Global Tensions—The Denudation of the Post-1990 Consensus and the Need to Reconceptualise Citizenship Education

Abstract

The article begins by examining the “post-1990 consensus,” an international orientation—emerging in the mid-twentieth century and consolidating after 1990—that promoted diversity, equity, inclusion, human rights, multiculturalism, and postmodernism as guiding values of the global order. Education was seen as both the site and the instrument for advancing this vision of a new socio-political world. However, this consensus has been undermined by what the authors term the “denudation of the post-1990 consensus”, an analytical turn that emerged in the early twenty-first century amid intensifying global tensions and the erosion of liberal-democratic ideals. (The term ‘denudation’ is borrowed from the science of geology, where it refers to the stripping away of layers of material, thereby exposing deeper, formerly hidden layers.) The article introduces the construct of the “denudation of the post-1990 consensus” as an analytical turn in interpreting how contemporary political transformations reshape the conditions under which citizenship and education operate. This turn is characterised by various interconnected processes, including democratic regression, deglobalisation, populism, nationalism, rising inequality, and social fragmentation, all of which point to the weakening or the stripping away of the normative foundations of diversity, equity, inclusion, and the liberal-democratic citizenship that lay at the heart of the post-1990 consensus. They have also been weakening or stripping away the foundational values that previously informed global educational reform. However, in its current form, the concept of liberal-democratic citizenship is not suitably equipped to meet the challenges brought about by the turn of events referred to as the “denudation of the post-1990 consensus”. It must, therefore, be reconceptualised as a critical, multilayered, human-rights-based, intercultural, and capability-oriented field of formation. It is contended that, in view of the “denudation” process, a reconceptualised form of citizenship education, capable of addressing fragmented identities, democratic instability, and multilayered forms of belonging, may offer an appropriate educational response to contemporary global turbulence.

1. Introduction, Research Method, and Core Theoretical Argument

Educational reform initiatives worldwide have been informed since the mid-twentieth century by normative frameworks that emphasise diversity, fairness, and participatory inclusion [1]. These normative frameworks were closely aligned with post-Cold War tendencies toward democratic consolidation, human rights protection, and international cooperation. In this context, education came to be viewed as both the arena and the instrument for bringing about a new global socio-political world order based on these values. We employ the notion of “the post-1990 consensus” heuristically to refer to this liberal-democratic disposition that emerged in the aftermath of the Cold War and found expression and application in international institutions from around 1990 onward. This disposition found expression and application in human rights frameworks and educational reform agendas. According to this line of reasoning, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 symbolised the geopolitical end of the Cold War. The term “the post-1990 consensus” refers to the decades thereafter, during which the abovementioned liberal-democratic normative framework became progressively institutionalised in international governance and in educational reform [2]. As mentioned, this liberal-democratic framework foregrounded human rights, democratic participation, multiculturalism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion as guiding principles of social and educational organisation. In brief, we employ the term “the post-1990 consensus” heuristically in our analysis of recent global political and social developments, not as a reference to a single historical turning point such as the fall of the Berlin Wall.

We also coined the concept of “the denudation of the post-1990 consensus” to mark a shift in how contemporary political and social transformations reshape educational priorities, the normative foundations of public life, and citizenship. Contemporary societies are increasingly characterised by instability, contestation, and political realignments that reverberate far beyond the formal arenas of governance [3]. Shifting global power relations, the weakening of multilateral cooperation, and the resurgence of exclusionary political imaginaries have combined forces to generate social conditions marked by uncertainty and fragmentation [4]. These developments are not only geopolitical; they also permeate everyday social life, reshape collective identities, and redefine the parameters of belonging within and across nation-states [5]. As a result, social cohesion has become increasingly fragile and tenuous; long-standing commitments to pluralism and social justice are under mounting pressure. Education systems do not operate in isolation from these broader transformations; they are in fact deeply embedded in prevailing political and social contexts and continuously shaped by them [6].

Rather than entailing simply erosion or a departure from liberal-democratic norms, the concept of denudation offers a dual interpretation according to which (a) the normative surface that long concealed underlying political, cultural, and geopolitical tensions is being progressively stripped away, and (b) the weakening of the previously dominant normative order and prominence of competing political formations that were present but partially concealed and suppressed by the post-1990 consensus as the dominant geopolitical paradigm. The concept of denudation draws attention to the rise of alternative normative geopolitical–social approaches centred on national sovereignty, civilisational identity, majoritarian democracy, geopolitical competition, and exclusionary understandings of belonging. These approaches or views gain salience as the normative authority of “the post-1990 consensus” fades. In brief, then, the concept of denudation directs attention not only to normative loss, but also to the transformation of the political and educational landscape through the exposure of previously subordinated tensions and political formations. Erosion may be understood as one mechanism captured by the concept of denudation. The analytical value of denudation lies in its emphasis not only on weakening or removal, but also on the exposure of political formations, tensions, and alternative normative projects that had previously been obscured or subordinated within the dominant normative order.

