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Introduction to special issue: The study of populism in international relations
Abstract
The rise of nationalist populism, its challenge to representative democracy and the populist impact on the liberal international order have emerged as one of the most significant phenomena in international politics in recent years. This special issue brings together a group of researchers from a wide range of theoretical, disciplinary and epistemological backgrounds, including political science, populism studies, foreign policy analysis and critical security studies, to examine the international dimension of populism and the practical impact of populism on foreign policy and international security. Empirically and conceptually, it presents audiences in political science, international relations and related disciplines with a timely review of the scope of research on populism in international relations. Our specific aim is to explore and evaluate what challenges a populist mobilisation of anti-elitism and anti-globalism presents to both the contemporary study of international politics, and the structure of the international system and key actors within it.
... The commonality lies in the constraints IOs are argued to place on the "will of the people": populists are likely to demand, for example, the nationalization of political control in the form of reduced out-group solidarity and cooperation, or even withdrawal of membership (Chryssogelos, 2020;Löfflmann, 2022). In turn, recent scholarship has argued that the growing contestation of IO authority, often driven by and in turn driving these populists challengers, has led IO defenders to expand the norms and ideas underpinning legitimation from technocratic to democratic ones (Dingwerth et al., 2019a;Rauh and Zürn, 2020;Tallberg and Zürn, 2019). ...
... If the behavior of ostensible technocrats and populists is driven primarily (or at least to a considerable part) by underlying ideology, we should expect two patterns to emerge which mirror expectations in the literature on IO (de)legitimation we discuss above: first, that politicians externalize their ideological positions, including populism or technocracy, into the international arena (Löfflmann, 2022), and second, that they (aim to) do so largely consistently given (as "true believers") they should be expected to seek congruence between their ideology and behavior across different contexts (Lacatus and Meibauer, 2023: 253). For example, if a populist truly believes that some IO unfairly limits the sovereignty of the "true people," one would expect them to (try to) consistently challenge it, not least also because their followers or voters are likely to punish inconsistency (Sorek et al., 2018: 660-661). ...
... This also implies that we should be wary of classifying populists and technocrats by their stance toward IOs. Our findings thus nuance much of the recent scholarship on populism in IR, which tends to rely on conceptions of populism as ideology (Destradi et al., 2021;Löfflmann, 2022). ...
Our understanding of the contestation of liberal international order relies on an intuitive dualism. Technocratic norms underpin the legitimation of international organizations (IOs) because IOs embody a functional and depoliticized mode of problem-solving based on expertise and non-majoritarianism. Populist norms challenge IO authority as IOs create constraints on the popular will of the “true people.” We empirically examine whether this duality extends to the actors engaging in IO (de)legitimation by leveraging a novel and unprecedentedly fine-grained database on IO (de)legitimation by national governments. We find that (de)legitimation patterns of governments with technocratic or populist tendencies are far more dynamic and diverse than a dualistic account suggests. In particular, we find complex patterns of (de)legitimation that suggest challenges to and defenses of IO authority are driven more by a strategic, as opposed to an ideological, logic. We outline implications for the literatures on the international liberal order, technocracy, and populism.
... The origins of populism in Europe can be attributed to various elements, including economic concerns, cultural conflicts, discontent with mainstream politicians, and the imperialistic policies of the EU. The 2008 global financial crisis served as a catalyst, exacerbating pre-existing frustrations and cultivating mistrust with established institutions 27 . Concerns over immigration, identity, and sovereignty have invigorated populist discourses, exploiting anxieties about cultural erosion and loss of authority. ...
... The charming mythology of 'resilient small island Britain' during World War II continues to resonate profoundly with that demographic. However, it requires leaders like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson in the UK (similar to Donald Trump in the US) to confer credibility and political momentum on them 27 . ...
The United Kingdom’s 2016 decision to exit the European Union constituted a pivotal moment in European politics, precipitating a surge of uncertainty and contemplation throughout the continent. Brexit represented not merely a political or economic division; it epitomised the escalating impact of right-wing populism, which has subsequently intensified throughout Europe. Nationalist and populist groups are undermining the conventional principles of integration and collaboration, prompting the European Union to confront unparalleled enquiries regarding its unity, stability, and future trajectory. Right-wing populist discourses are explicitly nationalist and are organised to identify another against whom the nation is delineated: the Brexit referendum campaign and the extended history of Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom. The internal and external elements of populist discourses are pertinent in many manners. This article analyses the relationship between Brexit and the ascendance of right-wing populism, investigating the wider ramifications for the EU’s long-term viability, governance, and identity in a swiftly evolving political context. Keywords: Brexit; Rightwing Populism; European Union; Integration; Euroscepticism
... Scholarly works on PFP have proliferated in recent years and some have started developing a research agenda on how populism can shed light on IR debates (Wajner and Guirlando 2024;Chryssogelos et al. 2023). PFP research has focused on different regional realities from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Middle East, North America and Western and Easter Europe (Lacatus 2023;Plagemann and Destradi 2018;Löfflmann 2022;Wajner and Wehner 2023;Lopes et al. 2022;Wehner 2023;Giurlando 2021;Jenne 2021). Initial works on international populism engaged in conceptualizing PFP, with a focus on its manifestations and characteristics (Chryssogelos 2018;Destradi and Plagemann 2019;Verbeek and Zaslove 2017;Wehner and Thies 2021). ...
... Populists seek to subsume the societal divisions in and through the gap people vs elite. Thus, populism ends diluting these societal demands in the search of the general will against an established system (Mouzelis 1985;). 2 While this discursive approach has shown its value in the study of PFP (Chryssogelos 2020;Löfflmann 2022), it does not consider the possibility that not all domestic actors following the leader are excluded in a systematic manner by the political system. Some groups are still able to keep their own interests and identity despite the leader's aspiration to subsume them in the populist discursive practice. ...
... Journal of Current Social and Political Issues Vol.1 No. 1 2023 policy outcomes (Löfflmann, 2022). In this section, we draw on content analysis of political speeches, media coverage, and public discourse to elucidate the nuanced effects of populism in different contexts. ...
... Populism, a political phenomenon characterized by its appeal to the grievances and concerns of ordinary citizens, has gained remarkable prominence in global politics (Löfflmann, 2022). To comprehend the root causes of populism, it is imperative to explore the complex dynamics that underpin its rise. ...
This article delves into the phenomenon of rising populism in global politics, offering a comprehensive examination of its causes, consequences, and potential solutions. Populism, characterized by its appeal to the sentiments and concerns of ordinary citizens, has gained significant traction in various regions around the world. By exploring the underlying drivers, such as economic inequality, cultural shifts, and the erosion of trust in traditional political institutions, we aim to shed light on the roots of this trend. Furthermore, we analyze the far-reaching consequences of populism, including its impact on democratic norms, international relations, and policy outcomes. Lastly, this article outlines potential strategies and solutions for addressing the challenges posed by populism, emphasizing the importance of fostering inclusive political discourse, reinforcing democratic institutions, and promoting evidence-based policymaking. In an era marked by populist surges, this research provides valuable insights for policymakers, scholars, and citizens alike, aiming to contribute to a more informed and constructive dialogue on the future of global politics.
... Most specifically, the increasing attention paid to populism in international relations (IR) has allowed the development of a rich theoretical understanding of the way populist governments tend to formulate, plan, and implement their foreign policies (see, e.g., Verbeek and Zaslove 2017 ;Chryssogelos 2018 ;Destradi and Plagemann 2019 ;Stengel, MacDonald, and Nabers 2019 ). The empirical evidence is also vast and diverse in terms of geographic diversity, including case studies from North America ( Boucher and Thies 2019 ;Löfflmann 2019 ;Skonieczny 2019 ;Drezner 2020 ;Lacatus and Meibauer 2021 ), Latin America ( Sagarzazu and Thies 2019 ;Wajner 2021 ;Lopes, Carvalho, and Santos 2022 ;Wehner 2022 ), Western Europe ( Chryssogelos 2020 ;Giurlando 2021 ;Homolar and Löfflmann 2021 ;Lequesne 2021 ), Eastern Europe ( Jenne 2021 ;Cadier and Szulecki 2022 ;Subotic 2022 ), Southeast Asia ( Plagemann and Destradi 2018 ;Wojczewski 2019 ), Africa ( Lacatus 2023 ), and the Middle East ( Ta ş 2022 ). ...
... Chryssogelos (2020) argues that this anti-global elite dimension is an essential component of populism in international politics. The backlash against a globalist establishment (or "blob") follows the ideal of the populist leader that any action of the government has the purpose to protect or favor the people from the foreign elite (see Löfflmann 2022 ;Subotic 2022 ). Yet, it is not only "elites" who are inherently internationalized by contemporary populism, but also "the people" who are strategically projected transnationally. ...
