The unexpected rise to power of President Donald Trump in the US, and the UK referendum resulting in Brexit, highlighted 2016 as a year of populism and post-truth. Both campaigns were driven by appeals to emotion, not reason, and were characterized by the widespread use of non-truths. The winners were appealing to those frustrated with regular politics, and those hit by the negative impacts of globalization. While populism and post-truth are neither new nor limited to our two examples, do these results therefore signal a greater crisis within the two key architects of the global system? What will be the impacts on the economic order that has been in place since WWII? Will brakes be applied to the various processes of globalization that have continued virtually unabated for more than 50 years? How are international and domestic institutions responding to the post-truth world that may threaten their legitimacy and even existence? What does the seeming rise in populism and post-truth say about civil society and its crucial role in democracy? While it may be that the shift towards populism could be interpreted as a domestic shift in power from elites to citizens, should we also understand it in terms of the ongoing global shift in power from the West to the rest?
The AAGS conference organizing committee invites paper proposals seeking to answer these and other related questions concerning any aspect of Populism and Post-Truth, and its Global Impacts. Proposals should be between 150 to 200 words and include the paper's title and the author's name, affiliation, and contact information. A bio of 100 to 125 words describing the author's background, accomplishments and research interests should also accompany the proposal. Both proposals and bios should be written following the guidelines on the templates provided at: http://bit.ly/AAGSProposalTemplate and http://bit.ly/AAGSBioTemplate and sent to us. Applications should then be submitted as MS Word email attachments or Google Documents to conferencechair@aags.org. Documents not using the templates or not following the specified format will not be accepted.
