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The Trump Shock: Populism and Changing Narratives of US Foreign Policy
Abstract
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.
Paradoxically, research on the international dimensions and effects of populism finds that populist leaders’ politicization frequently portrays domestic and foreign “elites” as intertwined—but that their decision-making tends to be considerably more antagonistic vis-à-vis internal opponents than established external actors. Combining structural and agential perspectives, this paper unboxes the individual micro-factors feeding into this paradox by analytically disentangling domain-specific personality traits. To explore whether populist leaders’ individual characteristics vary or remain stable in domestic politics and foreign policy, we conduct a novel domain-specific leadership trait analysis of eleven populist chief executives around the globe. On the one hand, we find limited and rather heterogeneous variation in most individual characteristics, including need for power and conceptual complexity. On the other hand, the great majority of profiled leaders display higher foreign self-confidence and higher domestic distrust. We conclude that particular tendencies toward fearful blanket suspicions of other powerful internal actors and more self-assured case-by-case judgments of external counterparts matter to understand why populist decision-makers often produce confrontational domestic but relatively cooperative foreign policy records. These personality-level inferences support recent IR scholarship about the international opportunities for populist leadership, personalistic foreign policy decision-making, and the primarily domestic logic of intermestic “people-versus-elite” politicization.
Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 U.S. presidential election offers a fresh perspective on the nature of ‘Trumpism’, which has now firmly established itself not as a temporary or accidental fluctuation in U.S. political life, but as a stable and powerful social phenomenon. This article attempts to identify the origins and key ideological components of this trend, examining it in the context of contemporary political processes within the Republican Party. The first section of the article traces the changes in Trump’s approach to building relationships with the Republican establishment. It highlights that there were favorable domestic political conditions and an updated campaign strategy that allowed Trump to solidify his electoral position at both regional and federal levels in 2024. This marks a sharp contrast with the 2016 campaign, where he was viewed as an ‘outsider’ and a disruptive actor. The second section delves into the ideology of ‘Trumpism’ in the context of the 2024 presidential election. It notes that while Trump distanced himself from the most radical initiatives of the far-right faction of the Republican establishment during the campaign, his rhetoric was distinctly conservative and combative, especially when contrasted with the conciliatory platform of the Democrats. In conclusion, the article argues that ‘Trumpism’ has evolved into a powerful, independent movement within the Republican Party, one that is likely to maintain its influence in the years to come. At the same time, it suggests that Trump’s and the Republican Party’s victory in the U.S. reflects a broader global trend towards strengthening rightwing ideologies. In this regard, the case of the European Union is particularly noteworthy. It raises the question of how Trump’s victory will impact the positions of conservative and right-populist parties and movements across Europe.
In 2019, the Donald Trump administration rejected the draft Treaty on the Prevention of Placement of Weapons in Space (PPWT) in the UN Conference on Disarmament and instead created the Space Force, the first new US military service branch established in decades. The administration had to overcome a series of obstacles to achieve this, though, including public opposition from powerful government actors, the absence of a coherent strategic vision guiding the creation of a Space Force, and entrenched bureaucratic resistance. This article adopts the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) theory to show how Trump administration officials changed their dominant narratives in defense policy. By portraying the United States as the “hero” that faced increasing space security threats from “villains,” Russia and China, the policy narrative promoted conditions in which the president could more easily advance the “solution” to the problem: establishment of the Space Force. Specifically, this study identifies five rhetorical themes used to help shape the policy narrative and then codes the content of 132 different declarations and national space directives from administration officials, with 3982 datapoints, over a 20‐year period. The article finds evidence of narrative strategies that promoted US security interests and vilified the actions of China and Russia in the lead‐up to changes in the strategic force posture. It concludes with a discussion of the added value of the NPF model and the need for more in‐depth analysis of inflection points in different space narratives around the world and in multilateral forums for space governance.
