Overview
Why has greater global connectivity also produced social dislocation and political backlash? Heywood locates part of the answer in social relations. Durable communities coexist with more individualized and digitally mediated ties. Precarious work and network power can also weaken stable sources of belonging.
Dani Rodrik identifies a political-economic constraint. Deep globalization, national sovereignty and democratic politics cannot all be maintained at full strength. Late-stage liberalization also creates concentrated losses that compensation often fails to repair. Pankaj Mishra interprets resentment and rage as responses to modernity’s broken promises. Together, the readings support a multicausal explanation of populism. The lecture distinguishes demand from political supply and compares how regions organize discontent differently.
Questions guiding the lecture
- How do communication technologies and markets transform community and social belonging?
- Which combinations of globalization, sovereignty, and democracy are politically sustainable?
- How do economic loss, cultural change, and status anxiety interact without becoming interchangeable explanations?
- Why does populist demand consolidate into durable political movements in some settings but not others?
Lecture map
Social transformation changes both thick and thin forms of connection. Precarity and risk society provide one account of that change, while liquid modernity and network society provide others.
Rodrik's globalization trilemma introduces the political economy. Trade creates distributional losses, and compensation often fails politically.
Mishra explains dislocation and humiliation as sources of resentment and rage. This affective account adds one layer to contemporary backlash.
The analysis separates populist demand from political supply. Institutions can absorb or diffuse discontent, and they can channel it into left- or right-wing movements.
Readings
Heywood, Andrew. 2014. Global Politics, 2nd ed., Chapter 7, “Society in a Global Age.”
The syllabus assignment provides the social account of globalization. The 2026 lecture guide uses the updated third-edition chapter by Heywood and Whitham.
Rodrik, Dani. 2018. “Populism and the Economics of Globalization.” Journal of International Business Policy 1(1): 12–33.
Connects distributional shocks to populist demand while placing globalization among several possible causes. Its relative importance varies across cases.
Recommended and lecture-specific extensions
The syllabus recommends Ulrich Beck on world risk society, Pankaj Mishra's The Age of Anger, and Norris and Inglehart's Cultural Backlash. The lecture guide additionally uses Mishra's 2016 Guardian essay “Welcome to the Age of Anger” as a short bridge to the affective argument.
Classroom study
Structured lecture exercise
Diagnosing the globalization trilemma
The exercise asks which corner of Rodrik's trilemma was constrained in five cases. Students considered Greece and Brexit, followed by China, the United States under Trump and Argentina.
Students voted by show of hands before the lecture worked through each case. The activity served as a discussion and diagnostic exercise rather than a survey or randomized experiment.
No vote tally or participation count was recorded. Expected splits in the speaker notes guided discussion and should not be treated as observed results.
A planned answer and a show-of-hands discussion have a different evidentiary status from a stored survey result. This site makes no empirical claim about how the class voted.
Takeaways
- Global connection can coexist with precarity and social fragmentation. It may also generate renewed demands for control.
- Rodrik's trilemma clarifies institutional trade-offs but does not by itself explain which political coalition forms in response.
- Economic and cultural accounts of populism can interact. Neither should be treated as a universal, single-cause explanation.
- Populist outcomes depend on political supply. Institutions and regional histories shape how leaders and parties organize discontent.
Course record checked against the 2025–2026 syllabus and the lecture slides, speaker notes and reading guide. The documented trilemma exercise was used to verify the classroom activity.