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Die großen Probleme unserer Zeit – Terrorismus, Klimawandel, globale Migration und jüngst die Corona-Pandemie – überschreiten die Grenzen der Nationalstaaten. Allein und ohne die Kooperation mit anderen kann kein Staat diese Probleme lösen. Die Handlungsoptionen sind reduziert und gelten in der Regel nur für das eigene Staatsgebiet. Im besten Fall fußen sie auf freiwilligen und damit wenig belastbaren, zwischenstaatlichen Absprachen. Dem gegenüber steht die Instrumentalisierung globaler Krisen durch einzelne Großmächte. Es fehlt ein globales Korrektiv, das im Bedarfsfall gezielt eingreifen kann und auf der Basis eigener Ressourcen handlungsfähig ist. Es ist deshalb an der Zeit, die Diskussion über eine demokratische und föderale Weltregierung wieder aufzunehmen. Christian J. Jäggi legt mit diesem Buch einen Beitrag dazu vor.

“Paradoxes of Populism” argues that populism, far-from-random similarities with ordinary manifestations of nationalism, should be approached not as a venture into the classical structures of nation-states and identities, but as a disruptive and destabilizing consequence of some of the constituent elements of sovereign nation-states becoming eroded and prised apart by contextual global processes and their agents. The book demonstrates that populism, in its many varieties, is riddled with even more paradoxes and inconsistencies than mainstream nationalism itself––confusing causes and appearances, realities and fantasies and turning the world inside out. This book definitively engages with real-world challenges that the age of populism, the Second Coming of Nationalism, poses in liberal democracies states as well as their political and cultural interpretations in the populist fantasia. The book argues that contrary to its self-image, populism does not represent a return to a peaceful, well-ordered and secure place of identity, progress and belonging, but, first, the introduction of irreconcilable division into the domestic arena; second, the breakdown of trust and civilized communication between governors and governed elites and people; and third, the exposure of the increasing powerlessness of the international order. “Paradoxes of Populism” is a book about the fantasies, promises and contradictions of populism, as also about its backgrounds and causes in liberal democracies. While demonstrating its many varieties, the book explains populism's rising popularity and steers the reader through the many myths and misconceptions surrounding it.

The crisis of the neoliberal order has resuscitated a political idea widely believed to be consigned to the dustbin of history. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the neo-nationalist, anti-globalisation and anti-establishment backlash engulfing the West all involve a yearning for a relic of the past: national sovereignty. In response to these challenging times, economist William Mitchell and political theorist Thomas Fazi reconceptualise the nation state as a vehicle for progressive change. They show how despite the ravages of neoliberalism, the state still contains resources for democratic control of a nation's economy and finances. The populist turn provides an opening to develop an ambitious but feasible left political strategy. Reclaiming the State offers an urgent, provocative and prescient political analysis of our current predicament, and lays out a comprehensive strategy for revitalising progressive economics in the 21st century.

During the First World War, the German occupier tried to split Belgium internally. This was done by pursuing a Flamenpolitik, a policy aimed at scaring the Flemish, or at least the Flemish movement, against Belgium. That worked, because a small number of Flemish supporters, the so-called activists, did indeed collaborate. From the late summer of 1914, Berlin in the occupied country would incessantly bombard the Flemish movement with a large-scale media campaign. The German services, supported by their Austrian allies, mainly made use of pamphlets and the written press, not only in Belgium but also in the neutral Netherlands. In the summer of 1915 activism was a fact: an anti-Belgian Flemish nationalism, the consequences of which have been felt to date, had seen the light of day. The propaganda underlying it was so ingenious and clever that it not only convinced contemporaries, but still misleads historians even more than a century later. It is a fine example of “fake news” avant la lettre., Tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog probeerde de Duitse bezetter België intern te splijten. Dat gebeurde door het voeren van een Flamenpolitik, een beleid dat erop gericht was de Vlamingen of in elk geval de Vlaamse beweging in het harnas te jagen tegen België. Dat lukte, want een klein deel Vlaamsgezinden, de zogenaamde activisten, collaboreerde inderdaad. Vanaf de nazomer van 1914 zou Berlijn in het bezette land de Vlaamse beweging onophoudelijk bestoken met een grootscheepse mediacampagne. De Duitse diensten, gesteund door hun Oostenrijkse bondgenoten, maakten daarbij vooral gebruik van vlugschriften en de geschreven pers, niet alleen in België maar ook in het neutrale Nederland. In de zomer van 1915 was het activisme een feit: een anti-Belgisch Vlaams-nationalisme, waarvan de gevolgen tot op heden voelbaar zijn, had het daglicht gezien. De propaganda die eraan ten grondslag lag was zó vernuftig en ingenieus dat ze niet alleen tijdgenoten overtuigde, maar zelfs meer dan een eeuw later nog steeds historici misleidt. Het is een mooi staaltje van “fake news” avant la lettre.

World War I had just broken out, but colonial authorities in the Netherlands Indies heaved a sigh of relief: The colonial export sector had not collapsed and war offered new economic prospects; representatives from the Islamic nationalist movement had prayed for God to bless the Netherlands but had not seized upon the occasion to incite unrest. Furthermore, the colonial government, impressed by such shows of loyalty, embarked upon a campaign to create a ‘native militia’, an army of Javanese to assist in repulsing a possible Japanese invasion. - - Yet there were other problem: pilgrims stranded in Mecca, the pro-German disposition of most Indonesian Muslims because of the involvement of Turkey in the war, and above all the status of the Netherlands Indies as a smuggling station used by Indian revolutionaries and German agents to subvert British rule in Asia. - - By 1917 the optimism of the first war years had disappeared. Trade restrictions, the war at sea, and a worldwide lack of tonnage caused export opportunities to dwindle. Communist propaganda had radicalized the nationalist movement. In 1918 it seemed that the colony might cave in. Exports had ceased. Famine was a very real danger. There was increasing unrest within the colonial population and the army and navy. Colonial authorities turned to the nationalist movement for help, offering them drastic political concessions, forgotten as soon as the war ended. The political and economic independence gained by the Netherlands Indies, a result of problems in communications with the mother country, was also lost with the end of the war. - - Kees van Dijk examines how in 1917 the atmosphere of optimism in the Netherlands Indies changed to one of unrest and dissatisfaction, and how after World War I the situation stabilized to resemble pre-war political and economic circumstances. - - Kees van Dijk (1946) has worked as a researcher at KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies from 1968 to 2007 and has been professor of the history of Islam in Indonesia at Leiden University since 1985. Among his publications are Rebellion under the banner of Islam; The Darul Islam in Indonesia (Leiden, KITLV Press 1981) and A country in despair; Indonesia between 1997 and 2000 (Leiden, KITLV Press 2001).