Leslie Wehner

• PhD in Political Science
• Professor (Full) at University of Bath

This chapter focuses on how Latin American populist leaders make sense of International Organisations (IOs). The literature on populism in International Relations stresses that populist leaders erode the liberal international order in which multilateral institutions are its building blocks. However, left-wing and right-wing populist leaders indefec...

Under what conditions do populists embrace or reject “the international”? Some scholars of populism argue that populist leaders tend to neglect political (inter-)action in the international arena due to their stated preference for isolationist, nationalistic, and protectionist stances. Meanwhile, others claim that through their promotion of perform...

This chapter explores political shocks from a role theory perspective. Role theory, like most approaches to political shocks, views a shock as providing a potential window for policy change away from the status quo. For example, the end of a war may induce a longstanding rivalry to end as well. The exact process whereby this occurs may not always b...

This chapter explores what is original and distinctive of populist foreign policy in Latin America and what are the factors that enable and constrain it. The chapter proceeds as follows: first, we introduce the conceptual dimensions of populism and its more common use in terms of foreign policy analysis. This section also provides an eclectic analy...

This article introduces an analytical framework to trace and compare leaders’ different types of behaviours to the health crisis posed by COVID-19, following the analytical benefits of Leadership Trait Analysis. It examines Boris Johnson’s and Nicola Sturgeon’s diverging initial responses to the pandemic’s onset. We employ the Leadership Trait Anal...

Populist leaders unfold anti-elite rhetoric to sustain the ‘in-group’ morale of the ‘people’ they represent. Populist projects contain an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ dimension constituted by the stereotyped images that serve to inform the role-selection process in foreign policy. When images shaping roles on the international stage are used against the ‘out...

This paper seeks to advance the study of the nexus of populism and foreign policy by showing the connection between the personality traits of the leader and the foreign policy behavior of the state that they represent. It focuses on the political personality profiles of two populist leaders who can be characterized as antiplural, Hugo Chávez and Do...

This paper inquires theoretically into how leaders act and react to the state role of rising power through the case study of India. It brings together role theory and leadership trait analysis, and contends that there is a puzzling interplay between rising status and leaders’ characteristics. We project that leaders’ traits and styles condition how...

While it has been well-documented when and how leaders matter in foreign policy, there is still no clear roadmap on how to connect and investigate the different possibilities that leadership studies offer for the benefit of role theory development. Thus, this article lays the foundation for a dialogue between role theory and leader-based approaches...

This paper argues that states needing to engage in short-term strategic manipulation of their identity will often turn to branding strategies. Branding allows leaders the flexibility to adopt new roles or reimagine existing roles to fit with the current security environment. Drawing on insights from role theory, social identity, and branding, we de...

The term populism has recently gained visibility in the media and policy world to describe the foreign policy principles, rhetoric and strategies of political actors in the United States and some European states. Yet, populism is nothing new in Latin America where it has enjoyed a long tradition among leaders of various countries. Populism has thus...

This article analyses Chile’s foreign policy, utilizing a multilayered identity model, one that covers the country’s most stable identity layer as a sovereign state, an intermediate layer in which processes of identification between Chile and its peers unfold, as well as the most superficial layer in which key entrepreneurs advance new identities....

Whilst there is no shortage of analyses on the politics of regions in International Relations, little attention has been paid to states who perceive that they do not properly fit in the regions they happen to be located in. These are the ‘misplaced states’: they stand out not so much because of material capacities but because they espouse an identi...

This article demonstrates the benefits of using a role theory approach in the field of international political economy (IPE) by demonstrating its benefits relative to variants of the social constructivist paradigm, especially vis-à-vis identity-based accounts of IPE. This article also documents how role theory always had a home in IPE even before t...

Starting from the recurrent criticism that role theory is conceptually rich but methodologically poor, this article assesses the potential of interpretive narrative analysis for the methodological development of role theory within foreign policy analysis. It focuses on the methodological side of narratives from an interpretive perspective, so as to...

Geopolitical thinking has a long tradition in Latin America. This chapter analyzes the development of current geopolitical thinking in South America in particular, and how this influences the development of security conceptions and practices at the state and at the regional levels. It develops an analytical approach based on role theory with the ob...

This article assesses the relationship between Brazil and Chile, focusing on the fields of economic and security cooperation from Chile's perspective. Chile plays a number of different roles, the most salient of which is 'global trader'. This role stretches beyond Brazil's expectations, but it converges with the social demands of Mexico and the Uni...

This article analyzes what the drivers of contestation of secondary powers vis-à-vis the regional power are, differentiating therein between structural, historical, behavioural and domestic such drivers. We argue that in regions characterized by relative stability where major interstate violent conflicts are unlikely, as is the case in South Americ...

This article assesses the possibilities for the development of foreign-policy role theory using the concepts of traditions and dilemmas from the interpretive approach to foreign policy, as well as narratives as an interpretive method for analysis. While role theory is rich in conceptualization, it still suffers from overt structuralism, inattention...