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 performative encounters and transnational solidarities between “People(s),” populists are actually more likely to engage with actors, ideas, styles, and agendas coming from abroad. This article explores this apparent contradiction, hypothesizing that three main elements influence the “populist mindset” to narrate the external world and thus adopt or rather resist new contingencies originating internationally: legitimacy, support, and opportunity. To examine the combination of these behavioral patterns, we compare two populist presidents who are paradigmatic of a fourth wave of populism in Latin America: Brazil's Jair Messias Bolsonaro and Mexico's Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO). A comparative analysis of Bolsonaro's and AMLO's discursive responses to numerous foreign policy issues reveals how these three mechanisms condition their engagement or apathy toward external developments in bilateral frameworks of cooperation, regional integration schemes, multilateral organizations, and global governance institutions. The findings of this study can contribute to a greater understanding of populist foreign policies and their outcomes, with a special emphasis on Latin America and the Global South, and more generally to the emerging research on populism in international relations.
... Given the global rise of radical and insurgent politics, mainly on the right of the political spectrum, ranging from the election of Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro to the electoral successes of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and National Rally in Europe, there has been a growing interest in the impact of ideologies on foreign policy. Interestingly, International Relations (IR) scholarship has predominantly analysed these and other political actors under the label of populism (Destradi et al., 2021;Stengel et al., 2019;Löfflmann, 2022). Although this scholarship generally agrees that populism is a 'thin' ideology and always combined with 'thicker' ideologies , 1 ...
What is the far right’s foreign policy outlook? Although International Relations scholarship has provided important insights into the foreign policy preferences of far-right actors, it has predominantly analysed these political actors under the label of populism and focused on the effects of populism on foreign policy positions. Consequently, we lack a clear understanding of the impact of far-right ideology on foreign policy beliefs and preferences. This article provides a theorization of far-right foreign policy by deriving its key characteristics from far-right ideology. It tests this theoretical framework through a comparative analysis of the foreign policy preferences of the populist radical-right Alternative for Germany and the extreme-right, Neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany. The comparative analysis of primary textual data reveals a shared far-right foreign policy outlook characterized by (1) ultra-nationalism, (2) group-based enmity, (3) authoritarianism, (4) revisionism and reactionism and (5) producerist-nationalistic economic positions, but also some important variations in the pursuit of these positions.
... The recent "discovery" of the rise of illiberal democracies internationally has shown how scholars of populism largely overlooked its external dimensions, as well as the lack of interest that for decades characterized IR scholars toward populism as a category of political analysis. Certainly, the growing academic debate on the international features of populism has made a valuable contribution to developing theoretical links and empirical evidence (e.g., Destradi, Cadier, and Plagemann 2021;Giurlando and Wajner 2023;Hadiz and Chryssogelos 2017;Löfflmann 2022;Stengel, MacDonald, and Nabers 2019;Verbeek and Zazlove 2017;Wehner and Thies 2020;Zürn 2022). Yet a closer study of how populist performances are activated through the international arena is necessary for a better understanding of the effects of populism. ...
The quest for legitimacy has traditionally been intrinsic to the political phenomenon of populism, while (de-)legitimation struggles are increasingly relevant once populist leaderships take government control. However, the rich literatures on populism and legitimacy have hardly interacted and, therefore, analysis of populists’ international (de)legitimation strategies has been scarce. This chapter addresses the ways in which incorporating theoretical frameworks on legitimacy and (de)legitimation into the ideational approach can contribute to better understand the drivers, patterns, and impact of the global rise of contemporary populist leaderships, suggesting new avenues for research on the potential international mitigation of populism.
... Populism and foreign policy: charting the terrain During the last few years, interest in populist foreign policy has increased (for reviews see Destradi et al., 2021;Löfflmann, 2022;Chryssogelos, 2021;Verbeek and Zaslove, 2017). Most of the attention, however, has been devoted to the policies and politics of populist elite actors (Cadier, 2024;Kesgin, 2020;Mead, 2002Mead, , 2011Wehner, 2023). ...
This article explores how populist attitudes are correlated with foreign policy postures at the public level in four European countries: France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy. We provide first evidence adjudicating between two rivalling perspectives. One perspective focuses on the ideational core of populism and argues that it entails substantive beliefs and values that may inform foreign policy preferences – just like any other ideology. Another perspective focuses on the thin-centredness of populism and argues that no policy implications can be derived from populist ideas. Analysing original survey data, we find strong and consistent associations of populist attitudes with two foreign policy postures, militant internationalism and isolationism, and weaker and less systematic associations with two others, cooperative internationalism and global justice orientations. Importantly, these patterns are independent of host ideologies. We discuss the implications of these findings for the question of how “thick” populism is and what that may mean for the politics of (European) foreign policies in times of a continuing populist Zeitgeist.
... The past decade has witnessed an upsurge in populism across Europe, America, and South Asia. 1 Populist leaders lay claim to power and authority as representatives of a 'forgotten people' who are disillusioned with 'mainstream politics', corrupt elites, technocratic governance, corrupt institutions, and 'globalist' policies and ideologies. 2 Populists appeal to the identity of these purported 'people' and their sense of national belonging. 3 Populism has also been defined as a political style, as 'repertoires of performance are used to create political relations' by populist leaders; therefore, one can study populism by focusing on the relationship between populist leaders and the people and analyzing their political style, 4 where right-wing populist leaders rely on emotions to mobilize the people. ...
... Studies have also attempted to merge IR theories with pending questions about populism in global politics. This is particularly the case in the edited volume of Frank Stengel et al. (2019) , which examines in-depth the cross-regional drivers and patterns of populism, as well as the special issues coordinated by Vedi Hadiz and Angelos Chryssogelos ( 2017 ), Amy Skonieczny and Amentahru Wahlrab (2019) , Sandra Destradi, David Cadier, and Johaness Plagemann (2021) , Georg Löfflmann (2022 . Several pioneering works that questioned the scope and nature of the populist dimension in foreign policy contributed to this direction, such as the articles of Angelos Chryssogelos (2017) (2020) , Özgür Özdamar and Erdem Ceydilek (2020 ), Christian Lequesne (2021) , Consuelo Thiers and Leslie Wehner (2022) , and Stephan Fouquet and Klaus Brummer (2023) , among many others. ...
This article reviews one of the expanding research programs in International Relations (IR): the study of populist foreign policy (PFP). Recent years have witnessed a significant proliferation of IR scholars researching the nexus between the global rise of populism and their foreign policies across different countries, regions, and subfields. However, scientific progress at such stage of this research program demands an in-depth "mapping" of its different ontological approaches. To this end, we identify and explore five different "schools" of PFP that have been consolidated in the last decade, while highlighting their accomplishments in understanding the distinctive populist elements in foreign policy and their possibilities of analyzing local and external conditions under which PFP impacts global politics. We also set the stage for future contributions on the drivers, patterns, and effects of PFP, under the assumption that the populist phenomenon and its transnational dimensions will continue to affect IR prospects for a long time to come.
... Many scholars have identified a 'populist surge' 4 and see the 'populist mobilisation of anti-elitism and anti-globalism' as driving force behind this challenge to the liberal global order. 5 Interestingly, despite their chauvinistic our-country-first nationalism, we can observe intensified cross-border networking and cooperation between these political actors. For example, Brexiteer Nigel Farage gave speeches at Trump rallies, while Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon toured Europe and sought to unite European parties such as Alternative for Germany (AfD), Lega Nord (LN), National Rally (NR) and United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) in a joint 'populist nationalist movement'. ...
This article analyses the international cooperation of the radical right and the role of populism in forging cross-border ties between different political projects. Drawing on the Laclauian-Mouffian poststructuralist discourse theory, it conceptualises this cross-border collaboration as an attempt to build an international counter-hegemonic project and sheds light on its discursive formation and content. Through the discourse analysis of primary textual data drawn from Europe and the United States, it examines how the discourses of the populist radical right construct collective meanings and identities that enable these actors to cooperate with each other and pursue a common political cause. The article demonstrates that this cross-border collaboration has been made possible and promoted by shared – populist, nationalist and reactionary – political logics of articulation that interpellate and construct subjects as members of an endangered and decaying ethnocultural nation who can only restore their identity through the reversal of political, economic and cultural globalisation and the re-assertation of the ‘native people’ against ‘globalists’, ‘foreigners’, ‘immigrants’ and ‘minorities’. While the transatlantic counter-hegemonic coalition-building has ultimately remained limited, Europe’s radical right has successfully broadened its international cooperation and forged a joint counter-hegemonic project that promotes the cultural-racist and supremacist notion of an ‘ethnopluralist Europe of nations’.
