Producing cultural change: how political populism and extremism can influence the development of international political and security environment?

The international system has become increasingly unstable after 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, followed by the Iraqi intervention of 2003 and challenges to the status quo of the international system from revisionist powers like Russia and China. Besides, the present international political and security environment has been strongly influenced by various anti-establishment movements characterized by the ongoing populist wave from alternative left (e.g., the Occupy movement, Syriza (Greece), Podemos (Spain), Chavismo (Venezuela) that dominated the populist wave in the 2000s and early 2010s) to increasingly powerful alternative right movement which became more visible in the 2010s with the anti-migration movement in Europe, the Brexit process (UK) and Trumpism (US). These populist waves often feed each other and ally with revisionist powers in their common strategic goal to contend general principles of the existing system. Samuel Huntington (1991) has noted that waves of democratization will be followed by reverse waves. These ongoing populist challenges can lead to the abandonment of the principles Kantian political culture that the international system followed in the post-Cold War period and instead of the Kantian principles of collective security and security community the international system is moving further on towards Hobbesian enmity and Lockean rivalry (Wendt 1999; Frederking 2003). The cultural change in the dynamics of post-Cold War international system has damaged the effective global governance and produced mistrust against international organizations. The Western liberal democracy practicing freedom of speech and expression tend to be more vulnerable for such challenges. The world has become less static, which makes future developments less detectable for strategic decision-makers and researchers. Therefore, studying cultural change is going to become one of the most challenging issues in social sciences. The COVID-19 global pandemics has proved the international community has found being unprepared to efficiently deal with widespread global threats, which are not caused by political turmoil, but due to unforeseen developments in nature. There are other unique experiences the international society has recently faced, including migration crisis, climate change, green deal initiatives, evolution of social networks and communication, technological advancement, rise of nationalism, cancel culture and political correctness, culture of fear, economic disparities, trade wars among others. This trend can easily produce contrasting perceptions and misperceptions and contribute to the rise of populist and extremist movements. Potential adaptation and further mainstreamization of alternative movements during the process of change can produce changes in cultural paradigms. The dynamics of the spread populism vis-à-vis changes in cultural patterns of the political systems will be reviewed by the workshop, for example how cultural patterns have changed political narratives and discourses. The goal is to elaborate appropriate methodologies, which do not rely significantly on looking the recurrence of historical evidence but are rather looking for more advanced strategic forecasts in the complicated, ambiguous, and culturally diverse environment. Besides, the is an urgent need to discuss new theoretical approaches that focus on recent cultural challenges to the global political and security environment (e.g., Williams 2007; Lebow 2008).