The impetus for this research is to examine America's evolving role in a changing world, particularly in light of European concerns regarding the potential re-election of Donald Trump. Since the mid-20th Century, the United States has been the leader of the Western world, playing a pivotal role in maintaining and advancing a liberal international order. However, recent developments have called into questioning the durability of America's leadership in this domain. Specifically, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the possibility of his return to the presidency have raised doubts among European allies about the U.S.'s commitment to the liberal international order. This study employs a descriptive methodological approach and conducts a comparative analysis of Trump's first-term policies with potential policies in a prospective second term. Additionally, the research compares the U.S., Europe, and Russia across various dimensions, including defense budgets, NATO involvement, military collaboration, climate targets, trade partnerships, human rights, U.N. contributions , economic growth, alliance positions, global influence, and immigration policies. Key findings of this research indicate a growing trend of isolationism , exemplified by the "America First" policy, which has strained U.S.-Europe relations. The study further suggests that a second Trump presidency could exacerbate these challenges, complicating military cooperation, economic relations, and human rights initiatives. These findings are crucial for American and European citizens, global leaders, and policymakers to develop strategies to mitigate rising tensions and prevent the potential isolation of the U.S. from the Western alliance.
This book aims to introduce readers to the emerging and developing field of populism and foreign policy, highlighting some of the more important scientific advances in the past decade and setting the stage for future contributions to this growing research program. Across its different chapters, this edited volume examines what is distinctive about populist foreign policy (PFP) in parallel to its diversity in cultural, socio-economic, and political terms. Moreover, by exploring how populist governments addressed their foreign policies in Latin America, North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, the Middle East, East and Southeast Asia, Oceania, and Africa, the book analyzes the domestic and international conditions which enable or constrain PFP in each region.
Populist leaders base their electoral appeal on underlying their agenda with claims to authenticity reflected both in the content and in the style of their political communication. Based on a conceptualisation of authenticity as discursive performance, we conduct a comparative analysis of the authenticity claims of two right-wing populist leaders, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. We focus on authenticity claims associated with international politics. International issues are central to populist exclusionary narratives, but also difficult for populist incumbents to narrate authentically. We find that despite differences in their public personas, Johnson and Trump show considerable similarities in both content and style of their authenticity performances. In particular, they ‘domesticate’ international politics to reinforce domestic issues assumed closer to ‘ordinary’ voters, all the while employing rhetorical styles suggestive of their authenticity. These findings highlight the centrality of authenticity performances to populist politics and electoral appeal.
This article aims to contribute to the growing academic debate on the transnational drivers and patterns of contemporary populism. As populist leaderships expand both politically and geographically, the very nature of the populist phenomenon is changing, as it is increasingly being projected on the international stage. Contemporary populist leaders show a growing willingness to transfer the discursive construction of a struggle between ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’ to the regional and global levels as a way of obtaining internal and external legitimation. In so doing, they exploit the symbiotic two-level game that links national and international (de-)legitimation dynamics, seeking to gain ‘abroad’ the kind of legitimacy that they cannot obtain ‘at home’. This article suggests three mechanisms that explain the populist ‘way out’ from various legitimation traps based on the traditional distinctions between input, throughput, and output legitimacy. The article’s argument is illustrated with reference to prototypical cases of populism in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. The incorporation of the literature on international legitimacy enhances our understanding of the strategic activation of populist attitudes through the transnational articulation of empty signifiers, the global diffusion of this phenomenon, and the possibilities for its contestation and mitigation.
Donald Trump and his loyalists invoked the concept of the deep state when confronted with resistance to the president’s agenda. The hazy concept of the deep state was tied to the long-standing conservative critique of the administrative state and the growth of the federal bureaucracy. Together, they conveyed reproach that Trump was subverted by a shadowy network of unelected bureaucrats that illegitimately holds the levers of real power in the United States. But there is no deep state. The conflict between the bureaucracy and Trump underscores a conflict between liberal and populist conceptions of democracy; between, utilizing Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation,” an ethic of responsibility and an ethic of conviction. The bureaucracy’s commitment to liberalism and instrumental rationality butts up against the Caesarist authority claimed by a leader on the basis of his presumed plebiscitary electoral mandate. Trump’s rhetorical accusation of a deep state undermined confidence in government and the legitimacy of the state.
