How to Turn Back the Populist Tide and Build Support for the Liberal Order (Peter Trubowitz and Brian Burgoon)
In the years immediately following World War II, voters on the left and right in Western countries both backed liberal internationalism. They found common cause in their support for policies that sought to expand international trade and cooperation and prevent the spread of communism. For decades, this “vital center,” as Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., termed it, held. But times have changed. Since the early 1990s, an antiglobalist backlash has seen the support of Western voters for parties favoring trade liberalization and multilateral cooperation fall by nearly 50 percent.