Content uploaded by Gustav Meibauer
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Gustav Meibauer on Nov 13, 2023
Content may be subject to copyright.
Introduction: Populism, Political Communication and Performative Leadership in International Politics
Abstract
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.
... Some studies have made first efforts at theorizing the impact of populism on conflict behavior, on the readiness to contribute to global governance, or on the processes of foreign policy decision making (Chryssogelos, 2017;Plagemann and Destradi, 2019;Wajner, 2021; see also ; and the recent edited volume by Giurlando & Wajner, 2023). Others have addressed issues like specific populist leaders' foreign policy role conceptions (Wehner & Thies, 2020) or their rhetoric and discourse on international matters (Lacatus et al., 2023; Cadier & Szulecki, 2020). Moreover, some studies have delved deeper into populists' attitudes towards specific actors or issues in international politics, including their skepticism of international courts and multilateralism (Voeten, 2020(Voeten, , 2021Copelovitch & Pevehouse, 2019) or their approach to international cooperation in the COVID-19 pandemic (Pevehouse, 2020). ...
Populism is often assumed to undermine the liberal world order, but this claim has never been tested systematically. In this study, we do so for the first time. Based on an understanding of populism as a “thin-centered ideology” entailing anti-elitism and people-centrism, we expect populist governments to have foreign policy preferences opposed to the core features of the US-led liberal international order. Our empirical analysis assesses government preferences on the liberal international order as expressed through UN General Assembly votes. Our findings support the expectation that populism has a strong and statistically significant negative impact on foreign policy preferences related to the core norms of the liberal international order. Moreover, we find that populists with a left-wing ideology and those in less democratic countries tend to be more opposed to the US-led liberal international order. However, populist governments do not reject the UNGA as such, as they are not more likely to be absent from UNGA votes than other states. Thereby, this study makes a contribution both to the burgeoning literature on the international implications of populism and to debates on the crisis of the liberal order.
... The study of domestic politics and international affairs has seen a surge in attention to both populism and China as subjects of study. This includes works on the 'China threat' narrative (Gries, 1999;Pan, 2004;Roy, 1996;Zakaria, 2020) and more recently research on the connection between international politics and populism (Bonansinga, 2022;Destradi et al., 2022;Lacatus and Meibauer, 2022;Lacatus et al., 2023). Yet in the IR disciplinary field, there has been a noteworthy absence of in-depth engagement with the China-as-enemy narrative in assessments of Trump's populism and how this shaped US foreign policy towards China (for notable exceptions, see Löfflmann, 2019Löfflmann, , 2022Marandici, 2023;Wojczewski, 2020b). ...
This article speaks to an established interest of International Relations scholars in the construction of the ‘China threat’ in US political discourse. We advance recent works which have argued that the rise of China has contributed to the success of populism in the United States and Western liberal democracies more widely. Specifically, we transpose the concept of the ‘populism of the privileged’ to the international realm to understand how narratives of status loss nurture perceptions of collective trauma and victimhood. We argue that the concept helps explain why Trump’s anti-China populism is centred on the counterintuitive articulation of an American underdog identity at the domestic and international levels. It sheds light on why populist narratives of unjust suffering have grip even if supporters stem from comparatively privileged groups. Victimhood-centric narratives are always relational and, as we show, the imaginary of lost status is a powerful device in the populist toolbox.
Philippine foreign policy under Rodrigo Duterte is notorious for its abrupt pivot to China and the unraveling of the country's longstanding alliance with the United States. His pronouncements have vividly reflected these to rationalize significant foreign policy recalibrations. It is from this understanding that this article seeks to explore the specific discourses that he has promoted in relation to China and the United States in pursuit of a coherent foreign policy logic for his administration. This article introduces victimhood as a framework to analyze Duterte's salient policy discourses and explores how these discourses influenced his administration's foreign policy behavior and informed his unique populist leadership. By invoking a discourse of suffering from past and present injustices, along with perceived insecurities arising from shifting power dynamics between the two major powers, Duterte constructed and internalized a victim identity for the Philippines, which has profoundly influenced the country's external relations during his tenure.
