National Interest

Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London. He has authored seven books including Taking Control: Sovereignty and Democracy After Brexit (2023) co-written with George Hoare, Lee Jones and Peter Ramsay. He has taught international relations at the university level for 14 years. He contributes regularly to public debate on questions of national politics and international order and can be found @thephilippics on X.

"Cunliffe argues valiantly and incisively for a concept long scorned. A revived concept of the national interest will help recover social solidarity, democratic accountability and the basis for pursuing the common good."Patrick Porter, University of Birmingham"Cunliffe's book provides a brilliant rehabilitation of the concept of national interest, establishing it as a founding stone of a post-globalist democratic theory and practice and making it the essential point of departure for a rigorous theory of the state-in-society that leaves the shallows of the neoliberal worldview behind."Wolfgang Streeck, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne"Rejecting the anti-politics of both managerial technocrats and populist demagogues, Philip Cunliffe makes a convincing argument that in today's world genuine democracy is impossible without national sovereignty."Michael Lind, author of The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite"A vital account of how academics and politicians have collaborated in the hollowing out of the idea of the nation state – in favour of sub-national identities and supranational institutions – and how it might be revived."David Goodhart, author of The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics"A foundation for a postliberal theory of international order... Cunliffe makes a compelling case that technocratic elitism and populist nihilism are both downstream of a crisis of political legitimacy that can only be remedied through a restoration of national identity, associational life, and democratic representation."Heather Penatzer, Compact

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroduction1. What Happened to the National Interest?2. The Theory of the National Interest3. The History of the National Interest4. The Nation: A Story of Abandonment5. The Need for a New National InterestEpilogueNotes