite lie in yet further globalisation and liberalisation that erodes traditional national values and local communities. This managerialist sociology provides the radical Right and its supporters with a common enemy – the global liberal elite – which may have different faces in different geographical locations, but that nevertheless facilitates powerful equivalences and transversal alliances that spans nations and regions.