... Asimismo, se produjeron avances en la identificación de cómo las dos categorías analíticas centrales del populismo -pueblo y élite-se han "transnacionalizado", con potencial de impactar fuertemente en el orden internacional (Destradi, Cadier y Plagemann 2021;Löfflmann 2022;Wajner 2022;Wehner y Thies 2021). De esta manera, el progreso científico en el estudio del populismo global en RRII en general, y de la Política Exterior Populista (PEP) en particular, ha logrado contribuir a enriquecer el debate público y académico. ...
¿Cómo se legitiman los liderazgos populistas por medio del escenario internacional? Recientes investigaciones en la disciplina de Relaciones Internacionales han destacado la importancia de profundizar en las fuentes, patrones y efectos transnacionales del fenómeno populista. Sin embargo, se requiere aún un análisis más profundo de la diversidad de estrategias de legitimación empleadas por populistas en sus interacciones externas. Este estudio examina las formas en que liderazgos populistas contemporáneos en Europa han rearticulado transnacionalmente el núcleo duro de la conceptualización populista (“pueblo” y “élites”). Tal proyección del antagonismo pueblo-versus-élites al nivel internacional pretende influenciar positivamente a audiencias locales y externas para así moldear sus percepciones de legitimidad. Utilizando como vehículo analítico un modelo ideal que incorpora tres funciones de (des-)legitimación que actúan vía mecanismos normativos, políticos y emocionales (adecuación, consenso y empatía, respectivamente), se mapean ilustraciones de diversas estrategias de legitimación internacional de liderazgos populistas europeos, de izquierdas y de derechas. La identificación de patrones similares, así como particularidades locales, sugieren novedosas enseñanzas sobre las condiciones bajo las cuales los gobiernos populistas se difunden y empoderan a nivel regional y global.
... For example, Erdogan has been very quiet on the oppression of Muslims in Xinjiang, perhaps due to increasingly close economic ties between Turkey and China. Erdogan's foreign policy rhetoric is thus designed to fuel Turkish people's insecurities, and use this " insecurity as an ideational resource to construct the 'people vs. elite' struggle as a relationship whereby the existence of the former is threatened by the latter in a variety of ways" (Löfflmann 2022). At the same, time, it is evident that Erdogan's neo-Ottoman ambitions are held in check by geopolitical and domestic political realities. ...
The purpose of this article is to clarify the concept of ‘civilizational populism’ and work towards a concise but operational definition. To do this, the article examines how populists across the world, and in a variety of different religious, geographic, and political contexts, incorporate and instrumentalize notions of ‘civilization’ into their discourses. The article observes that although a number of scholars have described a civilization turn among populists, there is currently no concrete definition of civilization populism, a concept which requires greater clarity. The article also observes that, while scholars have often found populists in Europe incorporating notions of civilization and ‘the clash of civilizations’ into the discourses, populists in non-Western environments also appear to have also incorporated notions of civilization into their discourses, yet these are rarely studied. The first part of the article begins by discussing the concept of ‘civilizationism’, a political discourse which emphasizes the civilizational aspect of social and especially national identity. Following this, the article discusses populism and describes how populism itself cannot succeed unless it adheres to a wider political programme or broader set of ideas, and without the engendering or exploiting of a ‘crisis’ which threatens ‘the people’. The article then examines the existing literature on the civilization turn evident among populists. The second part of the article builds on the previous section by discussing the relationship between civilizationism and populism worldwide. To do this, the paper examines civilizational populism in three key nations representing three of the world’s major faiths, and three different geographical regions: Turkey, India, and Myanmar. The paper makes three findings. First, while scholars have generally examined civilizational identity in European and North American right-wing populist rhetoric, we find it occurring in a wider range of geographies and religious contexts. Second, civilizationism when incorporated into populism gives content to the key signifiers: ‘the pure people’, ‘the corrupt elite’, and ‘dangerous ‘others’. In each case studied in this article, populists use a civilization based classification of peoples to draw boundaries around ‘the people’, ‘elites’ and ‘others’, and declare that ‘the people’ are ‘pure’ and ‘good’ because they belong to a civilization which is itself pure and good, and authentic insofar as they belong to the civilization which created the nation and culture which populists claim to be defending. Conversely, civilizational populists describe elites as having betrayed ‘the people’ by abandoning the religion and/or values and culture that shaped and were shaped by their civilization. Equally, civilizational populists describe religious minorities as ‘dangerous’ others who are morally bad insofar as they belong to a foreign civilization, and therefore to a different religion and/or culture with different values which are antithetical to those of ‘our’ civilization. Third, civilizational populist rhetoric is effective insofar as populists’ can, by adding a civilizational element to the vertical and horizontal dimensions of their populism, claim a civilizational crisis is occurring. Finally, based on the case studies, the paper defines civilizational populism as a group of ideas that together considers that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people, and society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’ who collaborate with the dangerous others belonging to other civilizations that are hostile and present a clear and present danger to the civilization and way of life of the pure people.
This chapter discusses the foreign policies of the four regimes and examines the influence of their respective civilizational authoritarian populisms, with a focus on their relationship with the developing world, especially African nations. We do not claim that the foreign policies of the BJP, Putin, CCP, and AKP are entirely determined by civilizationism and populism, or designed merely to legitimize the regime and its authoritarian policies. Rather, we begin from the premise that foreign policy is a product of both regime and leader ideology and the nation’s desire to defend itself from perceived enemy states, and to increase national power and prestige. The chapter begins with an overview of the literature on populism, civilizationism, and foreign policy, and then discusses in depth each of the four regimes foreign policies and the influence of authoritarian civilizational populism upon them.
This article examines how populism reconfigures diplomacy. We contend that populist leaders practice a new form of diplomacy, i.e., champion diplomacy, which poses significant problems for negotiating and implementing international agreements. Portraying themselves as championing the causes of the people in its supposed struggle against the elites, champion diplomats sideline career diplomats, use simple and often coarse language, and prefer direct public diplomatic encounters, often on social media, over more traditional diplomatic channels. This complicates getting to the negotiation table, makes it more difficult to come up with meaningful agreements, and causes problems for implementing them. Our empirical research of two cases, US nuclear diplomacy towards North Korea and the Abraham Accords between Israel as well as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrein, Morocco and Sudan provides strong evidence for our claims. Our findings have important implications for diplomacy and international order more generally. With populist practices increasingly diffusing in diplomatic conduct, even beyond non-populist leaders, concluding workable agreements among states becomes more and more difficult.
Previous studies in Psychology have identified Psychological Entitlement (PE) as an important variable that affects a wide variety of attitudes and behaviors in humans. PE is an individual-level character trait that describes a tendency to expect unwarranted and unearned rewards. In this paper, we build on existing research in Psychology and we investigate the effect of PE on foreign policy attitudes. Theoretically, we expect that those who score high on PE will score higher on American exceptionalism and—as a result—they will have more negative attitudes toward international law. We test our hypotheses on a nationally representative sample of the United States adult population. Respondents were asked a number of questions designed to tap into their PE scores, foreign policy attitudes, and general demographic characteristics. Our models provide broad support for our theoretical expectations. An experimental follow-up analysis (in which entitlement levels were manipulated) corroborates our findings.
The book examines the changing approach of courts in reviewing foreign affairs decisions of the executive. Traditionally, the judiciary awarded deference to executive decisions in that area, a notion that clashes with the idea of general judicial oversight in the modern constitutional state. As the problem is often looked at solely from a national angle, this thesis chooses a comparative approach taking into account the development in three democratic countries to identify general trends as well as differences. Thereby, it shows the development of a new judicial approach, which does not per se defer to executive assessments in the field.
