Geoeconomic competition in a post-neoliberal global order

The observation that we live in a world after neoliberal globalization is, in the age of Trump and China‘s rise, a truism. At the same time, we are being flooded with analyses that herald the advent of a more ‚geopolitical‘ world. When the effects of the COVID19 pandemic revealed the fragility of global supply chains, people quickly began to talk of a process of »de-globalisation«. The rise of China has led Western politicians and commentators to demand protectionist measures. And against the backdrop of growing international tensions, many feel we are witnessing a return of geopolitics.

In this talk, I argue that such as geopolitical reading of our times is neither empirically accurate nor politically helpful. Rather, we should develop an empirically sensitive lens that studies instances of geoeconomic competition closer to better understand where a post-neoliberal global order is heading. Different from a geopolitical reading, a geoeconomic lens allows us to go beyond a narrow focus on national security, on states as sole actors in the world system, and on confrontation as the only possibility of enaging in international politics. Rather, it emphasizes the economic competition for relative gains that it at the heart of our times; the power non-state actors like multinational corporations wield; and the different modes of engagement that actors display when they enter the world of geoeconomic competition.

Addressing key state, market and political transformations of our times and analyzing them from a geoeconomic lens, I develop a framework for thinking about what lies beyond the horizon of neoliberal globalization – and what perils and possibilities this new global order presents to the actors involved in building it.

Milan Babić is Associate Professor in Political Economy of Finance at the Political Science Department at the University of Amsterdam and PI of the DECARB project. His research deals with the transformations of the global political economy towards a geoeconomic global order; the political economy of decarbonization; and state-led investment. He co-edited The Political Economy of Geoeconomics (Palgrave 2022) and wrote two monographs: The Rise of State Capital (Agenda 2023) and Geökonomie (Suhrkamp 2025). Before joining the University of Amsterdam, he worked at Maastricht University and Roskilde University in Denmark. 

The lecture isarranged with the support of the Centre for European Studies