the past fifty years have seen the debacles of two universalist ideologies: communism and neoliberalism. Both were defeated by the real world. The new ideologies will not be universal: they would not claim to apply to the entire world. They will be particularist, limited in scope, both geographically and politically and geared toward the maintenance of hegemony wherever they rule; not fashioning it into universal principles. This is why the talk about
global ideologies of authoritarianism is meaningless. These ideologies are local, aiming at the preservation of power and of the status quo. This does not make them averse to the old imperialist temptation. But that temptation can never be extended to the world as a whole nor can various authoritarianisms work together to accomplish that. Moreover, since they lack universal principles, they are likely to clash. The only way for authoritarians not to fight with each other is to accept a very narrow set of principles, essentially those of non-interference in domestic affairs and absence of aggression, and leave it at that. Xi Jinping’s proclamation of
five such narrow rules at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting may be based on such a calculation.