The connection between populism and foreign policy has received a lot of scholarly attention in recent years. Nevertheless, the nature and impact of populist discourse in an African setting is understudied. This chapter aims to expand our knowledge of populist communication and foreign policy in a competitive authoritarian context, offering an analysis of two Ugandan politicians—Bobi Wine and Yoweri Museveni—and their communication on Twitter before the January 2021 election. The analysis finds that, when it comes to their position on foreign policy, the two candidates use strategic electoral communication to position themselves in relation to the West, signalling a commitment to a strong linkage with the West and democratisation in the event of electoral victory. Museveni, the long-standing incumbent, uses populist tropes that brought him past political success to reinforce his regime, highlighting his government’s well-established linkage to Western donors and experienced conduct of a successful foreign policy based on foreign aid and economic development. Counter-candidate Wine is a contemporary populist who strongly opposes the decades-long regime, critiquing the Western support for Museveni’s presidency. By the same token, Wine promises a corruption-free linkage with the West and a truthful commitment to democratisation, if successfully elected.
The goal of this article is to explore the role of mobilization in the foreign policies of populists in power. To do so, we focus on the main features and changes of Bolivia’s foreign Policy under its populist president Evo Morales (2006-2019) with regard to its two most prominent conflictive bilateral relations, with the US and Chile. In both domains, Morales departed from the foreign policy of previous governments. By ending cooperation with the US, the Morales government sought to establish a sovereign counternarcotics policy in line with its core constituency’s demands of legalizing coca crops. On the key issue of relations with Chile seeking to negotiate a sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean, the Morales government exhibited more continuity initially. However, by referring the stalemated conflict to the International Court of Justice, Morales eventually changed his country’s approach to finding a resolution. Tracing Morales’ discourse over time reveals an intensification of populist as well as hostile rhetoric in periods of domestic political instability. Thus, our findings support the theoretical expectation of a particularly close link between domestic politics and foreign policy under populists in power. Thereby, populism may lead to a more conflictive foreign policy in some cases. However, neither does populist mobilization over foreign policy matters necessarily drive foreign policy change, nor does it preclude genuine bilateral dialogue.
The rise of populists to power in many states around the world has caused concern among defenders of multilateralism and the so-called liberal international order. Due to their frequent attacks on established international organizations (IOs), populists are often falsely portrayed as unilateralists. Our article addresses the apparent contradiction that populist leaders legitimate certain IOs while actively legitimating others and examines on what grounds they do so. The study focuses on three populist leaders from different continents: Viktor Orbán, Hugo Chávez and Rodrigo Duterte. These populist leaders have all adopted sovereignty-centred and identity-based frames for the (de)legitimation of IOs, which subvert conventional legitimation strategies based on liberal norms. We call these frames ‘representational’ because they critically ask on whose authority IOs speak, in whose interest they act, who they are made up of and what they stand for. By relying on conventional arguments about performance or fair procedure, stakeholders of established IOs have sidestepped more fundamental representational questions of sovereignty and identity. Instead of criticizing populists for being unilateralists (which they rarely are), they should meet the populist challenge by engaging in more fundamental debates over the very purpose and mandate of IOs.
This article investigates whether Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro extended demagoguery and populism into his foreign policy discourse. An analysis of 673 tweets indicates that demagoguery was more common (observed in 94 tweets) than populism (observed in 14 tweets). Bolsonaro adopted a Red Scare tactic, distorted information about the 2019 Amazon wildfires, spread rumours about COVID-19, and portrayed relations with the US during Trump’s administration and Israel during Netanyahu’s as panaceas. Findings suggest that demagoguery can ramify into foreign policy discourse, with a leader fitting distorted interpretations of foreign topics and actors into stories made for domestic consumption. Bolsonaro was cautious concerning relations with China though, indicating that international power politics and expected gains or losses from trade and investment may condition the scope of demagogical discourses. This article shows a conceptual gap in literature on foreign policy discourse, which a framework using the concept of demagoguery can, in part, fill.
