Centre for West Studies

We are a politically non-aligned think tank dedicated to policy development, critical scholarship, and public debate on issues relevant to the contemporary West.

What is the West?

An evolving definition of the West could be: states and societies that broadly encompass or subscribe to liberal democratic values, are active members of the international system, are considered strategic allies of traditional Western states such as the US, UK, Germany, etc., regardless of ethnic or racial composition or geographical position. Ultimately, it is a network of power, a set of institutions strongly influenced by, and comprised of, Western states. It could be argued there is a core West: the US, Europe and Anglo-sphere democracies; a broad west comprising that core, international institutions established after WWII and peripheral partially liberal-democratic states that strongly support the existing post-WWII international political system and sometimes ally with the core. There’s an additional conception of the West: issue/interest/value based temporary crystallizations of elements of core and periphery.

CWS operates under the assumption that sustenance of the individual freedom is the paramount goal of western societies and their associated states. To this end, a kind of subsidiarity involving the limitation of state encroachment into areas where individuals are competent to decide and act, is a fundamental underpinning of our political philosophy. CWS is also internationalist, but unconventionally so. We recognize international legal responsibilities and take the protection of human rights globally as key to progress. As an under-researched, indeed under-recognized subject of scholarly enquiry, the West is THE elephant in the room of international politics and society. There is skepticism about the very question of the West’s contemporary existence as an idea, let alone as a political, economic, social and cultural reality. There is also currently an explosive, degenerate push back against the West in history. But at the same time, it is a ‘concept’ regularly employed as a vague reference point, in discourse about political, cultural and social issues. The West certainly was and indeed remains an amorphous, shifting, constantly re-crystallizing force in human civilization. It has increasingly seen by a wide range of commentators as undergoing a significant, potentially damaging cultural revolution and facing decline of its power and influence in the world.

Central to a proper understanding of the West, often neglected in commentary on strategic issues, is its inspirational and sustaining role in the development of democracy movements throughout the undemocratic or authoritarian world.

The CWS Mission

The Centre is dedicated to the exploration of policy proposals for the betterment of the contemporary West, and additionally, the study, and public debate of, all aspects of it: its definition, formation, evolution and nature; the history of the West with special reference to its colonial past; contemporary issues such as diversity, woke culture, immigration, human rights, media, and democracy; internal Western division; the US and the West; Europe and the West; its relationship to China, Russia and the authoritarian world; its relations with other major rising powers, India and Brazil, the West’s power and relationship to power in the global system.

The CWS is unique as a think tank in its approach to policy making, scholarship and public debate – a central objective being our attempt to integrate into policy and academic analysis a broader sense of public thinking and discourse on issues concerning the West to avoid the pitfalls of division between elites and ordinary people in the UK and wider West that have been seen in recent years. Huge gaps between the perspectives of those holding power in institutions across society and the public in general have arisen over many decades resulting in great fissures in UK, US and European societies and a sense or view, held increasingly by many, of a lack of democratic accountability on fundamental issues. We will engage with public opinion through polls, focus groups and worker-scholars’ research wherever feasible in relation to our research projects. As such it will aim to offer a counterview to prevalent policy, conventional think tank and academic perspectives.

The Centre for West Studies is a politically non-aligned think tank but has, nonetheless, a strong political compass which helps to shape its policy formulation: focused on the West, the Centre is pro-West, but not uncritically so. It is strongly opposed to the rise of many authoritarian powers clustered around China, Russia and Iran, which it perceives as a huge, looming danger to the free world. In this sense, in terms of human rights, but also in relation to the systemic contest for power in the world realists recognise, the CWS takes the liberty of individuals and states (and their linked societies) as critical features in analysing the world’s problems.

The CWS is strongly supportive of freedom of speech and freedom of expression and as such is extremely concerned about the rise of cancel culture in the West, which has seen many careers and public lives of decent people dashed against the rock of ideological novelty and activist innovation. Above all, it serves to limit the spread of ideas and creativity which helped to create the West through its stamping on free expression. In this sense, the Centre strongly supports, though might often disagree with, a range of actors who are critical of gender ideology or have an informed but critical view of the ‘climate consensus’ or have questioned aspects of a so called scientific consensus about the myriad issues relating the Covid crisis.

The massive reconfiguration of knowledge creation and dissemination through the media transformations we are living through has led to an epistemic crisis which has helped polarise opinion across a range of political ideas. Now, it’s not unusual to question established expert opinion and apparent consensus. The CWS sees dangers in this technological and social turn but also, opportunity. The Centre is concerned for the fate of the ordinary folk, suffering a welter of new, often radical and life-changing ideas and believes in the need to debate anyone and any idea that is not explicitly advocating violence at the individual level or promoting unprovoked aggression at the level of states.

In terms of Western societies, the CWS has a concern with tradition. There is an increasing sense that societies are become unmoored from the intricate networks and structures that shaped their development over hundreds, if not thousands of years. Technological change, and concomitant social and cultural reorganisation is now enacted at an unprecedentedly accelerating rate. In this sense the Centre is techno-sceptic but not -phobic, it is pro reflection on tradition and wary of the influx of ideologies and religious ideas and practices which can be seen as undermining traditional cultures and practices long-established in the West. Again, the fate of ordinary people throughout the West, who still value their existing ways and structures of life, is a central concern of the CWS.