The discursive domain of (in)security is integral to nationalist populism, as documented in the political rhetoric of Donald Trump. This article combines insights from political psychology on blame attribution with scholarship in International Relations on security narratives to show how the reframing of national identity through a populist security imaginary elevated internal ‘enemies of the people’ to an ontological status of equal, or even superior standing to that of external threats to national security. Portraying internal and external Others as equally existential threats endangering the ‘real’ United States informed both foreign policy choices and mobilised voters through an affective persuasion of audiences, actively dividing society for political gain. Populist appeals to resentment, fear, and anxiety constituted a shared affective space between Trump and his followers that provided a source of mutual ontological reassurance and the legitimation of America First measures from immigration restrictions to trade protectionism and a Jacksonian foreign policy.
This article introduces the special issue on Trump and unpredictability in international relations. It analyses each of the contributions to the special issue in turn, as they appear in the running order, while also elaborating on the intellectual and political context for the special issue as a whole. Paralleling the special issue, this introduction begins by setting out the problem of understanding the very notion of unpredictability itself as a general concept; turns to unpacking that theoretical complexity in more empirical terms by questioning how we can understand unpredictability in relation to Trump’s foreign policy; explores the contestation of that understanding by analysing alternative explanations for unpredictability and whether this constitutes doctrine; then delves more deeply into the specific notion of Madman theory, which comprises a critical and highly prominent sub-section of the unpredictability debate; and culminates in a more expansive focus on the impact of unpredictability as Trump’s foreign policy approach, specifically in relation to China.
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.
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.
Much like his candidacy, Donald Trump’s presidency has been described as populist par excellence and as fundamentally breaking with the liberal internationalist tradition of American foreign policy. Despite a growing interest in populism and the role it has played in shaping Donald Trump’s appeal to the public at election time in 2016, we lack an understanding of how populist rhetoric after his electoral victory shaped his approach to foreign policy. This article proposes a study of President Trump’s official campaign communication through rally speeches and Twitter during the 2 months prior to the mid-term election in November 2018 as well as tweets published in the official personal account @realDonaldTrump from September to November 2018. The analysis finds that resurgent Jacksonian populism promoted by the Tea Party shapes President Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Fundamentally anti-elitist, Trump’s populism opposes migration, multilateralism, and is deeply sceptical of the United States’ capacity to support a liberal global order that he perceives as detrimental to the economic interest of the American people. In addition, the analysis finds inconsistencies between his campaign discourse of non-intervention in military conflicts abroad and his foreign policy action.
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 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.
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.
This article utilizes a historical materialist informed framework to analyse change and continuity in US counterterrorism policy. Although Donald Trump's "America First" discourse conveyed a "new" approach to counterterrorism, in practice his administration has largely reinforced pre-existing tendencies, expanding the military campaigns against ISIS and al-Qaeda. In accordance with America's longstanding objectives in the global south, which centre on stabilizing existing patterns of capitalist political-economic relations, the US continues to police transnational security challenges "from below". The article calls for increased sensitivity to the means-ends calculus in American statecraft. It argues that tactical shifts at the policy level (the means) should be situated in relation to historical considerations and the structural and material factors (the ends) that impact US foreign policymaking across presidential administrations.
This article contributes to the debate over Donald Trump's foreign policy by bringing in perspectives on American nationalism, reframing the current debate as an identity contestation between civic and ethnic nationalism. The article argues that the Trump administration's “America First” agenda represents a radical departure from how civic nationalism and U.S. leadership in the “liberal world order” was coupled after the end of the Cold War. In the context of a civic nationalist narrative of liberal progress, Trump represents reactionary change. If we question this narrative of liberal progress, however, the conclusion is less obvious. Rather than argue for change or continuity from immediate predecessors, the article places Trump's “America First” platform in the historical context of how narratives on American nationhood have been coupled with foreign policy. The conclusion is that how one decides upon continuity vs. change depends on the underlying narrative of nationhood with which one begins.