Однією з провідних тенденцій міжнародної політики останніх десятиліть є піднесення популістського націоналізму. Відродження феномену популізму спостерігається у різних регіонах світу: в Європі, Азії, Африці, Північній і Латинській Америці. Лідери-популісти прагнуть використати легітимність, отриману через демократичні вибори, для консолідації влади. Популістські модифікації є новим виміром політичних режимів, які виникають як у демократіях, так і в гібридних та авторитарних режимах. Історико-політична роль популізму в країнах Латинської Америки вже не одне десятиліття викликає гострі дискусії в експертному середовищі. Автор показує, що у Латинській Америці популізм був і залишається важливим фактором історичного процесу, прикладом політики націєтворення на чолі з каудільо. Дослідники феномену латиноамериканського популізму виділяють три типи популізму, зокрема, класичний, неоліберальний і радикальний, та декілька хвиль популізму у регіоні ЛАКБ. Автором здійснено історичний огляд хвиль популізму в латинській Америці, визначено їх специфіку. Одним з найяскравіших проявів правого популізму в Латинській Америці у 21 столітті є «болсонарізм», внутрішня та зовнішня політика президента Бразилії Жаїра Болсонару (2019-2022 рр.). «Болсонарізм» – це своєрідне бразильське явище глобального виміру. Феномен популізму яскраво простежується й в Аргентині. Там це добре відомий «перонізм», продовжувачем якого є починаючи з кінця 2023 р. чинний президент Аргентини Хав’єр Мілей. Політичні та економічні кризи є сприятливим часом для піднесення популізму. Сучасний латиноамериканський популізм демонструє високий ступінь адаптивності феномену популізму до викликів сучасності.
The global rise of right-wing populist (RWP) leaders has raised concerns about the threat they pose to a cooperative international order, but there is little systematic evidence linking RWP leaders to military aggression. Are RWP leaders more prone to initiating international disputes? If so, when and why? We argue that a RWP leader’s hyper-nationalist rhetoric can galvanize popular support for militant internationalism, but this only leads to pressures for the leader to follow through on their belligerent rhetoric by initiating international disputes in participatory democracies. Using survey experiments fielded in India and Japan, we find strong support for our claims about the effects of RWP rhetoric on civilian attitudes. Statistical results from original data on populist leaders worldwide (1886-2014) then show that RWP leaders in participatory democracies are more likely to initiate militarized disputes. Our results are troubling given the recent increase in RWP leaders elected in participatory democracies.
Who speaks for ‘the people’? Populists across the globe have mobilised this question to attack liberal institutions, political opponents, and the democratic process itself, communicating a political reality in which globalist elites have allegedly betrayed the sovereign will of the popular community. The recent ‘surge’ (Mudde, 2016) or ‘wave’ (Aslanidis, 2016) of populism around the world has encompassed electorally successful right-wing populist leaders in the Northern Hemisphere such as Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Marine Le Pen, Jaroslav Kaczynski, Recyp Erdogan, and Victor Orbán, who have advanced nationalist, exclusionary, protectionist and Eurosceptic political agendas. In parallel, left-wing populists in Greece, Spain and Bolivia have attracted voters disillusioned with neoliberal economic policies and existing representational mechanisms of liberal democracy with anti-elitist and anti-globalist platforms. In the Southern Hemisphere, Narendra Modi, Jair Bolsonaro and Yoweri Museveni are oft-cited examples of contemporary populist leaders who have enjoyed continued electoral success with agendas promoting ethnocultural and religious-Nationalist slogans in post-colonial contexts. Prior analyses of these populists’ electoral success and political leadership have usually focused on the ideas, ideologies and strategies populism encompasses, especially in the domestic political arena.
This chapter provides an operational definition of civilizational populism. It examines how populists incorporate and instrumentalize notions of “civilization” into their discourses. It first discusses the literature on civilizational populism and shows how it has largely been described as a European and North American phenomenon. It then examines civilizational populism in three key non-Western nations representing three of the world’s major faiths: Turkey, India, and Myanmar. Finally, the chapter defines civilizational populism as a group of ideas that together considers that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people, and society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite” who collaborate with the dangerous others belonging to other civilizations that are hostile and present a clear and present danger to the civilization and way of life of the pure people.KeywordsPopulismCivilizationismCivilizational populismDemocracyReligionNation-stateReligious nationalismTurkeyIndiaMyanmar
This chapter examines the foreign policies of contemporary populist leaderships in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). We adopt a comparative regional approach to “populist foreign policy” (PFP) in MENA, seeking to identify commonalities and differences that distinguish PFP in these countries, as well as national and international factors that allow or limit these regional trends. We place special emphasis on four cases: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey (2003–), which is probably the most “paradigmatic” case of contemporary populism in the region, and three more “controversial” cases in terms of the theoretical applicability of populism as a category of political analysis—Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s Egypt (2014–), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran (2005–2013), and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel (1996–1999, 2009–2021). Although the four cases differ greatly from each other, especially in their varied approaches to democracy, freedom, human rights, and the rule of law, we can still benefit from a comparative perspective of their PFPs. MENA’s PFP must be understood considering the geopolitical background of this region, which includes a combination of internal struggles, military conflicts, and external interventions. The study also highlights the role of civilizational and ethno-religious components in promoting and limiting collective action, as well as the differences in terms of PFP between countries with well-established democratic/authoritarian regimes and between parliamentary/presidential systems.
During his inaugural address on January 20, 2021, Joe Biden called on Americans to end their ‘un-civil war’ and refrain from treating political opponents as mortal enemies (White House, 2021). Biden vowed to defend democracy and the US Constitution and stressed the vital importance of facts and truth for the functioning of a liberal, open, and democratic society. Without ever naming his predecessor outright, Biden’s speech repudiated decisively the nationalist populism of Donald Trump, who had employed a divisive rhetoric of fear, anxiety, and resentment throughout his time in office; a strategy of narrative disruption and antagonistic mobilization for domestic political gain, culminating in the January 6 Capitol riot in Washington DC, where, instigated by Trump, a violent mob attempted to overturn the certification of the presidential election by force (Homolar & Löfflmann, 2021). Some of the first executive orders Biden signed in office saw the United States re-join the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization (WHO), symbolically ending the era of America First in US foreign policy. But the forces of nationalist populism and nativism did not disappear with Donald Trump’s exit from the White House, and his political influence survived his banning from the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. The United States of America remained a deeply polarized nation, while Trump’s renewed bid for the presidency in 2024 remained a realistic, even probable proposition (Dimock, 2021). In any case, the 74 million Americans that voted for Trump in 2020 all but guaranteed that nationalist populism would continue to dominate the Republican Party and the American right at large. This enduring quality of populism in American politics challenges the structural integrity of liberal democracy and its core institutions, casting serious doubts over the future role of the United States in the international system.
This article investigates whether Turkish populism has undergone a ‘civilizational turn’ akin to what Brubaker, Haynes, Yilmaz, and Morieson have described occurring among populist parties in Europe and North America. The article applies Yilmaz and Morieson’s definition of ‘civilizational populism’ to Turkey under the rule of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) in order to determine whether the party conforms to this definition. The article investigates how the AKP, an Islamist and populist political party lead by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has increasingly incorporated what we term ‘civilizational populism’ into its discourse. The article shows the impact of civilizational populism on Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy under the AKP rule. The article finds that the AKP has increasingly, and especially since the 2013 Gezi Park protests and the mysterious coup attempt in 2016, construed opposition between the Turkish ‘self’ and the ‘other’ not in primarily nationalist terms, but in religious and civilizational terms, and as a conflict between the Ottoman-Islamic ‘self’ and ‘Western’ other. Furthermore, the article finds that the AKP’s domestic and foreign policies reflect its civilizational populist division of Turkish society insofar as the party is attempting to raise a ‘pious generation’ that supports its Islamizing of Turkey society, and its nostalgic neo-Ottomanist power projections in the Middle East. Finally, the paper discusses how the AKP’s civilizational populism has become a transnational populist phenomenon due to the party’s ability to produce successful television shows that reflect its anti-Western worldview and justify its neo-Ottoman imperialism in the Middle East.
Populism is traditionally understood as a challenge to diplomacy. This article reconsiders that notion through an illustrative case of regional sub-state diplomacy. First, it examines how and why populists discredit diplomacy and the international order through four typically populist discursive strategies: crisis discourse, exceptionalism, underdogism and challengerism. Second, it explores why populists may approach regional sub-state diplomacy differently. To illustrate this, it examines the position of Vlaams Belang (a Flemish populist party in Belgium) in the Flemish Parliament Commission for Foreign Policy. It shows that the party discredits state diplomacy while advocating for stronger Flemish diplomacy, implying that the idea of populism as a challenge to diplomacy does not necessarily hold up for regional sub-state diplomacy. As such, the article suggests that the multifarious ways in which populism and diplomacy intersect deserve greater scrutiny and that diplomacy studies should approach populism not as a monolith but as a multi-faceted concept.
