Nationalism, Populism, and COVID-19

Session Submission Type: Virtual Roundtable

Session Description

As we move into a post-pandemic world, the management of the political and social aftermath of COVID-19 is likely to challenge states, policy-makers, activists, and civil society for years to come. Just as the pandemic was experienced unevenly across and within states, emergence from the pandemic will be an ongoing and uneven global process that will impact domestic politics and international relations in perhaps unpredictable ways. In essence, we may have reached the end of the pandemic too quickly to understand the forces it unleashed, and coping with its consequences will depend upon our ability to come to terms with those forces. In attempting to bridge the gap between understanding social and political responses to the pandemic and the future challenges of post-pandemic politics, this roundtable brings together contributors to an upcoming special issue of Nationalities Papers dedicated to nationalism, populism, and COVID-19, to discuss the ways that the pandemic augmented and amplified nationalism and populism in world politics. In particular, the discussion will focus on the ways that the pandemic reinforced rather than diminished the salience of nations and the growth exclusionary nationalism; how European far right parties varied in their responses to the pandemic; the global spread of conspiracy theories in response to COVID-19; and the modularity of everyday practices and everyday foreign policy in response to the pandemic and the radicalization of demands to restore normalcy.

Sub Unit

• Partner Associations / Association for the Study of Nationalities

Chair

• Zsuzsa Csergo Queen's University

Presenters

• Paul Goode Carleton University

• Florian Bieber University of Graz

• David R. Stroup University of Manchester

• Sinisa Malesevic University College, Dublin

• Prerna Singh Brown University

• Jakub Wondreys Newton University, Prague

• Elizaveta Gaufman University of Groningen