June « 2021 « Views and works

ANTI-ENLIGHTENMENT IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND TRADE LAW:

A U.S.−E.U. COMPARISON

Tamas Dezso Ziegler*

After the inauguration of Donald Trump as president of the U.S. and the success of authoritarian, far-right leaders in certain countries in the E.U., the legal framework of international trade changed drastically. This article elaborates on this phenomenon by highlighting the effect of the Western anti-Enlightenment tradition, a tradition containing diffuse elements like ethnocentrism, overt nationalism and Social Darwinism on international business and trade rules in the U.S. and Europe. As many elements of this tradition work against international cooperation, it is the main drive for change, and it seems it will even strengthen in the future. This paper highlights connections that are otherwise hidden: ethnocentrism, racism, chauvinism, Social Darwinism and irrational emotionalism by analyzing their different components and using a broader, sub-legal framework. Each of these ideas are connected to each other, and affect market policies domestically and internationally. As lawmaking is not independent from its social environment, this also means that apart from legal answers, cultural−social answers must also be taken into consideration when trying to counter these tendencies.

If the editors do not add this article to their website asap, I will scan it and upload it here and/or to my ssrn page. As I saw it is also listed in Heinonline, but the text is missing, hope it will be uploaded soon.

The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition as a Common Framework of Fascism and the Contemporary Far Right

Published an article about the connection between fascism and the far right. As I see, there is a split among those scholars who connect fascism to far right forces, and those would not recommend this. I belong to the first camp, and use Zeev Sternhell’s theory of the anti-Enlightenment tradition to explain similarities. I think this is one of my most important articles I published about this problem. You can reach it here , or through clicking on the image below. The abstract is as follows:

The relationship between far-right political streams and fascism is a recurring topic in scientific literature. However, we find a low number of academic publications which try to create a framework for their similarities. This article uses Zeev Sternhell’s theory of fascism as a tool to measure different interpretations of fascism and the far right. According to its basic statement, there exists an anti-Enlightenment tradition in the Western world, which could serve as a substratum of these streams. This proves two points. Firstly, that there are several political groups which share a very similar political vision, even if their levels of aggression and radicalism are different. This is the reason why many neo-fascist, post-fascist, ‘populist’ and conservative parties have interchangeable rhetorical clichés and ideological patterns. Second, it shows that Western countries could successfully fight the rise of upcoming anti-democratic forces through strengthening the values of the Enlightenment-tradition.