For most observers, the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States (US) came as a shock. This has been widely recast as the culmination of the American public's long-standing dissatisfaction with the political elite and deep-seated frustrations with broader socioeconomic conditions. We argue that the Trump campaign's success also stemmed from its effective use of an emotionally charged, anti-establishment crisis narrative. With insights from political psychology, we examine the socio-linguistic mechanisms that underlie the effectiveness of 'Trump-speak' through both quantitative and qualitative content analysis of Trump's communications toolkit during the 2016 US presidential election campaign. We show that his leadership legitimation claims rest significantly upon 'crisis talk' that puts his audience in a loss frame with nothing to lose and explain why 'crisis talk' impacts on political behaviour. As we demonstrate, the crisis stories that political agents tell simultaneously instil ontological insecurity among the American public and serve to transform their anxiety into confidence that the narrator's policy agendas are the route back to 'normality'. Through these rhetorical mechanisms, the Trump campaign manipulated individuals' ontological (in)security as a tool in the politics of reassurance at the broader, societal level.
Donald Trump assumed office in January 2017, committed to revamping US foreign policy and putting ‘America First’. The clear implication was that long-held international commitments would be sidelined where, in Trump’s view, the American interest was not being served. NATO, in the crosshairs of this approach, has managed to ride out much of the criticism Trump has levelled against it. Written off as ‘obsolete’ by the American president, it has fared better in the Trump era than many commentators had predicted. NATO exemplifies a tendency in US foreign policy, which pre-dates Trump, where open criticism stops short of abandonment. This pattern has continued since 2017 and indicates a preference for voice over exit. As such, it suggests that Trump’s foreign policy is not always as illogical as many have assumed. Logic is borne of institutional context: Trump has chosen to articulate voice where institutionalisation makes exit unviable. Institutional resilience in general and NATO’s case specifically has a wider relevance, both for transatlantic relations and international order.
In 2016, a wave of American populism triggered emotional reactions to issues like trade and immigration, and dramatically impacted the Obama administration’s plans to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) during President Obama’s final year in office. This article asks how do emotions infuse populism with political power, and why was populism effective in sparking American economic nationalism and retreat from free trade during the 2016 presidential campaign? Drawing on a psychoanalytic, narrative framework, the article argues that populist narratives deployed by US presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders characterized the American economy as a story of the people versus corrupt elites offering greater audience resonance that ultimately derailed President Obama’s plan to pass the TPP and ushered in an era of economic nationalism under President Trump. The article contributes to the literature on emotions and foreign policy and explores the under-studied emotional features of populism as a discursive narrative.
This article focuses on an area of study that may be called folk economics and that is currently not on the social science agenda. Folk economics has as its task to analyze and explain how people view the economy and how it works; what categories they use in doing so; and what effect this has on the economy and society. Existing studies in economics and sociology that are relevant to this type of study are presented and discussed. A theoretical framework for analyzing folk economic issues is suggested, centered on the distinction between episteme and doxa or between scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and everyday knowledge, on the other. This is then applied to an exploratory case study of the role that folk economics played in Trump’s presidential campaign. It is shown that Trump and his voters thought in a parallel way on key economic issues, especially protectionism.
The American electorate has grown increasingly divided along party lines in recent decades, by political attitudes, social values, basic demography, and even beliefs about reality. Deepening partisan divisions have inspired high levels of party-line voting and low levels of ticket splitting, resulting in thoroughly nationalized, president- and party-centered federal elections. Because of the way the electoral system aggregates votes, however, historically high levels of electoral coherence have delivered incoherent, divided government and policy stalemate. The 2016 nomination campaigns have exposed deep fissures within as well as between the parties, and their results threaten to shake up electoral patterns that have prevailed so far during this century, with uncertain and perhaps unpredictable consequences for national politics. The 2016 election is certain to polarize the electorate, but the axis of polarization may not fall so neatly along party lines as it has in recent years.
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.
Folk economics is the intuitive economics of untrained people. It is concerned with distribution, and does not allow for or understand incentives. Folk economic notions evolved in our ancestors in circumstances where there was little in the way of specialization, division of labor, capital investment, or economic growth. It can explain the beliefs of naive individuals regarding matters such as international trade, labor economics, law and economics, and industrial organization. It is important that voters understand economic principles. Economists would do a better job of persuading others and of teaching if we paid explicit attention to folk economics. Because untrained individuals do not fully understand gains from trade, training in economics is likely to improve welfare by increasing the number of trading opportunities. There is evidence that this is in fact true.