This article sets out how secondary powers in South America—that is, Argentina, Chile, and Venezuela—see Brazil as a regional power, as well as Brazil's strategy of using its regional powerhood to further its own ambitions of becoming a global power on the international stage. The article assesses the expectations of these three countries, specific...

The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has positioned itself as a regional security organization aimed at reducing the influence of the Organization of American States (OAS) in South America. At the same time, the OAS paradoxically serves as a model for UNASUR because of its operational capacity and its legitimacy as a regional organization....

In a joint declaration on 8 October 2013, the presidents of the Pacific Alliance (PA) – an organisation legally constituted in 2012 that is comprised of Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico – announced the conclusion of trade negotiations to remove all tariff barriers be­ tween its member states, thus making it the eighth largest economy in the world....

This book aims to examine the conceptions and practices of security adopted by Regional Organisations (ROs) across the globe. Since the end of the Cold War, there has been an increased focus on regions as a relevant realm for security, with actors within regional contexts identifying a significant degree of interdependency between one another. As...

The politics of contestation on the part of secondary regional powers such as Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela towards Brazil as the regional leader oscillate between competition and cooperation, inasmuch as the South American region has one regional power and is a zone of negative peace without aggressive rivalries. The secondary powers us...

Este artículo analiza la formación y el proceso sostenido de institucionalización formal e informal de la unasur y su Consejo de Defensa mediante el discurso y la acción, conceptualizados como una comunidad de seguridad regional. Se establece que ambos se encuentran al comienzo de un estado «ascendente» y que la intención de los países líderes del...

Resumen Este artículo analiza la formación y el proceso sostenido de institucio-nalización formal e informal de la unasur y su Consejo de Defensa mediante el discurso y la acción, conceptualizados como una comunidad de seguridad regional. Se establece que ambos se encuentran al comienzo de un estado «ascendente» y que la intención de los países líd...

This article analyses the reasons for Chile's aggressive Free Trade Agreement (FTA) policy. Assessing both how the Chilean government has converged with the export sector and how the government has been able to co-opt, soften and divide those on the losing side of any FTA policy, are key to understanding Chile's vast number of FTA s. However, FTA s...

Bolivia and Chile do not trust each other as a consequence of the Nitrate War (1879–83). The construction of the other as distrustful has shaped the discursive articulation of their bilateral relationship. However, since Evo Morales and Michelle Bachelet took office in Bolivia (2006-present) and Chile (2006–10) respectively, they have sought to cha...

This article analyses the reasons for Chile's aggressive Free Trade Agreement (FTA) policy. Assessing both how the Chilean government has converged with the export sector and how the government has been able to co-opt, soften and divide those on the losing side of any FTA policy, are key to understanding Chile's vast number of FTAs. However, FTAs a...

Bolivia and Chile live in a culture of rivalry as a consequence of the Nitrate War (1879‐1883). In each country’s case, the construction of the other as a threat, a rival and/or inferior has shaped the discursive articulation of the bilateral relationship. Whereas the culture of rivalry is more evident in Bolivia because of its aspiration to alter...

Why is Chile following such a proactive FTA policy and at the same time promoting the benefits of these type of agreements to other Latin American countries' There is a pre-dominance of economic explanations to analyze why countries pursue an active FTA policy. Yet within an FTA policy, understood as an essential component of a country’s foreign po...

This article analyzes the "other" goals that drive Chile and Mexico to achieve intra- and extra-regional FTAs. These countries have a predominantly economic motivation to negotiate FTAs. However, there are other elements that are less apparent, but equally important, in Chile's and Mexico's FTA policies. These accords can also be seen as means to p...

En este trabajo se analizan los “otros” objetivos que llevan a Chile y México a concretar TLCs intra o extra-regionales. Estos países tienen una motivación económica que predomina al momento de buscar estos acuerdos; sin embargo, existen otros elementos que son menos aparentes, pero igualmente esenciales en la configuración de sus políticas de TLCs...

The present article analyses the internal and external factors that facilitated the reaching of a rapid agreement between Japan and Chile after five rounds of Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. The issue-area of agriculture dominated the FTA agenda because of Japanese unwillingness to make many concessions in its previous FTAs and because of...

el objetivo de este trabajo es analizar desde una perspectiva de la ciencia política las variables políticas y económicas que explican las razones de la elección de Menem y Fujimori el año 1989 y 1990, y su posterior re-elección en el año 1995. Para esto es necesario realizar un análisis historico-político sobre la estrategia para llegar al poder y...

This dissertation explores the sources of power that the EU and US use in their relations with Mercosur. The theoretical framework is drawn from the complex interdependence theory. I analyse the EU and US trade strategies and political goals regarding the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations between the EU-Mercosur, and the US-Mercosur countries...