It’s almost a truism to say that we are living through an age of crisis. The liberal international order is undergoing a series of interconnected and turbulent transformations, many of which are profoundly perilous. But how can we understand this age of crisis from a distinctly Southern perspective? This is the question at the heart of a new book, co-authored by the director of the Centre for Asian Studies in Africa, Prof Alf Nilsen, and colleagues from Wits University, the University of São Paulo, UCLA, and the Federal University of São Paulo. Published in the prestigious book series Progress in Political Economy, which is hosted by Manchester University Press, Southern interregnum: remaking hegemony in Brazil, India, China, and South Africa puts forward a bold diagnosis of the present moment in the Global South. 

‘The book is actually the end result of a collaboration that I initiated as far back as 2016, at my then workplace, the University of Bergen in Norway,’ says CASA director Alf Nilsen. ‘I brought together a group of researchers with expertise on Brazil, India, China, and South Africa to share and discuss insights into the relationship between economic growth and popular protest in emerging powers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.’ The first result of this collaboration was a special issue of the international journal Globalizations, but the collaboration did not end there. 

‘As our discussions progressed in meetings that took place in Bangalore, São Paulo, and then Pretoria, we came to the conclusion that it would be necessary to develop a new and critical perspective on southern development trajectories in the early 21st century, and this is what our book attempts to provide,’ Nilsen says. 

Working comparatively across four country cases, Southern interregnum challenges many mainstream narratives about the Global South in the early 21st century. ‘It is quite common in academia, policy circles, and the media to claim that our era is defined by the geoeconomic and geopolitical rise of the South,’ Nilsen tells us. ‘This narrative, however, is far too simple. Yes, there has been substantial economic growth in many parts of the Global South, but this growth is deeply unequal and characterised by entrenched precarity. Yes, the world-system is increasingly multipolar, but there is little to suggest that this will bring about social justice and greater democratic participation in countries in the Global South,’ he continues. 

‘As an alternative to such easy narratives, Southern interregnum focuses on how inequality and precarity have created crises of legitimacy for governing elites across the emerging powers that are the focus of the book. This is evident in the waves of popular protest that have rocked the Global South, from the Arab uprising of 2011 and 2012 up until the very recent insurgencies in countries like Sri Lanka, Kenya, and Bangladesh,’ says Nilsen. 

In their book, the authors draw on the work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci to argue that these crises are moments when the old is dying but the new cannot be born. In such moments, they argue, it is crucial to focus on what governing elites do to restore their hegemony in society. ‘Hence, in Southern interregnum, we develop a comparative analysis of what we call hegemonic projects across Brazil, India, China, and South Africa. In the Brazilian case, we focus on how the Bolsonaro regime attempted to fuse free-market economics with a call for a return to the country’s authoritarian past; in the case of India, we discuss the neoliberal Hindu nationalism of Narendra Modi and the BJP. China is, of course, a very important case, and we investigate how the party-state has attempted to steer a course through turbulence by going global and going digital. Finally, in the South African case, we focus on how political life is increasingly polarised between the technocratic neoliberalism of Cyril Ramaphosa and a xenophobic populism anchored in a patronage-violence complex that accumulates wealth through corruption,’ Nilsen says. 

So what conclusions does the book reach? “Well, much as we don’t align our analysis with simple narratives, we also don’t end with simple, technical policy recommendations. Ultimately, the trajectory of the Global South in the coming decades will be shaped by struggles and contention, by the kinds of elite projects that we focus on in Southern interregnum and the insurgent movements that these projects respond to. And if a new world is to be born at all, those movements will most certainly be its midwife,’ says Nilsen.