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 recent assassinations of General Soleimani and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh have renewed debates surrounding governments’ use of assassination. Some commentators have interpreted these episodes as an escalation in practices of “remote warfare.” Recently, the literature on remote warfare has expanded to include multiple activities at – and below – the threshold of war. From its original focus on geographical distance, “remoteness” now encompasses the “political” distance of deployments of force. In this understanding, “remoteness” has blurred the line separating the methods used to deploy force and the ways – overt or covert – in which they are deployed. Having highlighted the role of covertness, this article establishes that assassination should be included in the “remote warfare” canon. A study of the US government’s involvement in assassination permits us to elucidate the interplay between remoteness and covertness. The article shows that a deeper engagement with the assassination as a tool of US foreign policy provides two main advantages. First, it permits us to better historicise the “opacity” and “political distance” of practices associated with “remote warfare.” Second, it helps unveil the origins of the legal, political, and technological infrastructures that currently sustain much of the US government’s global “remote wars.”
The book explores the breakdown of the elite consensus on America's role in the world. By emphasising military restraint and 'leading from behind' President Obama challenged the Washington foreign policy establishment and its strategic vision of liberal hegemony from within.Highlighting the identity performing function and discursive construction of grand strategy, the book demonstrates how the geopolitical identity of American exceptionalism is linked to the conduct of an activist and interventionist foreign policy, resulting in a dominant grand strategy of American primacy and global military pre-eminence. An intertextual framework of analysis is used to examine the political performance and validity of this dominant identity-policy link, and the success of countering discourses of cooperative engagement and restraint under the Obama presidency. The nexus of geopolitical identity and national security is traced through a multidimensional perspective that considers the common sense status of popular culture and media, the expertise of Washington think tanks and foreign policy experts, and the political decisions taken in the White House and the Pentagon.From an in-depth analysis of various competing discourses of national security and foreign policy, the book concludes that American grand strategy under Obama no longer represented a coherent and consistent equation of material resources and political ends, but a contested discursive space, where identity and policy no longer matched. This resulted in the conflicted and contradictory nature of the Obama Doctrine.
What is the role of ‘populism’ in Donald Trump’s foreign policy? Defining populism as a framing style that constructs antagonisms around ‘the people’ and their adversaries, this article explores Trump’s rhetoric in relation to his efforts to shift US grand strategy away from its traditional investment in the liberal international order. Based on an approach grounded in the ontological commitments of critical discourse analysis, it examines three interlocking frames: (1) the ‘corrupt’ elites of the establishment ‘swamp’; (2) the anti-globalist, ‘America first’ agenda; and (3) poor deal-making responsible for the United States ‘losing’ in international affairs. In responding to declinist themes and anxieties, Trump’s populist rhetoric frames a Jacksonian ideological approach based on nationalism, mercantilism and a reliance on coercive power.
While partisanship has always been one of the largest factors accounting for public attitudes toward foreign policy, opinion dynamics about the Trump Doctrine largely mirror the hyper-partisanhip seen in domestic politics. Although broad inclinations regarding foreign policy (e.g., role of the United States in the world, importance of trade, multilateralism) appear not to have changed in a dramatic manner, attitudes regarding the highlighted aspects of the Trump Doctrine, such as immigration, China, and trade, have become more partisan. This chapter considers these issues in reference to attitudes on the role of the United States in the world, foreign policy goals and priorities, threats, means, and policies toward Iran, Russia, China, trade, and immigration. Given the hyper-partisan political discourse among leaders that tends to focus on issues that divide the public, continued partisan differences will likely to remain.
This special issue on elections, rhetoric, and American Foreign policy brings to light how and why ‘talk’ matters particularly in foreign policy. While not all of the articles examine President Trump directly, the special issue situates itself in what can be seen as a new era, brought on by Trump, that is, rewriting the rules of rhetoric and elections, and challenging our assumptions about how they impact American foreign policy. By way of conclusion, I summarize what I see as the key contributions of the special issue and offer a critical claim that the authors do not go far enough in just how dramatically President Trump’s rhetoric is reshaping American domestic and international politics.
