The Twilight of Internationalism

Abstract:
The twentieth century has often been defined as the century of internationalism. It was highlighted how, especially after the Second World War, international visions and institutions, in their intertwining with nation-states, interacted to create international connections within the framework of the competitive internationalisms that unfolded during the Cold War. The legacy of these global connections and interweavings is also clearly visible in the twenty-first century on the economic, cultural, and international political relations levels. However, internationalism as a political project aimed at transforming societies and world order—which has been at the center of international visions and discourses throughout the last century—seems to have vanished. This project aims to offer new perspectives to the growing research on internationalism by addressing the topic of its decline in the final phase of the Cold War and its consequences. The working hypothesis is that the emergence of economic globalization in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the ideas of Western hegemony in the world order that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union, only apparently represented the pinnacle of internationalism, while in fact, they laid the foundations for its decline. We will therefore focus on three thematic axes: the last attempts at reform of the Soviet Union and the post-Soviet world; conceptions of a global role for the European Union; and Anglo-American political thought of the "third way" as the guiding principle of a post-Cold War world order.

Duration of the project: 28/09/2023 – 28/09/2025

Co-Principal Investigator: Paolo Capuzzo

Principal investigator: Silvio Pons (Scuola Normale Superiore – Pisa)

Partnership: Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Università di Trento
Budget of the University of Bologna: 45.943 EUR

ERC sectors:
SH6_9 Modern and contemporary history
SH6_11 Global history, transnational history, comparative history, entangled histories