The concept of denudation as used in this paper refers not only to a descriptive weakening of liberal-democratic norms, but also to a historically situated view of institutional and value-based attrition affecting the global order that emerged after the Cold War. Denudation does not mean the replacement of concepts such as the liberal international order or neoliberal globalisation. Whereas other concepts describe particular political, economic, or institutional configurations, denudation draws attention to how their application and force—based on widely shared values (the “consensus”)—is progressively being stripped away, thereby exposing the competing political formations that were actually present during the consensus era, but were deemed to be of less significance. Denudation has led to a gradual waning of the post-1990 consensus’s political and cultural dominance. Denudation, therefore, does not imply the complete disappearance of liberal-democratic values but rather their gradual weakening, selective appropriation, and declining authority as organising principles of public and educational life. At the same time, the concept of denudation draws attention to a cluster of interrelated structural tendencies, such as deglobalisation, democratic backsliding, populism, atavistic nationalism, rising socio-economic inequality, and racialisation, which are not necessarily new in themselves but have gained renewed visibility, political salience, and normative legitimacy as the impact of the post-1990 consensus has weakened. These tendencies collectively weaken the normative authority of the post-1990 liberal-global framework (the “consensus”). The analytical turn embodied in the term “denudation” does not imply that all contemporary political developments stem from a single cause, nor that the post-1990 consensus was ever fully realised in practice. Although the developments discussed in this article are global in scope, the analytical argument developed here applies most directly to liberal-democratic contexts in which the post-1990 liberal-democratic normative framework has become institutionally influential. It should therefore not be read as a comprehensive account of political and educational trajectories across all world regions.

The notion of denudation draws insights from political sociology, critical policy studies, and decolonial scholarship. From a political–sociological perspective, it adopts insights into democratic regression, institutional distrust, social fragmentation, and the geopolitical restructuring associated with late modernity and intensified global tensions. From a critical policy perspective, it highlights how power relations and dominant political assumptions shape policy agendas and institutional practices. From critical global citizenship studies, it draws insights into structural inequality, contested forms of belonging, and the need to interrogate dominant global narratives. From a decolonial perspective, it draws attention to historical inequalities, hegemonic structures, and the persistence of exclusion within ostensibly inclusive institutional orders. A decolonial perspective qualifies what is meant by the “exposure” dimension of denudation. What becomes newly visible from within liberal-democratic contexts may not have been concealed or subordinated in the same way from perspectives outside the centres in which the post-1990 consensus acquired its greatest normative authority. Historical inequalities, exclusions, and asymmetries of power remained directly visible in many postcolonial contexts throughout this period. “Exposure” should therefore be understood as the declining capacity of a dominant normative framework to render such tensions politically secondary or peripheral, rather than as their literal emergence from concealment everywhere. The concept of denudation also draws on cosmopolitan and human-rights traditions in citizenship education, particularly in recognising diversity, equity, inclusion, and intercultural democratic participation as educational aims.

In brief, our application of “the post-1990 consensus” as a heuristic, and of the “denudation of the post-1990 consensus” as an analytical instrument for understanding events currently in the process of unfolding does not seek to offer a causal theory of global political change, but rather to serve as means for understanding and tentatively describing how contemporary macro-social transformations have been reshaping the normative and educational conditions under which citizenship is conceived and practised. Put differently, combining the heuristic with this analytical instrument provides a theoretical interpretation of broad international developments rather than a comprehensive account of all regional contexts and phenomena. It focuses primarily on broad structural tendencies.

Methodologically, this article employs a normative-conceptual form of theoretical analysis rather than a systematic literature review. Sources were purposively selected for their relevance to the conceptual construction and examination of the post-1990 consensus, the denudation process, and their respective implications for citizenship education. The analysis draws on three complementary bodies of material: (1) scholarly literature used to develop and critically examine the central concepts and normative traditions addressed in the article; (2) major international institutional frameworks, particularly those of UNESCO and the OECD, used as expressions and operationalisations of influential post-1990 educational norms; and (3) selected international reports and indices used illustratively to identify macro-social developments interpreted in terms of the denudation of this normative configuration. These sources are not treated as an exhaustive or systematically sampled corpus, but are analysed comparatively and interpretively to examine the normative assumptions that became influential within the post-1990 educational order, how they are being destabilised or contested, and what the implications are for citizenship education.

Against this methodological and conceptual background, the central theoretical argument of this paper is that, if viewed in the light of the denudation of the post-1990 consensus, current global tensions are gradually altering the conditions under which citizenship is understood, and education—including citizenship education—is deemed to function. As a result, existing models of citizenship education are becoming increasingly inadequate as 1990-consensus-based democratic norms, intercultural commitments, and cosmopolitan orientations and aspirations weaken. We take the following steps to substantiate this core theoretical argument: We begin with a more in-depth outline and description of the post-1990 consensus, then attend to its gradual weakening, which we interpret as a process of denudation in terms of our understanding of this concept, and finally examine the implications of these developments for citizenship education.

2. The Post-1990 Consensus: Origins and Foundations

As discussed, the term “post-1990 consensus” is used here as a heuristic to describe this process of consolidation. What distinguishes the period after the end of the Cold War is not the emergence of new ideas, but the convergence and consolidation of prevalent principles into a broadly shared liberal-democratic framework that shaped international governance, educational reform, and public policy. The following subsections briefly examine the principal elements of this framework.

2.1. Diversity, equity, and inclusion: the pillars of the post-1990 consensus

Diversity, equity, and inclusion gradually emerged during the late twentieth century as influential normative values within both global politics and educational reform [7,8,9,10,11]. Closely connected to human-rights discourse, multiculturalism, and postmodern critiques of exclusion, these values became central to the post-1990 consensus. At the international level, this normative orientation has been articulated not only through OECD frameworks but also, and more comprehensively in relation to citizenship education, through UNESCO’s work on global citizenship education. UNESCO’s Global Citizenship Education framework connects cognitive, socio-emotional, and behavioural dimensions of learning with human rights, diversity, global interdependence, social responsibility, and active participation [8,9]. More recently, the 2023 UNESCO Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights, International Understanding, Cooperation, Fundamental Freedoms, Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development has consolidated these principles within a global normative framework for education [10]. These UNESCO frameworks are particularly relevant to the present analysis because they provide an institutional articulation of several of the liberal-democratic, human-rights-based, intercultural, and cosmopolitan commitments associated here with the post-1990 consensus. The rise of the “creed” of human rights, multiculturalism, and postmodernism in the 1980s and 1990s is another facet of the global change that we refer to as the “post-1990 consensus” [12]. Education has likewise been both the terrain on which and the instrument for bringing about a new global socio-political order rooted in the foundational values embodied in the aforementioned facet. The term “post-1990 consensus” thus denotes not the emergence of this normative orientation, but its international institutionalisation and growing normative dominance in the post-Cold War period.

The rise in diversity, equity, and inclusion discourse has not been uncontested, however. Critical scholars have argued that institutionalised forms of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) may become depoliticised. Structural inequalities may then be reframed primarily as issues of representation or tolerance rather than of power, redistribution, or historical injustice. Critics have consequently warned that some forms of diversity and inclusion policy may become managerial or technocratic responses that leave deeper structural inequalities insufficiently challenged [13]. Decolonial and critical pedagogical scholars have also warned that inclusion frameworks may unintentionally reproduce hegemonic norms by requiring marginalised groups to be incorporated into existing institutional orders without fundamentally transforming such orders [14]. These critiques do not necessarily invalidate the normative importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion. They do, however, highlight the need for citizenship education to engage critically with the political, historical, and institutional conditions under which such concepts are mobilised [15,16]. Interpreted in terms of denudation, these critiques also expose a limitation that could remain obscured within the dominant post-1990 discourse of inclusion, namely, that expanding access or representation does not necessarily transform the institutional arrangements through which participation and authority are organised. The denudation line of thought developed later in this article, therefore, treats diversity, equity, and inclusion not as fixed or politically neutral concepts but as commitments that also require critical scrutiny of the institutional arrangements through which inclusion is enacted.

2.2. A Global Education Expansion and Reform Project

Since the mid-twentieth century, education has expanded globally on an unprecedented scale and has increasingly become associated with democratic participation, economic development, social integration, and societal transformation [17]. Reform agendas increasingly emphasised equality, inclusion, and citizenship formation, thereby positioning schools as important institutions in shaping modern democratic societies [18]. Although these developments began well before 1990, they became increasingly embedded within the broader liberal-democratic framework that characterised the post-1990 consensus.

2.3. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Educational Reform

Since the middle of the 20th century, a tolerance and even an appreciation for diversity have developed in societies worldwide [19]. This refers to diversity not only in culture and lifestyle but also in age, ability, and gender identity [20]. Educational reform increasingly began incorporating commitments to cultural diversity, inclusion, and recognition of marginalised identities. Multicultural, intercultural, critical-pedagogical, capability-oriented, and queer-theoretical approaches all contributed to challenging historically assimilationist educational models and to expanding understandings of democratic participation and belonging. Schools increasingly came to be seen as not merely transmitters of national culture but also as sites of democratic negotiation, intercultural encounter, and identity formation [21].

The global education reform agenda did not end with the recognition of diversity as a pedagogical value. Equal educational opportunities also became a major driver of educational reform since the mid-twentieth century [22]. Although concepts of equality and equity remained largely contested, both were employed as central drivers of educational reform during the second half of the twentieth century. Educational reform increasingly sought to expand equal educational opportunities and to reduce forms of institutional exclusion and segregation.

Inclusion increasingly came to be understood not merely as formal access to education but as meaningful participation, recognition, and belonging within diverse educational environments. Initially strongly associated with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), inclusive education gradually expanded to encompass broader concerns about exclusion, discrimination, and marginalisation [23]. Anti-racist, intercultural, and socially inclusive educational approaches increasingly became part of this broader framework.

Collectively, these developments aimed to transform education into a central mechanism for democratic socialisation, intercultural coexistence, and the promotion of inclusive citizenship. In the process, educational reform increasingly became linked to broader political aspirations pivoting on values such as pluralism, participation, human rights, and social cohesion [24].

2.4. From Societal Transformation to Educational Change

The developments outlined above became institutionalised after the Cold War as part of the post-1990 consensus, a liberal-democratic framework that increasingly shaped international governance, educational reform, and public policy through its emphasis on human rights, democratic participation, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Broader political and social orders increasingly shape educational systems because schools function as political institutions, sites of socialisation, and mechanisms for legitimising particular forms of citizenship and belonging.

Post-1990 consensus values affect education through four interrelated pathways. First, political transformations influence educational policy and curriculum priorities by redefining the values that states seek to reproduce through schooling. Second, changing social conditions—including migration, inequality, violence, and cultural polarisation—alter learners’ lived realities and identity formations, thereby reshaping educational needs and classroom dynamics. Third, institutional trust and democratic participation influence how schools understand civic formation, authority, and public responsibility. Fourth, transformations in media environments and digital communication increasingly relocate the formation of citizenship beyond formal schooling, challenging schools’ traditional monopoly over civic socialisation.

All such global tensions and transformations affect the very conditions under which citizenship is understood and education functions. Processes such as deglobalisation, democratic regression, intensified migration, populist nationalism, digital political socialisation, and growing socio-economic fragmentation reshape how individuals experience belonging, authority, participation, and public life. As a result, citizenship education models historically grounded in relatively stable, nationally bounded, and liberal-democratic assumptions become increasingly inadequate for contemporary conditions. The need to reconceptualise citizenship education, therefore, follows not from a general moral preference, but from structural changes in the social and political environments within which citizenship itself is constituted.

The next section turns to the “denudation of the post-1990 consensus”, the assumptions on which this educational and political turn was built.

3. The “Denudation of the Post-1990 Consensus”

The “post-1990 consensus” has come under increasing strain in recent years. A range of global political, economic, and social developments has contributed to what we described in Section 1 as the “denudation” of the post-1990 consensus. These interconnected macro-social developments collectively weaken liberal-democratic, cosmopolitan, and intercultural norms and reshape the political and educational conditions under which citizenship is constructed and practised. The analytical turn embodied in the “denudation” concept, however, signifies more than normative weakening or decline. The denudation process progressively strips away the normative layer through which liberal-democratic assumptions came to be regarded as relatively self-evident, thereby increasing the visibility and political salience of competing conceptions of political legitimacy, collective identity, sovereignty, and citizenship that were already present but relatively subordinated within the post-1990 consensus. The analysis below therefore considers both dimensions of denudation: what is being weakened or stripped away, and what previously subordinated tensions, interests, or normative alternatives thereby become more visible and politically salient. The various global indices and reports referenced in this article should not be understood as politically neutral representations of reality. Democracy indices, human-rights measures, and inequality metrics are themselves products of particular normative and methodological assumptions. Nevertheless, when interpreted comparatively and relationally, they provide useful indications of broad macro-social tendencies relevant to citizenship, education, and public life.

Deglobalisation, a central phenomenon in the process of denudation, refers to the weakening of economic, political, and cultural integration between societies. In recent years, growing protectionism, geopolitical rivalry, and declining multilateral cooperation have increasingly challenged assumptions regarding global interconnectedness. International relations are increasingly shaped less by liberal-democratic cooperation than by strategic competition, national interests, protectionism, and struggles for influence and security. The 2025 Global Peace Index, for instance, indicates a continuing deterioration of global peace and an increase in conditions associated with major conflict [25]. Such developments directly affect education by weakening cosmopolitan curriculum orientations and intensifying contestation over national identity, migration, democratic participation, and intercultural coexistence. Interpreted in terms of denudation, deglobalisation signifies more than a decline in international economic and political integration. It also brings into sharper view tensions that were already present within the globalising order but were relatively subordinated by the dominant post-1990 narrative of increasing interconnectedness and international cooperation. These include the continuing political force of national interests and sovereignty, geopolitical competition, and contestation over the consequences and distributional effects of global interconnectedness. Denudation refers not simply to declining integration, but also to the renewed visibility and political salience of these tensions as the normative authority of the post-1990 consensus weakens.

Another phenomenon in this context is democratic regression, which increasingly crops up from within democratic systems themselves, often through the gradual weakening of institutions managed by elected governments. Global levels of democracy have continued to decline in recent years [26]; indicators of civil liberties and human rights reveal similar deterioration [27]. All such developments weaken institutional trust, public deliberation, pluralism, and civic participation. Citizenship education depends fundamentally upon democratic conditions because its normative foundations presuppose open dialogue, participation, institutional legitimacy, and respect for rights and diversity. As these conditions weaken, citizenship education itself becomes increasingly contested and politically vulnerable. Interpreted as a form of denudation, democratic regression does more than register the weakening of democratic institutions and practices. It also exposes the extent to which commitments associated with the post-1990 democratic consensus depended upon a supportive normative and institutional environment and had not become irreversibly embedded. As that environment weakens, majoritarian, anti-pluralist, and other challenges to liberal-democratic understandings of citizenship can acquire greater visibility and legitimacy. The exposure effect of denudation thus draws attention to the contingent character of democratic commitments that, under the post-1990 consensus, could appear more firmly established than subsequent developments have shown them to be.

Contemporary forms of nationalism and populism also increasingly define political belonging in exclusionary cultural, ethnic, or civilisational terms [28]. Populist discourse frequently draws antagonistic distinctions between insiders and outsiders, thereby weakening institutional mediation, democratic pluralism, and public deliberation [29]. Such developments encourage narrower, more monocultural understandings of citizenship and belonging, thereby placing pressure on educational models grounded in intercultural dialogue, diversity, and democratic coexistence. From the perspective of denudation, the growing political salience of nationalism and populism should not be understood as the emergence of wholly new political formations. National, cultural, and exclusionary conceptions of political belonging persisted during the post-1990 period but were relatively subordinated within a dominant normative discourse emphasising liberal democracy, pluralism, human rights, and intercultural coexistence. Their renewed visibility and political legitimacy therefore illustrate the exposure (stripping away) dimension of denudation particularly clearly: as the normative authority of the post-1990 consensus weakens, alternative conceptions of belonging and political community acquire greater space to contest it.

Rising socio-economic inequality further accelerates these developments by weakening social cohesion and reducing opportunities for meaningful democratic participation [30]. Under such conditions, educational inequality also deepens because access to recognition, participation, and civic opportunity becomes increasingly uneven and unequal [30]. These tendencies are often accompanied by renewed forms of racialisation, exclusion, and identity-based antagonism that further fragment public life and complicate democratic coexistence [29]. In terms of denudation, the persistence and intensification of such inequalities also exposes a tension that existed already in the post-1990 consensus itself: the normative commitment to equity and inclusion coexisted with enduring inequalities in access to social, educational, and civic opportunities. As the consensus weakens, this discrepancy between formally endorsed inclusive norms and unequal substantive opportunities becomes increasingly visible and politically salient, with important implications for the conditions under which citizenship can actually be exercised.

Taken together, all the developments discussed so far illustrate the twofold analytical meaning of denudation developed in this article. Deglobalisation, democratic regression, populist and nationalist mobilisation, and persistent socio-economic inequality are weakening key normative and institutional features of the post-1990 consensus. At the same time, their significance cannot be reduced to decline alone. As the normative authority of that consensus diminishes, tensions, interests, and alternative conceptions of sovereignty, political legitimacy, belonging, and citizenship that had remained present but relatively subordinated acquire renewed visibility and political salience. The developments discussed above are therefore neither wholly new phenomena nor merely parallel indicators of liberal-democratic decline; they illustrate a changing normative configuration in which previously dominant assumptions coexist and compete with alternative political projects. It is this combination of normative weakening and renewed exposure that the concept of denudation is intended to capture. For citizenship education, the significance of this process lies in the changing conditions under which its aims must be pursued: democratic participation, human rights, pluralism, intercultural coexistence, and inclusive forms of belonging can no longer be pursued on the assumption of a relatively stable and normatively dominant liberal-democratic institutional background.

4. Social and Educational Developments Associated with the “Denudation of the Post-1990 Consensus”

Where the previous section described the process through which the normative authority of the post-1990 consensus is being stripped away, the present section examines the social and educational conditions that are associated with these developments. The cumulative significance of these developments extends beyond the political domain and manifests in a range of socially turbulent developments, including the following.

Forced displacement has increased dramatically in recent years due to conflict, political instability, violence, and human rights violations. Such displacement reshapes educational systems through migration, interrupted schooling, trauma, cultural diversification, and contested forms of belonging. To mention but one example: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caused many school-age children to experience interrupted schooling due to displacement, the destruction of educational infrastructure, and prolonged uncertainty. Schools in host countries, including Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands, unexpectedly had to accommodate large numbers of refugee learners, often requiring additional language support, psychosocial services, and curriculum adaptations. Another example: xenophobia increasingly affects migrants and refugees across many societies, contributing to exclusion, discrimination, and social fragmentation. Schools consequently become important sites in which tensions around identity, migration, and belonging are negotiated.

Contemporary environments marked by populism, inequality, weakened human-rights commitments, and political polarisation contribute to forms of racism, discrimination, violence, and social distrust [31]. Such conditions directly affect learners’ experiences of belonging, safety, participation, and recognition within educational environments.

Restrictions on freedom of expression, cultural participation, language, and religious practice have also intensified in many contexts. Such developments matter educationally because democratic citizenship education presupposes open inquiry, dialogue, critical discussion, and recognition of cultural plurality.

Contemporary economic insecurity also tends to produce socially vulnerable populations characterised by precarious employment, reduced mobility, and weakened participation in public life. All these conditions undermine social cohesion and democratic participation while intensifying educational inequalities and insecurity among young people.

Taken together, these developments, interpreted as the denudation of the post-1990 consensus, point to more than just a series of disconnected global crises. They are transforming the social conditions under which education systems operate, and citizenship is formed. They are also reshaping state expectations concerning social cohesion, national identity, and civic participation. As the normative foundations and values of the post-1990 consensus crumble and dissipate, educational institutions become increasingly contested spaces in which competing understandings of belonging, democracy, diversity, and public order are negotiated. It is precisely this altered socio-political and educational terrain that necessitates a rethink of citizenship education. These developments raise urgent questions regarding how schools should respond to increasingly fragmented, unequal, and contested democratic environments. Under these conditions, citizenship education can no longer be understood merely as the transmission of civic knowledge within stable national democracies. The next section attends to this issue.

5. Towards a Rethink of Citizenship Education

5.1. Why Citizenship Education Requires Revisiting

The preceding analysis has shown that contemporary political transformations are fundamentally altering the conditions under which citizenship is socially formed and educationally mediated. We do not propose an entirely new model of citizenship education. Instead, we contend that the macro-social transformations analysed in the previous sections fundamentally change the conditions under which citizenship education has to be offered to the upcoming generation. Existing approaches require renewed reflection and reconceptualisation if they are to remain adequate under these altered conditions. Citizenship education has been included in school curricula worldwide, either as a standalone subject under that name (as in England since 2002) or, more often, implicitly as a cross-curricular theme in all school subjects (most often in, but by no means limited to, history, character or values education). The content of citizenship education is largely shaped by the hegemonic political doctrine prevailing at a particular time and place [32,33], rather than by the broader democratic vision articulated in the Association for Citizenship Teaching’s conception of the subject [34].

A major limitation of current approaches was—and in many cases, still is—that they are caught up in the aura of the nation-state and are being employed as an instrument to impose the hegemonic political doctrine of the politically powerful [35,36]. National citizenship education—that is, preparing learners primarily for participation within a single national polity—appears to be increasingly inadequate in light of the denudation process discussed above and in line with broader discussions on cosmopolitan, intercultural and global citizenship education [35,37,38,39]. It should be acknowledged that the circumstances in which citizenship is enacted have fundamentally changed and continue to change. The values informing citizenship education derive from multiple sources operating at local, national, regional, and global levels. Despite the geo-political turn described above, citizenship education seems to remain largely constrained by nation-state priorities and dominant political agendas, thereby limiting its ability to respond adequately to contemporary global challenges. Developments associated with the denudation process provide compelling reasons for reconceptualising citizenship education. Such reconceptualisation requires renewed reflection on its normative foundations, pedagogical approaches, and practical implementation.

5.2. The Contours of a Reconceptualised Model

A rethink of citizenship education does not imply abandoning existing approaches to the subject or replacing them with an entirely new theoretical framework. Rather, it requires reconsidering and further developing established approaches in light of the transformed political and societal conditions as portrayed in the previous sections of this article. Accordingly, diversity, equity, and inclusion should not be understood merely as policy objectives or institutional management tools, but as normative commitments that require continuous democratic contestation, critical reflection, and attention to structural inequalities and historical injustices. Citizenship education should move beyond nationally bounded understandings of citizenship towards multilayered forms of belonging that connect local, national, regional, and global civic responsibilities. At the curricular level, it should integrate human-rights literacy, intercultural dialogue, critical media literacy, democratic deliberation, digital civic participation, and reflection on structural inequality. Pedagogically, it should encourage critical inquiry, ethical reflexivity, dialogical learning, and engagement with contested social realities rather than merely transmitting predetermined civic norms. Institutionally, schools should function as democratic spaces in which participation, inclusion, and intercultural engagement are actively practised [40]. This view of citizenship education has implications, for example, for arrangements regarding student participation in school governance. Inclusion should not be limited to ensuring that marginalised learners are represented within existing participatory structures; structures should also provide them with meaningful opportunities to influence decisions concerning school life, including the rules, practices, and priorities that shape their participation and belonging. In this way, inclusion concerns not only who is admitted to existing institutional arrangements, but also who is able to participate in shaping them. What distinguishes this approach is therefore not the introduction of entirely new educational aims, but the recognition that contemporary democratic fragmentation, complex identities, transnational interdependence, digital political socialisation, and contested forms of belonging fundamentally alter the conditions under which these aims must henceforth be pursued.

