The effects of global populism: assessing the populist impact on international affairs

Wajner, Daniel F.; Destradi, Sandra; Zürn, Michael Article — Published Version The effects of global populism: assessing the populist impact on international affairs International Affairs Provided in Cooperation with: WZB Berlin Social Science Center Suggested Citation: Wajner, Daniel F.; Destradi, Sandra; Zürn, Michael (2024) : The effects of global populism: assessing the populist impact on international affairs, International Affairs, ISSN 1468-2346, Oxford University Press, Oxford, Vol. 100, Iss. 5, pp. 1819-1833, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae217 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/310965 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. 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WAJNER, SANDRA DESTRADI AND MICHAEL ZÜRN* International Affairs 100: 5 (2024) 1819–1833; doi: 10.1093/ia/iiae217 © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Over the past decade, contemporary politics has gradually entered an era of global populism. Although populist phenomena have been examined in the social sciences for more than a century, it is only recently that populist leaders have simultaneously formed governments in such a wide range of countries, in both the global North and the global South. Moreover, the 2016Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and the political attention garnered by new types of populist parties and movements in Europe, the Americas, and Asia bear witness to claims of an emerging ‘global rise of populism’.1 At the same time as there has been renewed interest in the domestic drivers of populists’ success and their consequences for national societies, a growing number of studies have addressed the international dimensions of populism,2 focusing on issues like the international components of populist discourse and performance,3 or collecting rich empirical evidence of populist foreign policy in single cases.4 In * This article serves as an introduction to a special section in the September2024 issue of International Affairs on ‘The effects of global populism’, guest-edited by DanielF. Wajner and Sandra Destradi. This research was financially supported by the Israel Science Foundation, grant No. 2450/22 (Daniel F. Wajner) and by the German Research Foundation, grant No. DFG-DE 1918/3-1 (Sandra Destradi). 1 Carlos de la Torre, ed., Routledge handbook of global populism (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2018); RonaldF. Inglehart and Pippa Norris, Trump, Brexit, and the rise of populism: economic have-nots and cultural backlash, Working Paper No.RWP16-026 (Cambridge,MA: JohnF. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2016); Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How democracies die (New York: Crown, 2018); Benjamin Moffitt, The global rise of populism: performance, political style, and representation (Redwood City,CA: Stanford University Press, 2016). 2 See Sandra Destradi, David Cadier and Johannes Plagemann, ‘Populism and foreign policy: a research agenda (introduction)’, Comparative European Politics, vol.19, 2021, pp. 663–82, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-02100255-4; Philip Giurlando and DanielF. Wajner, eds, Populist foreign policy: regional perspectives of populism in the international scene (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2023); Georg Löfflmann, ‘Introduction to special issue: the study of populism in International Relations’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 24:3, 2022, pp.403–15, https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481221103116; FrankA. Stengel, DavidB. MacDonald and Dirk Nabers, eds, Populism and world politics: exploring interand transnational dimensions (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019). 3 Angelos Chryssogelos, ‘State transformation and populism: from the internationalized to the neo-sovereign state?’, Politics 40: 1, 2020, pp. 22–37, https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395718803830; Daniel F. Wajner, ‘The populist way out: why contemporary populist leaders seek transnational legitimation’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 24:3, 2022, pp.416–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211069345; Michael Zürn, ‘How non-majoritarian institutions make silent majorities vocal: a political explanation of authoritarian populism’, Perspectives on Politics 20:3, 2022, pp.788–807, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592721001043. 