Description:

Please join the International Relations Speaker Series as they host Professor Karen J. Alter, Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations at Northwestern University. 

This introduction defines backlash politics as oriented around a retrograde objective, involving extraordinary claims and tactics, and meeting a threshold level of the backlash rhetoric entering and transforming mainstream public discourse. The definition bounds the category while expanding the cases that qualify as backlash politics across time and space. After situating the definition within the larger set of backlash invocations, we develop a framework to move the conversation beyond a search for triggers and the common framing of backlash politics as reactionary. The backlash politics framework identifies a range of ‘before’ questions about the antecedents contributing to backlash politics, ‘during’ questions about the dynamic elements that may intensify or diminish backlash politics, and ‘after’ questions that investigate varied impacts and outcomes. The ultimate goal is to identify backlash politics as a distinct feature of our time, including the strategies that intensify, stop or provide off-ramps, and ways to channel a preference for an older way of life into current politics.

Karen J. Alter is the Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations and Professor of Political Science and Law, and co-director Research Group on Global Capitalism and Law at Northwestern University. A longtime specialist on the politics of international law and international courts, and the politics of international regime complexity, Professor Alter has conducted research in Latin America, Africa and Europe. Alter’s newest research focuses on the construction of global economic rules regulating trade and money, how China’s rise is influencing international relations, backlash politics, and US Export Control Politics. From August 2023-July 2024 Professor Alter served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Department of Commerce, sponsored by a CFR International Affairs Fellow for Tenured IR Faculty. Alter is author or editor of six books and more than seventy articles and book chapters on the politics of international law, comparative international courts, and international regime complexity. Alter is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, a former Guggenheim Fellow, winner of the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin, and winner of the American Society of International Law’s Certificate of Merit for a Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship