The 2016 U.S. presidential elections triggered emotions I had not felt for years. In 1998, Venezuela, where I’m from, elected a populist president who, like U.S. President Donald Trump, ran a campaign based on anti-establishment sentiments. Countries like Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Nicaragua followed suit, and I began to wonder about the extent to which the benefits of neo-liberalism were really reaching the general population. Systematic research on the possible “end of globalization” was not taken seriously, at least not by many of the Western drivers of today’s political-economic order. But now Brexit in the UK and Trump have shaken faith in the conventional wisdom and have many asking, “Is this the end?”

Rebecca Van Roy, študentka LSE (A Student Perspective on a Global Network Course on Globalization — LSE Management, 6. maj 2017)