4 See ErinK. Jenne, ‘Populism, nationalism and revisionist foreign policy’, International Affairs 97:2, 2021, pp.323–43, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiaa230; Feliciano de Sá Guimarães and Irma Dutra de Oliveira e Silva, ‘Far-right populism and foreign policy identity: Jair Bolsonaro’s ultra-conservatism and the new politics of alignment’, International Affairs 97: 2, 2021, pp.345–63, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiaa220; Sandra Destradi INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1819INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1819 8/29/24 9:49 AM8/29/24 9:49 AM DanielF. Wajner, Sandra Destradi and Michael Zürn 1820 International Affairs 100: 5, 2024 parallel, the issue of populism has been raised in debates about the contestations to the ‘liberal script’ and the crisis of the liberal international order (LIO),5 drawing attention to how populists have been trying to hollow out such order from within and have been promoting illiberal alternatives.6 So far, however, this thriving new research area has produced somewhat scattered findings, pointing to populism’s various effects on international politics, but without convincingly explaining the reasons for the observable variations. Foreign and security policies differ between different populist governments, and so do the implications of populism for global cooperation and regional integration. In other words, we still lack a systematic and theory-led understanding of the different impacts of populism on foreign policy and international order. This special section of International Affairs aims to bridge these theoretical and empirical gaps by systematically examining three types of international effects that populism has on politics, policies and polities. The evidence presented in the contributions which make up this section is geographically diverse and thereby does justice to the global character of populism. In the remainder of this introduction, we propose a theoretical framework that helps us make sense of variations in populists’ foreign policies and in the approach of populists to international institutions. We then summarize the findings of the contributing articles, and we conclude by discussing their policy-related implications as well as identifying remaining unanswered questions and avenues for further research. Variants of populism and their international effects The literature on populism from comparative politics and political theory offers several different understandings of and approaches to populism. Some scholars see it as a strategy for the acquisition and subsequent maintenance of power.7 and Johannes Plagemann, ‘Populism and International Relations: (un)predictability, personalisation, and the reinforcement of existing trends in world politics’, Review of International Studies 45:5, 2019, pp.711–30, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210519000184; Bertjan Verbeek and Andrej Zaslove, ‘Populism and foreign policy’, in Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser et al., eds, The Oxford handbook of populism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp.384–405; Erik Voeten, ‘Populism and backlashes against international courts’, Perspectives on Politics 18:2, 2020, pp.407–22, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592719000975; DanielF. Wajner, ‘Exploring the foreign policies of populist governments: (Latin) America first’, Journal of International Relations and Development, vol.24, 2021, pp.651–80, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-020-00206-8; LeslieE. Wehner and CameronG. Thies, ‘The nexus of populism and foreign policy: the case of Latin America’, International Relations 35:2, 2021, pp.320–40, https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117820944430. 5 Emanuel Adler and Alena Drieschova, ‘The epistemological challenge of truth subversion to the liberal international order’, International Organization 75:2, 2021, pp.359–86, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818320000533; Francis Fukuyama, ‘The populist surge’, The American Interest 13:4, 2018; G.John Ikenberry, ‘The end of liberal international order?’, International Affairs 94:1, 2018, pp.7–23, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iix241; Markus Kornprobst and T.V. Paul, ‘Globalization, deglobalization and the liberal international order’, International Affairs 97:5, 2021, pp.1305–16, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiab120; Benjamin Miller, ‘How “making the world in its own liberal image” made the West less liberal’, International Affairs 97:5, 2021, pp.1353–75, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiab114; DavidA. Lake, LisaL. Martin and Thomas Risse, ‘Challenges to the liberal order: reflections on International Organization’, International Organization 75:2, 2021, pp.225–7, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818320000636. 6 TanjaA. Börzel and Michael Zürn, ‘Contestations of the liberal international order: from liberal multilateralism to postnational liberalism’, International Organization 75:2, 2021, pp.282–305, https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0020818320000570; Fredrik Söderbaum, Kilian Spandler and Agnese Pacciardi, Contestations of the liberal international order: a populist script of regional cooperation (Cambridge,UK: Cambridge University Press, 2021). 