This changed understanding of citizenship education can be illustrated by the educational pursuit of human rights. Under the relatively stable normative conditions associated with the post-1990 consensus, human-rights education could proceed to a considerable extent from the assumption that the rights and democratic norms being taught were supported by a broadly established institutional and normative framework. Under conditions interpreted as denudation, that assumption can no longer be taken for granted. The educational aim of fostering commitment to human rights therefore remains, but its pedagogical realisation changes: learners need not only to acquire knowledge of rights and their normative foundations, but also to examine how rights become contested, how democratic institutions sustain or fail to sustain them, and how citizens can exercise and defend them under conditions of political and social contestation. Reconceptualisation, in this sense, concerns not the replacement of established educational aims but a changed understanding of what is required for their meaningful educational realisation.

While a human-rights-based approach remains indispensable in citizenship education because it establishes the normative and legal foundations of equality, dignity, and democratic participation, it does not by itself guarantee that learners are actually able to exercise these rights. The capability approach, developed by Sen and further elaborated by Nussbaum, complements rather than replaces a human-rights perspective by shifting attention from formal entitlements to people’s substantive freedoms and real opportunities to become and do what they have reason to value [41,42]. Rather than asking only whether learners possess civic rights, the capability approach asks whether educational arrangements genuinely enable them to develop the capacities required for meaningful participation in democratic life [43]. The capability approach itself also formed part of the intellectual foundations of the post-1990 human-development architecture, with Sen’s work on capabilities providing a philosophical foundation for the human-development paradigm introduced by UNDP in 1990 [44]. Its application in “denudation conditions” can therefore be understood as an instance of selective appropriation: an element of that normative inheritance is retained because it remains valuable under the altered conditions.

The distinction between possessing civic rights and having substantive opportunities to exercise them acquires particular significance under conditions of denudation. As the normative and institutional architecture supporting democratic and human-rights commitments becomes less secure, formal rights can no longer be assumed to translate into meaningful opportunities for democratic participation. Contemporary inequalities, social fragmentation, political polarisation, and unequal educational opportunities reinforce this discrepancy between formal rights and learners’ actual capacity for democratic participation. A capability-oriented conception of citizenship education therefore extends a human-rights-based approach by emphasising learners’ actual agency, their capacity for critical judgement, intercultural dialogue, democratic deliberation, ethical reflection, and responsible civic action. In this sense, citizenship education should not merely transmit civic knowledge or communicate democratic values, but should actively expand learners’ capabilities to participate meaningfully in democratic society [43,45].

Such an orientation also has important implications for educational practice. Curricula should not only include knowledge of democracy, human rights, and citizenship, but also create opportunities for learners to develop the practical capabilities required to exercise democratic citizenship. Pedagogically, this implies dialogical learning, critical inquiry, collaborative problem-solving, intercultural encounters, and authentic participation in democratic decision-making within the school community. Schools themselves should function as democratic environments in which learners experience participation, responsibility, and inclusion as lived educational practices rather than merely as abstract civic ideals [40,45]. Such an approach strengthens rather than replaces a human-rights framework by ensuring that formally recognised rights can increasingly be translated into substantive democratic freedoms and opportunities for all learners [46].

5.3. Building on Existing Approaches

Several developments have already emerged in the scholarly discourse on citizenship education that reinforce this broader reconceptualisation of citizenship education. Critical citizenship education, for example, seeks to foster socially engaged and critically reflective citizens by encouraging learners to question inequality, power relations, and social injustice [47]. Likewise, Osler and Starkey’s [38] conception of cosmopolitan citizenship and Andreotti’s [39] work on critical global citizenship education have substantially broadened understandings of democratic participation, diversity, equity, inclusion, and multilayered belonging. A replacement of these approaches or the proposal of a fundamentally new conception of citizenship education is not required. What needs to be recognised is that the development interpreted as the denudation of the post-1990 consensus has fundamentally changed the macro-social conditions under which citizenship education operates. This changing context requires existing cosmopolitan, intercultural, human-rights-based, and capability-oriented approaches to be reconsidered and strengthened in light of the altered conditions under which their educational aims must now be realised.