Is there a left-wing foreign policy emerging in the United States? The rise of an energized and assertive left wing of the Democratic Party, and a receptive constituency within the electorate, has opened space for new political possibilities at home. In the foreign policy realm, leftist internationalism is making compelling arguments about new directions. However, there are limitations to the possible realization of a left-wing foreign policy in the US. While candidates like Sanders and Warren are distinctive in a left-wing foreign policy worldview, the practical implications of their foreign policies are consistent with post-Cold War practice. There are two important exceptions: in trade policy and in their positions on the use of military force. Here they mark a sharp break from the liberal internationalist mainstream. This paper outlines five broad principles of left internationalism, assesses the foreign policy positions of leading Democratic candidates for the 2020 nomination, and explores the long-term prospects of left-wing foreign policy in the US after 2020.
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.
Given US President Donald Trump’s uncertain commitment to Europe’s defence, calls for greater European strategic autonomy have grown louder. However, Benjamin Shreer argues that while the approach of Trump’s government is certainly complicating transatlantic security relations, the current arrangement for Europe’s defence – anchored on NATO for collective defence and complemented by EU military capabilities for limited out-of-area operations – is unlikely to change. A US withdrawal from NATO is equally doubtful, as is the prospect that European countries will become serious about developing strategic autonomy.
Cambridge Core - Social Psychology - White Identity Politics - by Ashley Jardina
Four schools: Hamiltonians (money), Wilson (morals), Jefferson (democracy fragile), jacksonians (ass kicking- no substitute for victory, as a folk community).
This article uses realism to explain past US grand strategy and prescribe what it should be today. Throughout its history, the United States has generally acted as realism depicts. The end of the Cold War reduced the structural constraints that states normally face in anarchy, and a bipartisan coalition of foreign policy elites attempted to use this favorable position to expand the US-led ‘liberal world order’. Their efforts mostly failed, however, and the United States should now return to a more realistic strategy – offshore balancing – that served it well in the past. Washington should rely on local allies to uphold the balance of power in Europe and the Middle East and focus on leading a balancing coalition in Asia. Unfortunately, President Donald Trump lacks the knowledge, competence, and character to pursue this sensible course, and his cavalier approach to foreign policy is likely to damage America’s international position significantly.
This paper contributes to the study of social change by considering boundary work as a dimension of cultural change. Drawing on the computer-assisted qualitative analysis of 73 formal speeches made by Donald Trump during the 2016 electoral campaign, we argue that his political rhetoric, which led to his presidential victory, addressed the white working classes' concern with their declining position in the national pecking order. He addressed their concern by raising the moral status of this group, that is, by 1) emphatically describing them as hard working Americans who are victims of globalization; 2) voicing their concerns about 'people above' (professionals, the rich, and politicians); 3) drawing strong moral boundaries toward undocumented immigrants, refugees and Muslims; 4) presenting African American and (legal) Hispanic Americans as workers who also deserve jobs; 5) stressing the role of working class men as protectors of women and LGBTQ people. This particular case study of cultural resonance provides a novel, distinctively sociological approach for capturing dynamics of social change.
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.
Foreward by Richard C. Leone Introduction 1. The American Foreign Policy Tradition 2. The Kaleidoscope of American Foreign Policy 3. Changing the Paradigms 4. The Serpent and the Dove: The Hamiltonian Way 5. The Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur: Wilsonianism and Its Mission 6. "Vindicator Only of Her Own": The Jeffersonian Tradition 7. Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright: The School of Andrew Jackson 8. The Rise and Retreat of the New World Order 9. The Future of American Foreign Policy
Merkel: Europe “can no longer rely on allies” After Trump and Brexit
- Bbc News
Major Trends in U.S. Counterterrorism Aid FY 2015-19. Security Assistance Monitor
- C Arabia
- C Goodman
Americans Want a Less Aggressive Foreign Policy. It’s Time Lawmakers Listened to Them
- I Bremmer
American Isolationism Just hit a 50-Year High. Why That Matters
- M Fisher