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"Are Multilateralism and Collective Security Possible in an Authoritarian World?"

Against the backdrop of the return of conventional warfare to Europe, and after more than a decade of rising ethnonationalism and far right politics across the globe, the presentation will reflect on the prospects for a new global settlement based on economic redistribution, climate transition and strengthened protections for human rights. As the global order fractures, it considers the role social movements and civil society might play in resisting authoritarian trends and institutionalising democratic alternatives, as well as the complexity of seeking new forms of 'peaceful coexistence' in the 21st century. In world characterised by a crisis-ravaged interdependence and accelerating conflict between competing geopolitical blocs, are multilateralism and collective security still possible and how might they be achieved? 

Luke Cooper is Senior Research Fellow at IDEAS, the LSE’s in-house foreign policy think tank. His primary research interests lie in the field of nationalism, historical sociology, authoritarianism and the theory of uneven and combined development, and his work analyses both historical and present-day case studies. He is the author of Authoritarian Contagion; the Global Threat to Democracy (2021) and Authoritarian protectionism in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe: diversity, commonality and resistance (2021).