Populism has lately experienced a meteoric rise to become one of the most widely used terms not only in International Relations (IR) scholarship and a supposedly defining feature of both domestic and world politics. The introduction sets out the motivation for this book’s critical intervention into debates on populism in IR and beyond. It offers a brief review of IR research on populism and identifies a series of empirical and conceptual limitations that have contributed to an often hyperbolic and problematic usage of the term as a general descriptor for non-centrist politics of different persuasions. It then outlines how this book seeks to address these limitations by developing a new research agenda for the study of populism in foreign policy and world politics and moving beyond the predominant focus on right-wing populism and single-country and -region studies. The final part of the chapter provides an overview of the selected cases, method and data material and the individual chapters.
Das Lehrbuch bietet eine einführende Darstellung des Populismus in allen relevanten Facetten. Namentlich adressiert das Buch seine unterschiedlichen Manifestationen (als Ideologie, Parteiprogramm und individuelle Einstellung), stellt den Populismus in vergleichender Perspektive vor und analysiert die Ursachen für den Wahlerfolg populistischer Parteien. Ferner diskutiert das Buch die Auswirkungen populistischer Parteien auf die Demokratie und den Parteienwettbewerb.
Several opportunities arise for rule of law promoters: to reclaim the security discourse; to explain EU enlargement through the commitment to the rule of law; and consequently, to develop a strategy to influence opponents of enlargement.
Around 60 years after signing of the Treaty of Rome, which led to the establishment of the European Economic Community (EEC), the European Union (EU) is struggling with the aftermath of eurozone and migration crisis and the rise of anti-EU and populist movements all across Europe. Britain’s decision to move out of the EU, further adds to the challenges faced by the EU and put its regional integration in question. This paper tries to expose the factors that led to Brexit, analyses whether the EU is headed towards disintegration and what reforms are needed to save the EU model of regional integration from disintegration. Brexit was a complex interplay of factors such as a threat to national identity and sovereignty, rising inequality and economic insecurity and Euroscepticism. The results indicate that in post-Brexit, support for the EU has increased in member states. The economic losses and political chaos that Britain had to undergo post-Brexit has united the EU members despite the rise of populist movements across Europe. However, the EU needs to bring in some structural reforms and make the EU institutions more democratic and flexible in order to sustain as a model of regional integration.
This chapter examines the potentials of expanding populism from the national to the transnational level by taking the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) as a case study. It argues that DiEM25 can be seen as a paradigmatic case of transnational populism. By utilizing the methodology of the so-called Essex School of Discourse Analysis, it tests the aforementioned hypothesis. On the conceptual level, Laclau’s formal approach adopted in this chapter conceives populism as a particular logic detached from certain contents which means that populism can be different things and engage at various levels from local to national and transnational ones. This contribution focuses on the democratic potential of transnational populism and its effect on Europe’s democratic politics.
This article examines how communicative practices, emotion, and everyday experiences of insecurity interlink in processes of populist political mobilization. Combining insights from international security studies, political psychology, and populism research, it demonstrates how populist political agents from the right of the political spectrum have constructed a powerful security imaginary around the loss of past national greatness that creates affinities with the experiences of those who feel disempowered and ties existential anxieties to concerns with immigration, globalization, and integration. As we show, within the populist security imaginary, humiliation is the key discursive mechanism that helps turn abstract notions of enmity into politically consequential affective narratives of loss, betrayal, and oppression. Humiliation binds together an ostensibly conflicting sense of national greatness and victimhood to achieve an emotive response that enables a radical departure from established domestic and international policy norms and problematizes policy choices centered on collaboration, dialogue, and peaceful conflict resolution.
Cet article examine la mesure dans laquelle les pratiques de communication, l’émotion et les expériences quotidiennes d'insécurité sont liées aux processus de mobilisation politique des populistes. Il allie des renseignements issus d’études internationales sur la sécurité, de la psychologie politique et de recherches sur le populisme pour montrer la manière dont les agents politiques populistes de droite ont construit un puissant imaginaire de la sécurité autour de la perte de la grandeur nationale passée. Cet imaginaire crée des affinités avec les expériences des personnes qui se sentent mises à l’écart et associe les anxiétés existentielles à des préoccupations liées à l'immigration, à la mondialisation et à l'intégration. Comme nous le montrons, dans l'imaginaire populiste de la sécurité, l'humiliation est le mécanisme discursif clé qui permet de transformer des notions abstraites d'inimitié en récits de perte, de trahison et d'oppression qui font appel à l'affectif et ont des conséquences politiques. Cette humiliation associe deux sentiments ostensiblement contradictoires, celui de grandeur nationale et celui d’être victime, qui amènent à une réaction émotive conduisant à s’éloigner radicalement des normes politiques nationales et internationales établies tout en trouvant problématiques les choix politiques centrés sur la collaboration, le dialogue et la résolution pacifique des conflits.
Este artículo investiga de qué manera las prácticas comunicativas, las emociones y las experiencias cotidianas de inseguridad se conectan con los procesos de movilizaciones políticas populistas. Combinando los conocimientos de los estudios de seguridad internacional, la psicología política y la investigación del populismo, demuestra cómo los agentes políticos populistas de la derecha del espectro político han construido un imaginario de seguridad poderoso en torno a la pérdida de la grandeza nacional pasada, el cual crea afinidad con las experiencias de aquellas personas que sienten que carecen de poder y relaciona las ansiedades existenciales con las preocupaciones por la inmigración, la globalización y la integración. Tal como lo presentamos, dentro del imaginario de seguridad populista, la humillación es el mecanismo discursivo clave que ayuda a convertir las nociones abstractas de la enemistad en discursos afectivos de derrotas, traiciones y opresiones que son relevantes en términos políticos. La humillación une un sentido ostensiblemente opuesto de grandeza nacional y victimismo para lograr una respuesta emotiva que permita la divergencia radical de las normas políticas nacionales e internacionales establecidas y problematiza las elecciones políticas centradas en la colaboración, el diálogo y la resolución pacífica de conflictos.
Over the past decade, we have seen the rise of populist nationalist heads of state across a number of important electoral democracies—all of whom have made some version of the promise to make their countries ‘great again’. However, scholars are divided over whether these leaders' sometimes bombastic rhetoric has consistent or predictable effects on state foreign policy. This article introduces a framework for mapping the effects of populism and nationalism in foreign policy. In doing so, it draws on Essex School discourse analysis and sociological frame analysis to argue that representational crises at the sub-state level increase the popular resonance of ‘sovereigntist frames’ that diagnose the causes of perceived gaps in representation of the ‘authentic’ sovereign community at the international level and enjoin chief executives to resolve these gaps through revisionist foreign policy practices. The ethno-nationalist master frame prescribes policies and practices of lateral revisionism (conflict with neighbours or rival states), the populist frame prescribes systemic revisionism (conflict with allies and the international ‘establishment’), while the ethno-populist frame prescribes omni-revisionism (conflict with both). The article illustrates the effects of these disparate sovereigntist movements across three paired case-studies drawn from Europe, Latin America and the United States. It concludes that nationalism has greater destructive effects for the international system when combined with populism, demonstrating the importance of distinguishing nationalism and populism conceptually in order to isolate their separate and combined effects on foreign policy.
How do populists conduct foreign policy? The existing literature on populism focuses mainly on domestic patterns, and until recently the foreign dimension of populism has been largely overlooked. This paper aims to fill theoretical and empirical lacunae by mapping patterns of change and continuity in the formulation of geopolitical and economic international policy among Latin-American populist governments. Striving to conduct a systematic comparative analysis, this paper explores three waves of populist foreign policies in Latin America (classic, neoliberal, and progressive). While it is difficult to highlight a unified phenomenon, the findings reveal that several ‘unifying’ elements indeed exist: they are manifest in the tendency of such governments to jointly (re)construct transnational solidarities for legitimation purposes and to adopt economic foreign policies with a pragmatic bent. Moreover, in opposition to the two first waves of populist governments, the most recent wave has embraced personalist styles, emotional public diplomacy, and clientelist techniques with support networks abroad, thus actively projecting the domestic patterns of populism to the regional and global levels in an attempt to leverage both domestic and international legitimacy. This study offers critical lessons for IR scholarship’s increasing engagement with populism, contributing to the lively debate regarding the rise of populist trends across the globe.
Populists have lately been at the forefront of securitisation processes, yet little attention has been paid to the relationship between populism and securitisation. This paper investigates the role of securitisation in populism, exploring how the populist mode of securitising differs from traditional securitisation processes. It argues that securitisation is inherently embedded in populism which embodies a particular style of securitisation with a distinct set of discursive and aesthetic repertoires. The populist invocation of societal security and their claim to defend the fundamentally precarious identity of ‘the endangered people’ necessitate an unceasing construction of new threats. Aiming to discredit ‘elitist’ securitisation processes, populism invests in a specific construction of the referent object, the securitising actor and their relationship to the audience. The populist securitising style also carries a distinctive aesthetic centred on ‘poor taste’, sentimental ordinariness and unprofessionalism, examining which can widen our understanding of the aesthetics of security.
Etienne Balibar (2010) sees in a pan-European populism a chance for the rebirth of Europe's democracy. DiEM25, launched by Yanis Varoufakis, is a transnational European movement that seeks to democratize the European Union and save it from itself. This paper argues that DiEM can be perceived as a positive response to Balibar's call. By utilizing the methodology of the so-called Essex School of Discourse Analysis, I examine the aforementioned hypothesis. What we are witnessing, I claim, is a case of transnational populism, a paradoxical combination for those who identify populism with nationalism. Laclau's formal approach, adopted in this paper, conceives populism as a particular logic detached from certain contents which implies that populism can be anything, and thus there is no contradiction in a transnational populism. What are the possibilities of DiEM's transnational populism for Europe's democratic politics? Is DiEM a chance for European democracy?
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 far largely been treated as a national phenomenon with few international manifestations. Thus, this article adopts the concept of populism and its core components such as anti-elitism, the people, and the general will within a role theory framework to trace the foreign policy roles that populist governments play as a first step to improving our knowledge on the nexus of populism and foreign policy. We examine this framework in the context of the foreign policy of Carlos Menem of Argentina and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
This introduction presents the special issue’s conceptual and empirical starting points and situates the special issue’s intended contributions. It does so by reviewing extant scholarship on electoral rhetoric and foreign policy and by teasing out several possible linkages between elections, rhetoric and foreign policy. It also discusses how each contribution to the special issue seeks to illuminate causal mechanisms at work in these linkages. Finally, it posits that these linkages are crucial to examining the changes brought about by Trump’s election and his foreign policy rhetoric.
This article asks how Donald Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric during his presidential campaign and presidency has affected US foreign policy in the area of overseas counterterrorism campaigns. Looking at two case studies – the May 2017 Arab Islamic American Summit and the US role in the counter Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) campaign, it is argued that Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric has failed to accurately describe or legitimate his administration’s counterterrorism strategy, as per the conventional wisdom. Instead, Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric has largely been aimed at creating a sense of crisis (as populism requires) to mobilise his domestic base. In making this argument about the purpose of Trump’s foreign policy rhetoric, not only does the article contribute a new perspective to the extant literature on elections, rhetoric, and US foreign policy, but also to the burgeoning scholarship on governing populists and their foreign policies. Although these findings could be unique to Trump, the article’s novel framework – combining International Relations and populism scholarship to elaborate on how the foreign arena can be used to generate a state of perpetual crisis – can hopefully be applied in other contexts.
Research on national collective narcissism, the belief and resentment that a nation's exceptionality is not sufficiently recognized by others, provides a theoretical framework for understanding the psychological motivations behind the support for right‐wing populism. It bridges the findings regarding the economic and sociocultural conditions implicated in the rise of right‐wing populism and the findings regarding leadership processes necessary for it to find its political expression. The conditions are interpreted as producing violations to established expectations regarding self‐importance via the gradual repeal of the traditional criteria by which members of hegemonic groups evaluated their self‐worth. Populist leaders propagate a social identity organized around the collective narcissistic resentment, enhance it, and propose external explanations for frustration of self and in‐group‐importance. This garners them a committed followership. Research on collective narcissism indicates that distress resulting from violated expectations regarding self‐importance stands behind collective narcissism and its narrow vision of “true” national identity (the people), rejection and hostility toward stigmatized in‐group members and out‐groups as well as the association between collective narcissism and conspiratorial thinking.
Contributing to burgeoning studies of populism, this article conceptualises and contextualises Trump’s language as ‘Jacksonian populism’. We explore how this style of populist discourse influenced political debates before and after Trump’s election. Ours is the first article to analyse opposition and media responses to Trump’s construction of ‘real America’ as that of a Jacksonian, White, and male working class. To do so, the article analyses 1165 texts, from the government, opposition, newspapers, television coverage, and social media. In addition to locating Trump’s reification of a mythologised White working class within a broader Jacksonian tradition, we find that the Democratic opposition and mainstream media initially reproduced this construction, furthering Trump’s cause. Even where discursive challenges were subsequently developed, they often served to reproduce a distinct – and hitherto unspoken for – White (male) working-class America. In short, early resistance actively reinforced Trump’s discursive hegemony, which centred on reclaiming the primacy of working, White America in the national identity.
What kind of foreign policy do populists execute once in power? Based on the existing literature, we conceptualize populism as a set of ideas whose two core elements are anti-elitism and antipluralism. From this we develop a set of hypotheses regarding both substantive aspects of foreign policy as well as foreign policy–making processes of populist leaders in government. An analysis of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's foreign policy record serves as a first plausibility probe of our hypotheses. We find that our concept of populism carries most explanatory value in the procedural aspects of foreign policy making as well as in its communication, less so in those aspects relating to the goals or substance of foreign policy. Whereas foreign policy under Modi's populist leadership is highly centralized and personalized, the traditional foreign policy establishment, including most notably the Ministry of External Affairs, has lost some of its previous authority. Engaging the Indian diaspora abroad emerged as another characteristic of populist foreign policy making. By contrast, the case of India does not confirm our hypothesis regarding a preference of bilateralism over multilateralism, nor does populism necessarily preclude investing in global public goods.
The close empirical connections between populism and nationalism have naturalised a rather misleading overlap between the concepts of populism and nationalism in academic and public debates. As a result, the relation between the two has not received much systematic attention. Drawing on the poststructuralist discourse theory originally formulated by Laclau and Mouffe, this article differentially identifies populism and nationalism as distinct ways of discursively constructing and claiming to represent “the people”, as underdog and as nation respectively. These distinct constructions of “the people” can also be identified and highlighted from a spatial or orientational perspective, by looking at the architectonics of populism and nationalism as revolving around a down/up (vertical) and an in/out (horizontal) axis respectively. Building on this framework, the article then concludes that the co-occurrence of populism and nationalism should be studied through the prism of articulation. Again, a focus on discursive architectonics allows grasping how different political projects construct different discourses by connecting the building blocks of populism and nationalism in particular ways. The study of these articulations, based on a clear distinction between populism and nationalism, is a necessary step in further deepening our understanding of the complexity and variety of populist politics.
Social movement scholars have thus far failed to give populism its deserved attention and to incorporate it into their field of study. Although sociologists, political scientists, and historians have explored diverse facets of the intersection of populism and social dissent, there has been no concerted effort towards building a comprehensive framework for the study of populist mobilization, despite its growing significance in the past decades. In this article I combine insights from populism studies, social movement scholarship, and social psychology to build a unified framework of analysis for populist social movements. I suggest populism is best understood as a collective action frame employed by movement entrepreneurs to construct a resonant collective identity of “the People” and to challenge elites. I argue that populism depends on the politicization of citizenship, and I apply this framework to the movements of the Great Recession to classify Occupy Wall Street and the European indignados as instances of a populist wave of mobilization, using data from archival material and a set of semistructured interviews with Greek activists.
Populist right-wing politics is moving centre-stage, with some parties reaching the very top of the electoral ladder: but do we know why, and why now?
In this book Ruth Wodak traces the trajectories of such parties from the margins of the political landscape to its centre, to understand and explain how they are transforming from fringe voices to persuasive political actors who set the agenda and frame media debates. Laying bare the normalization of nationalistic, xenophobic, racist and antisemitic rhetoric, she builds a new framework for this ‘politics of fear’ that is entrenching new social divides of nation, gender and body.
The result reveals the micro-politics of right-wing populism: how discourses, genres, images and texts are performed and manipulated in both formal and also everyday contexts with profound consequences. This book is a must-read for scholars and students of linguistics, media and politics wishing to understand these dynamics that are re-shaping our political space.
The scientific debate about populism has been revitalised by the recent rise of extreme-right parties in Western Europe. Within the broad discussion about populism and its relationship with extreme-right, this article is confined to three topics: a conceptual, an epistemological and an empirical issue. First, taking a clear position in the ongoing definition struggle, populism is defined primarily as a specific political communication style. Populism is conceived of as a political style essentially displaying proximity of the people, while at the same time taking an anti-establishment stance and stressing the (ideal) homogeneity of the people by excluding specific population segments. Second, it is pointed out that defining populism as a style enables one to turn it into a useful concept that has too often remained vague and blurred. Third, drawing on an operational definition of populism, a comparative discourse analysis of the political party broadcasts of the Belgian parties is carried out. The quantitative analysis leads to a clear conclusion. In terms of the degree and the kinds of populism embraced by the six political parties under scrutiny, the extreme-right party Vlaams Blok behaves very differently from the other Belgian parties. Its messages are a copybook example of populism.
Populism is a key feature of contemporary democratic politics, and is on the rise across the world. Yet current approaches to populism fail to account for its shifting character in a rapidly changing political and media landscape, where media touches upon all aspects of political life, a sense of crisis is endemic, and where populism has gone truly global. This book presents a new perspective for understanding populism, arguing that it is a distinct ‘political style’ that is performed, embodied and enacted across a number of contexts. While still based on the classic divide between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, contemporary populism’s reliance on new media technologies, its relationship to shifting modes of political representation and identification, and its increasing ubiquity has seen the phenomenon transform in new and unexpected ways. Demonstrating that populism as a political style has three central features – appeal to ‘the people’ versus ‘the elite’; ‘bad manners’; and crisis, breakdown or threat – the book uses a performative framework to examine its key actors, stages, audiences and mise-en-scène. In doing so, it draws on illustrative examples from across the globe, moving beyond the usual cases of Western Europe and the Americas to also take in populism in the Asia-Pacific and Africa. Working across the fields of comparative politics, media communications and political theory, it seeks to account for populism’s complex relationship to crisis, media and democracy, ultimately offering an important and provocative new approach for understanding populism in the twenty-first century.
Traditional conceptualisations of nationalism focus on the need
for intergroup domination. We argue that current politics are
rather driven by the need for recognition of the greatness of
one’s nation. In psychological literature, the need for the
nation’s appreciation is captured by the concept of collective
narcissism—a belief in in-group greatness contingent on
external recognition. We demonstrate that collective
narcissism is associated with support for national populist
parties and policies. We also review the empirical evidence for
the intergroup and intragroup concomitants of collective
narcissism. We demonstrate that collective narcissism benefits
neither out-group nor in-group members. Instead, it helps
manage psychological needs of the individual. We conclude
that collective narcissism might undermine social cohesion
both within and between groups.
This article explores the relationship between foreign policy and domestic politics under Trump. We employ Gramscian theory to make sense of US foreign policy structures, conceptualizing the Trump administration as engaged in a discursive war of position over narratives of national identity and security. Second, we use securitization theory to conceptualize agency and change within this. We analyse 1200 official, opposition and media texts over 20 months following Trump's election. First, we consider Trump's attempted securitization of immigration. Second, we explore the counter-securitization of Trump as a threat to “progressive” America. Third, we analyse how Trump securitized the opposition, conflating the constructed threat posed by immigration with political elites. We show how this led to greater polarization of US political debate, which became underwritten by securitized language. Finally, we note security's referent differed for both groups, with Trump's ethnocentric “real” America opposed to the liberal America endorsed by his critics..
Trump's foreign policy does not spell the end of the liberal international order but does challenge the notion that liberal hegemony lacks a legitimate alternative.
Populists are on the rise across the globe and claim to speak on behalf of ‘the people’ that are set against the establishment in the name of popular sovereignty. This article examines how populist discourses represent ‘the people’ as a referent object that is threatened and the form and implications of this populist securitisation process. Drawing on securitisation theory and poststructuralism, the article understands populist securitisation as a discursive practice that propagates a politics of fear, urgency, and exceptionality in order to mobilise ‘the people’ against a ‘dangerous’ elite and normalise this antagonistic divide of the social space. While the proposed theoretical framework aims to clarify the relationship between poststructuralist and securitisation theory and capture the nexus between populism and security, the case of populism broadens the scope of potential subjects of security and poses important challenges to existing theoretical assumptions about security as something designated by states’ representatives and ‘security experts’. The article develops and illustrates its arguments with a case study on the (de)securitisation moves in the populist discourse of Donald Trump.
Despite the significance of the subject, studies on the foreign policy preferences of European populist radical right leaders are scarce except for a handful of examples. Are European populist radical right leaders more hostile than other world leaders or comparatively friendly? Do they use cooperative or conflictual strategies to achieve their political goals? What are the leadership types associated with their strategic orientations in international relations? Using the operational code construct in this empirical study, we answer these questions and depict the foreign policy belief systems of seven European populist radical right leaders. We test whether they share a common pattern in their foreign policy beliefs and whether their foreign policy belief systems are significantly different from the norming group of average world leaders. The results indicate that European populist radical right leaders lack a common pattern in terms of their foreign policy belief systems. While the average scores of the analysed European populist radical right leaders suggest that they are more conflictual in their world views, results also show that they employ instrumental approaches relatively similar to the average group of world leaders. This article illuminates the microfoundations of strategic behaviour in international relations and arrives at conclusions about the role of European populist radical right leaders in mainstream International Relations discussions, such as idealism versus realism. In this sense, the cognitivist research school complements and advances structural accounts of international relations by analysing leadership in world affairs.
The present article develops a theory of “nationalist populism” by examining the relationship between populism and the hegemonic configuration of nation-states. Following recent contributions by the “Essex School,” populism is understood as a process whereby diverse political demands and identities come to be aggregated via signifiers, typically that of “the people,” that incarnate an antagonistic populist body. I argue that the rhetorical construction of “the people,” to the extent that it is executed in the context of national hegemonic blocs, will often (inadvertently) come to be overdetermined by uncontested nationalist narratives and life modalities that are symbolically associated with the hegemonic signifier “the nation.” Nationalist populism can therefore best be understood as a chimeric political logic, whereby a populist totality is parasitically signified vis-à-vis the hegemonic signifier “the nation” and its associated family resemblances. This logic can assume a variety of forms, its content being dependent upon contextual political and ideological considerations.
For Leave voters the Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016 was invested with hopes and dreams, of refound sovereignty and control, freedom and liberty, subjectivity and agency. Brexit was an opportunity for both new beginnings and a reclamation of British essences. Winning, however, has not provided the closure promised, and today Leave supporters often appear decidedly anxious and angry. Bringing together literature on ontological security with Lacanian understandings of the (always incomplete) nature of subjectivity, this paper provides an explanation of how it is that ’Brexit’ became invested with such high hopes of fulfilment, but also why the populist ’fantasies’ underpinning Brexit have inevitably fallen short. However, while closure around ontological security and subjectivity is impossible, the paper shows how the promise of fulfilment (and its inevitable failure) can be politically seductive and mobilizing, is a central strategy of populist politics, but as such is also one that is only likely to exacerbate the ontological anxieties and insecurities upon which populist politics preys.
Cambridge Core - Political Sociology - Cultural Backlash - by Pippa Norris
Cambridge Core - Social Psychology - White Identity Politics - by Ashley Jardina
Drawing on a poststructuralist, discourse theoretical framework, the chapter analyzes how the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leader Narendra Modi have used foreign policy as a site for the construction and maintenance of a populist electoral coalition. The chapter understands populism, nationalism and foreign policy as discourses that construct collective identities by drawing and institutionalizing distinct political boundaries between Self and Other. Identifying these distinct political logics, the chapter argues that Modi’s BJP has shaped a populist-nationalist discourse that asserts to represent the ‘true’ people that must be protected from a corrupt establishment that is accused of siding with and appeasing the foreign Other. In this context, the chapter also illuminates the ideological dimension of populism and explains why subjects desire to identify with such discourses. In contrast to common understandings of ideology as ‘distortion of reality’, it argues that the ideological dimension of populism lies in masking over the discursive character of what we view as social reality and the resulting impossibility of a fully constituted subject such as ‘the people’.
This volume is the first to analyze populism’s international dimension, that is, its impact on, and interaction with, foreign policy and international politics. Although a lot of research has focused on populism’s domestic effects, its implications for world politics have received only limited systematic attention. The contributions to this volume engage conceptual theoretical issues and overarching questions such as the still under-specified concept of populism or the importance of leadership and the mass media for populism’s global rise. They zoom in on populism’s effect on both, different countries’ foreign policies and core international concerns such as the future of the liberal world order and the chances for international conflict and cooperation more generally.
The volume closes an important gap in both populism research and IR and will be of interest to scholars of foreign policy, international politics and populism not only in political science and IR but also in sociology, media studies and related fields.
This article conceptualizes populism as a discourse of international relations that arises as response to state transformation, a phenomenon that encompasses changes in both state-society relations and the norms defining the appropriate practice of statehood. The current surge of populism is a response to one such transformation: the internationalization of state elites and their insulation from popular scrutiny. Populism does not simply address material and cultural dislocations that internationalization entails. Crucially, its distinct discursive logic allows these partial social demands to adopt the moral claim to representation of the ‘real people’ and so counter the universality of the international norms that underpin state transformation. Beyond the current conjuncture of state internationalization, this conceptualization accommodates iterations of populism in various regional and historical contexts of state transformation, making it a promising basis for the further comparative study of populism.
