In this Distinguished Public Lecture, held on 27 January 2026, Professor Sir Steve Smith looked at the impact of globalisation over the last 30 years on international systems. Sir Steve Smith was appointed as the S. Rajaratnam Professor of Strategic Studies from 24 January to 7 February 2026 and he was a Member of the Board of Governors at RSIS from 2006 to 2024. He is currently the UK Government International Education Champion, and the UK Government Special Representative to Saudi Arabia for Education.
Centrally, he focused on the claims that it marked a transformative moment in world politics, changing the nature of international politics forever. Professor Smith noted that there was a wave of enthusiasm that accompanied its emergence as a dominant theoretical explanation of world politics in the 1990s, and compared that to specific circumstances of that period of recent international history. He then looked at the forces that have led to notions of de-globalisation, both in terms of a loosening connectivity in the international economy and the re-emergence of inter-state rivalries in world politics.
The core conclusion was that the discipline of International Relations adopted globalisation as a one-way transformation whereas it is now clear that there are both powerful globalising and de-globalising forces at work. These contrasting forces make statecraft ever more difficult with domestic political debates around the world increasingly populist in nature.
Watch the Distinguished Public Lecture here:
