About
Around the world, we see a resurgence of reactionary nationalist, religious, racist, classist, and anti-feminist ideologies and movements, as well as the rapid undermining of democratic political systems. The International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies (IRGAC) aims to zoom in on the regional and global interconnections of authoritarian capitalism and reactionary populism and place them at the centre of scholarly debates.
The group brings together more than 20 scholar-activists from countries of the Global South with the goal of combining in-depth studies of national, regional, and local processes with a global perspective that recognizes and analyzes the universal manifestations of authoritarian capitalism and universalizing processes that lie beyond the “rising tide” of authoritarianism. At the same time, we propose an internationalist perspective on local and regional counter-strategies, a perspective that, while discussing alternative paths and concrete, popular resistance strategies, campaigns, and initiatives, inquires about their potential to pave the way towards internationalist emancipatory transformative strategies.
The IRGAC is currently funding twelve post-doc research positions in universities in countries of the Global South, as well as a large number of research stays at German universities. The group holds regular on- and offline meetings and workshops to further develop and sharpen what we understand as global perspectives from the South on authoritarian capitalism and counter-strategies. We regularly publish new findings and research excerpts on this website, as well as in journals and other publications. In late 2022, we published “Global Authoritarianism. Perspectives and Contestations from the South” with transcript Verlag.
The IRGAC is an initiative of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, with funds by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Germany.
The research group is coordinated by Börries Nehe, Jan-David Echterhoff is responsible for the project management.