As a consequence of its performative turn, the critical literature on populism has dedicated increasing attention to its sociocultural and stylistic features. Among the most prominent concepts underpinning this approach is the notion that populism relies on the “flaunting of the low” or the use of “bad manners.” This article engages in an extensive discussion of the way this concept is used in the literature and showcases its main limitations. In replacement, I then suggest the alternative concept of transgression, understood as the violation of a norm, which has the substantial advantages of being more flexible and versatile as well as less reliant on a normative binary. I then develop an associated typology of transgressive performances depending on which type of norms is being disrupted: transgressions of interactional norms, transgressions of rhetoric norms, and transgressions of theatrical norms. Following this, I showcase how this typology contributes to the IR literature by emphasizing the importance of agency and embodied performances in global politics. This article concludes on the potential of considering transgression beyond populism.
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.
The burgeoning research into the impact of populism on foreign policy mostly revolves around polarising chief executives, but has still paid little attention to the personality attributes characterising leading agents of populism such as Chávez, Erdoğan, or Trump. The paper therefore uses leadership trait analysis (LTA) to explore to what extent the thoughts and actions of populist foreign policy agency are rooted in particular individual predispositions. As a theoretical contribution, the conceptual tenets of the ideational and political-strategic approaches to populism are systematically connected to the personality traits contained in LTA. The developed expectations are empirically tested by profiling a sample of eight populist government leaders from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Overall mixed results indicate that conceptual distinctions between populist and non-populist leaders are not fully reflected at the personality level. Even so, some traits such as high self-confidence and high distrust of others could indeed provide fertile ‘individual ground’ for the observable impact of populism on foreign policy making.
Populism is a powerful social force that has reshaped the political landscapes of many nations since the turn of the 21st century. Much of the success of populist movements is attributed to various social crises and a deep dissatisfaction with political systems. In the present issue, we sought to find papers that investigate what drives the demand for populist politics during crises on a psychological level and, correspondingly, how populist rhetoric influences the way individuals think about, and respond, to crises. In this editorial, we introduce a multidisciplinary issue and summarize the key themes stemming from the articles included. The contributions addressed various forms of crises; from identity issues to global transformations, and various aspects of populism; from the antiestablishment attitudes of the public, to the populist rhetoric of political actors. There was also a key theme centered on the role of emotions. We believe that these topics are of great interest to political psychologists of any mold. We hope that this special issue can play a part in increasing our understanding of how populism thrives during crises and in driving future research on this topic.
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.
Populist rhetoric is often portrayed as deeply emotional, aimed at provoking gut‐level, affective responses. It clearly enthuses some voters, while other voters clearly resent it. Yet we know very little about the affective responses that populist rhetoric actually evokes. For whom is populist rhetoric, particularly its antiestablishment component, arousing, and who has positive or negative affective responses? To analyze this, we study affective responses to antiestablishment and proestablishment rhetoric. We follow the circumplex model and conceptualize affective responses as arousal (measured with skin‐conductance levels) and valence (measured with facial electromyography [fEMG]). We use data (N = 343) collected at different sites (a music festival, the university lab, a religious gathering, a biker festival, a museum, and a fair) and our analyses are based on a preregistered analysis plan. We find no overall differences in affective responses to antiestablishment versus proestablishment rhetoric. We do find, however, that affective responses are conditional on vote choice and education level. Specifically, the lower educated respond with more arousal, and those who vote for the populist radical right also respond with more negative valence. These effects only manifest themselves vis‐à‐vis proestablishment rhetoric and, hence, suggest an incongruency effect. This raises the question of what constitutes the populist counterframe.