The main contribution of the present article is to propose the denudation of the post-1990 consensus as an analytical turn that helps explain why such reconsideration has become necessary. Although this argument builds on the authors’ earlier work on citizenship education, this article advances that programme by introducing the notion of the “denudation of the post-1990 consensus” as a shift in the interpretation of contemporary developments.

5.4. From Theory to Educational Practice

Citizenship education cannot claim an unqualified record of success in achieving its intended objectives [48,49,50]. Apart from the educand’s free volition—the outcome of education always contains an element of indeterminacy—the outcomes of citizenship education are co-shaped by broader societal and contextual factors present within a particular education system. Almond and Verba’s [48] pioneering study on education and political socialisation concluded that, while education generally tends to make students more politically conscious, its capacity to determine political convictions is far less certain [51]. Similarly, Abernethy’s [49] classic study of post-independence Africa found that, within that societal ecology, education tended to strengthen centrifugal rather than centripetal forces, contrary to one of the major motivations behind post-independence educational expansion: the forging of national unity. These findings suggest that policymakers and educators involved in citizenship education should remain sensitive to contextual realities and alert to opportunities for visionary, dynamic, and context-attuned leadership, policy, and pedagogy [50].

The contemporary situation—as sketched in the previous sections of this paper in terms of the denudation of the post-1990 consensus—in which education operates underscores the urgency of the abovementioned reconceptualisation of citizenship education. In their Editorial Comment in Comparative Education Review, Jules and Salajan [52] draw attention to a largely overlooked development in global politics over the past decade and a half: the role that youth movements have played in shaping political destinies across many parts of the world. They also point out that young people increasingly obtain information through social media, which has become a major source of political and civic socialisation and opinion formation. In a similar vein, Steiner-Khamsi [53], in her discussion of the seven temporalities of global school reform, refers to the youth movement Fridays for Future, which advocates immediate political action on climate change. Originally initiated by Greta Thunberg in 2018, Fridays for Future illustrates how citizenship formation increasingly develops through transnational youth activism beyond formal schooling. These examples demonstrate that citizenship formation increasingly occurs beyond the formal structures of the nation-state and traditional schooling. Citizenship education curricula could, therefore, for example, include structured engagement with misinformation, digital political socialisation, migration and belonging, climate justice, democratic participation, and intercultural conflict resolution.

Recent scholarship has also begun to explore how renewed forms of citizenship education may be translated into educational practice under “denudation conditions” of democratic uncertainty, political polarisation, digital transformation, and social fragmentation [54,55]. Such contributions complement the macro-social argument developed in this article by illustrating how the need for reconceptualisation may be reflected in curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher education. A detailed discussion of these practical implications, however, falls beyond the scope of the present theoretical analysis.

6. Conclusions

The preceding discussion has shown that contemporary society is marked by turbulence associated with the “denudation of the post-1990 consensus”. This turn of events, sentiment and views has been undermining the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion that have shaped educational reform for decades. While citizenship education offers a potentially important response to the developments associated with this turn, its current forms are insufficiently equipped to address these challenges effectively. A reconceptualised form of citizenship education is therefore required: one that is multilayered, human-rights-anchored, intercultural, critically oriented, youth-centred, and capability-focused. A capability-oriented approach implies expanding learners’ substantive freedoms and capacities to participate meaningfully in democratic and civic life rather than merely transmitting civic knowledge. Rather than treating democratic participation primarily as a formal civic competence, such an approach seeks to expand learners’ substantive opportunities to participate meaningfully in democratic life. Such an approach should also transcend narrow nation-state frameworks and equip learners to engage meaningfully with the complex realities of the contemporary world. The analysis has shown that contemporary global tensions directly influence educational priorities, civic socialisation, democratic participation, and experiences of belonging within schools. Citizenship education cannot remain insulated from broader social transformations; it becomes one of the principal arenas in which societies negotiate the meaning of democracy, diversity, inclusion, and public life amid intensified global uncertainty. In this way, citizenship education may become better equipped to respond constructively to the democratic, intercultural, and civic challenges of contemporary global life.

This article does not claim that the post-1990 consensus has ever been universally realised, remained uncontested, or been terminated, nor that all political developments associated with it should be interpreted negatively. The introduction and application of the concept of “denudation” as an analytical instrument for interpreting how changing global conditions reshape citizenship and citizenship education served to explain not simply democratic decline, but the concomitant weakening of an existing normative order (the “post-1990 consensus”), and the increasing visibility of alternative political and educational imaginaries. The analysis also does not suggest that these developments are unfolding uniformly across all regions of the world. It does, however, offer an alternative way of interpreting and evaluating these developments, one that may be more readily applicable in some political and educational contexts than in others. Future research may further explore regional variations and alternative democratic trajectories emerging under contemporary global conditions.