Across the West, economic dislocation and demographic change have triggered a demand for strong leaders. This surge of populism is more than an emotional backlash; it encourages a political structure that threatens liberal democracy. While populism accepts principles of popular sovereignty and majoritarianism, it is skeptical about constitutionalism and liberal protections for individuals. Moreover, populists’ definition of “the people” as homogeneous cannot serve as the basis for a modern democracy, which stands or falls with the protection of pluralism. Although this resurgent tribalism may draw strength from the incompleteness of life in liberal society, the liberal-democratic system uniquely harbors the power of self-correction, the essential basis for needed reforms. © 2018 National Endowment for Democracy and Johns Hopkins University Press.
The field of International Relations (IR) has recently witnessed the emergence of a wide variety of different approaches to make sense of the many ways emotions work in and through discourse. This forum takes stock of and investigates this link based on two interrelated questions: Why study emotions through discourse? How can we study emotions through discourse? Concerning the first question, we argue that textual and verbal utterances provide us with a promising way to make emotions empirically accessible for researchers. Regarding the second question, we argue that it is essential to develop specific criteria for the study of emotions via speech acts. We propose three criteria that the study of emotion discourse must answer to, which revolve around theory (what is an emotion?), expression (how are emotions communicated?), and effects (what do emotions do?). In a step toward fostering engagement and dialogue on these questions, the contributors of this forum propose a variety of approaches to study emotion discourse in world politics. The idea is to explore the ways in which discourse evokes, reveals, and engages emotions and how these effects can speak to larger questions in IR. Precisely, the goal with this forum is to go beyond the “emotions matter” approach of the first wave of emotions scholarship in IR to offer more specific ways to integrate the consideration of emotion into existing research, particularly that of a constructivist vein.
This article explores the relationship between people and nation by focusing on the Greek case, which has attracted considerable political and media attention throughout the last few years. The article traces the ways in which populism and nationalism have been related within Greek political culture diachronically, inclusive of the current crisis conjuncture. We follow this trajectory from the 1940s and the Greek Civil War up until today in order to capture the unexpectedly dynamic and ambivalent relationship between the two and account for its multiple mutations. The conclusions drawn from this country-specific exploration are expected to have wider implications for populism research internationally.
Despite the wide application of the label “populist” in the 2016 election cycle, there has been little systematic evidence that this election is distinctive in its populist appeal. Looking at historical trends, contemporary rhetoric, and public opinion data, we find that populism is an appropriate descriptor of the 2016 election and that Donald Trump stands out in particular as the populist par excellence. Historical data reveal a large “representation gap” that typically accompanies populist candidates. Content analysis of campaign speeches shows that Trump, more so than any other candidate, employs a rhetoric that is distinctive in its simplicity, anti-elitism, and collectivism. Original survey data show that Trump’s supporters are distinctive in their unique combination of anti-expertise, anti-elitism, and pronationalist sentiments. Together, these findings highlight the distinctiveness of populism as a mechanism of political mobilization and the unusual character of the 2016 race.
The new international order will be marked by the ascendancy of illiberal states and value systems, and a diminishment of American influence.
Although 'populism' has become something of a buzzword in discussions about politics, it tends to be studied by country or region. This is the first book to offer a genuine cross-regional perspective on populism and its impact on democracy. By analyzing current experiences of populism in Europe and the Americas, this edited volume convincingly demonstrates that populism can be both a threat and a corrective to democracy. The contributors also demonstrate the interesting similarities between right-wing and left-wing populism: both types of populism are prone to defend a political model that is not against democracy per se, but rather at odds with liberal democracy. Populism in Europe and the Americas offers new insights into the current state of democracy from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view.
Although ‘populism’ has become something of a buzzword in discussions about politics, it tends to be studied by country or region. This is the first book to offer a genuine cross-regional perspective on populism and its impact on democracy. By analyzing current experiences of populism in Europe and the Americas, this edited volume convincingly demonstrates that populism can be both a threat and a corrective to democracy. The contributors also demonstrate the interesting similarities between right-wing and left-wing populism: both types of populism are prone to defend a political model that is not against democracy per se, but rather at odds with liberal democracy. Populism in Europe and the Americas offers new insights into the current state of democracy from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view.
Populism has traditionally been defined as a cumulative concept, characterized by the simultaneous presence of political, economic, social, and discursive attributes. Radial concepts of populism offer a looser way of spanning different domains. Criticism of modernization and dependency theory, which assumed tight connections between different domains, and the emergence of new types of personalistic leadership that lack some traditional attributes of populism have made cumulative and radial concepts of populism problematic. Populism can be reconceptualized as a classical concept located in a single domain, politics. Populism can be defined as a political strategy through which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government power through direct, unmediated, uninstitutionalized support from large numbers of followers.
This article draws on primary focus group research to explore the differing ways in which UK publics conceptualise and discuss security. The article begins by situating our research within two relevant contemporary scholarly literatures: The first concerns efforts to centre the ‘ordinary’ human as security’s referent; the second, constructivist explorations of security’s discursive (re)production. A second section then introduces six distinct understandings of security that emerged in our empirical research. These organised the term around notions of survival, belonging, hospitality, equality, freedom and insecurity. The article concludes by exploring this heterogeneity and its significance for the study of security more broadly, outlining a number of potential future research avenues in this area.
This article pushes forward our understanding of populism by developing one of the more underappreciated definitions of populism, populism as discourse. It does so by creating a quantitative measure of populist discourse suitable for cross-country and historical analysis. The article starts by laying out the discursive definition of populism in the context of existing definitions. It then operationalizes this definition through a holistic grading of speeches by current chief executives and a few historical figures. The result is a data set of elite-level populist discourse in more than 40 current and past governments from a variety of countries across the world, with special focus on Latin America. This measurement has high reliability comparable to standard human-coded content analysis, compares well to common understandings of actual cases of populism, and is a reasonably efficient technique even in small samples.
A variety of constructivists have begun to address emotions in IR, viewing emotional events and memories as important dimensions to the social construction of identity. But it is not clear that constructivist tools, designed in most cases for interpreting discursive representations, are equipped to study affective phenomena. This article offers a critical assessment of constructivism’s ability to theorize affects—nonconscious and embodied emotional states—in global politics. Using as an example the ontology developed by Alexander Wendt, the article suggests that common presuppositions in orthodox constructivism in fact obstruct the study of affect and its role in social and political life. To grasp the depth, intensity, and fugitivity of emotional phenomena, constructivism needs to rethink its attachments to reflective agency, ideational processes, and symbolic meaning. Through a brief discussion of the American response to 9/11, the final section develops several propositions on the role of affect in forging political identities.
The measurement of populism – particularly over time and space – has received only scarce attention. In this research note two different ways to measure populism are compared: a classical content analysis and a computer-based content analysis. An analysis of political parties in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy demonstrates that both methods can be used to measure populism across countries and over time. Recommendations are presented on how to combine these methods in future comparative research on populism.
Sociology has long shied away from the problem of populism. This may be due to suspicion about the concept or uncertainty about how to fit populist cases into broader comparative matrices. Such caution is warranted: the existing interdisciplinary literature has been plagued by conceptual confusion and disagreement. But given the recent resurgence of populist politics in Latin America and elsewhere, sociology can no longer afford to sidestep such analytical challenges. This article moves toward a political sociology of populism by identifying past theoretical deficiencies and proposing a new, practice-based approach that is not beholden to pejorative common sense understandings. This approach conceptualizes populism as a mode of political practice—as populist mobilization. Its utility is demonstrated through an application to mid-twentieth-century Latin American politics. The article concludes by sketching an agenda for future research on populist mobilization in Latin America and beyond.
This article presents research from a three-year study of shifting understandings of threat and security in Britain following the 2003 Iraq War. We develop the case for a more integrated and nuanced approach to studying the relationship between policymakers, media practitioners and media publics given the increasing importance of these relationships to international relations (IR) matters of concern. Our analysis demonstrates the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that explain why certain individuals and groups arrive at certain understandings or perceptions of threats. Responding to recent calls in IR for the use of diverse and interdisciplinary methods, our methodology enables us to demonstrate how disparities emerge between official and public understandings of threats. These understandings result from people’s engagement with political and media discourses, and the experience of this engagement can be characterized by connectivity, (un)certainty and contradiction