7 Kurt Weyland, ‘A political-strategic approach’, in Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser et al., eds, The Oxford handbook INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1820INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1820 8/29/24 9:49 AM8/29/24 9:49 AM The effects of global populism 1821 International Affairs 100: 5, 2024 Others focus more on its discursive aspects, as with the Laclauian approach, which addresses populism as a political logic or a ‘logic of articulation’ that simplifies the political space by creating a dichotomy between the ‘people’ and a power bloc.8 Research is also paying increasing attention to the stylistic aspects of populism, focusing on the performative role of leadership, communication practices and emotions in attracting audiences and followers.9 Recent years have also witnessed the development of new, still understudied approaches to the study of populism, such as intersectional and gender approaches.10 Over time, the ideational approach, which suggests studying populism as an ideology, became dominant.11 In particular, the idea of populism as a thin ideology that is usually combined with thicker host ideologies plays a key role in the analysis of contemporary populism.12 Such a thin ideology ‘considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and …argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people’.13 Assessing the effect of populism on foreign policy and international institutions depends on such conceptual decisions. For instance, adopting a Laclauian discursive approach to populism makes it hard to expect a high degree of foreign policy commonality between different populist leaderships.14 Since a Laclauian approach separates populism sharply from nationalism, authoritarianism and anti-pluralism, a broad set of quite different actors come into focus, thus affecting the identification of their impact. Similarly, the strategic approach and a slim ideational approach are open to a wide array of different ‘host ideologies’, making it unlikely that different populist movements will consistently display an identical foreign policy.15 Against this background, we use the concept of authoritarian populism as a more or less thick ideology to provide a substantial reference-point for our theoretical of populism, pp.48–72. 8 Ernesto Laclau, On populist reason (London: Verso, 2005), p.44. 9 See Moffitt, The global rise of populism. 10 See for example Gabriele Dietze and Julia Roth, ‘Right-wing populism and gender: a preliminary cartography of an emergent research field’, in Gabriele Dietze and Julia Roth, eds, Right-wing populism and gender: European perspectives and beyond (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2020); Shweta Singh and Élise Féron, ‘Towards an intersectional approach to populism: comparative perspectives from Finland and India’, Contemporary Politics 27:5, 2021, pp.528–49, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569775.2021.1917164. 11 See KirkA. Hawkins and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, ‘The ideational approach to populism’, Latin American Research Review 52:4, 2017, pp.513–28, https://doi.org/10.25222/larr.85; KirkA. Hawkins et al., eds, The ideational approach to populism: concept, theory, and analysis (London and New York: Routledge, 2018). 12 Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: a very short introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). 13 Cas Mudde, ‘The populist Zeitgeist’, Government and Opposition 39:4, 2004, pp.541–63 at p.543, https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x. 14 See in this regard two specific contributions to this special section: Emmy Eklundh, Frank Stengel and Thorsten Wojczewski, ‘Left populism and foreign policy: Bernie Sanders and Podemos’, International Affairs 100:5, 2024, pp.1899–1918, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae137; and Rubrick Biegon and Soraya Hamdaoui, ‘Antipopulism and the Trump trauma in US foreign policy’, International Affairs 100:5, 2024, pp. 1857–75, https:// doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae174. 15 Here, see Michael I. Magcamit and Aries A. Arugay, ‘Explaining populist securitization and Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-establishment Philippine foreign policy’, International Affairs 100:5, 2024, pp. 877–97, https:// doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad248; and Monika Brusenbauch Meislová and Angelos Chryssogelos, ‘The ambiguous impact of populist trade discourses on the international economic order’, International Affairs 100:5, 2024, pp.1941–57, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad296. INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1821INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1821 8/29/24 9:49 AM8/29/24 9:49 AM DanielF. Wajner, Sandra Destradi and Michael Zürn 1822 International Affairs 100: 5, 2024 expectations and still allow for variation in the populism under question. We thus differentiate populists by focusing on how authoritarian they are. This choice is based on the observation that in the current wave of populism, the thin ideology of anti-elitism and people-centrism is mostly—but not always—combined with ideological traits that are characteristic of the authoritarian or communitarian pole of a new cleavage in modern societies.16 In this view, ‘authoritarian populism’ is driving the current wave of populism and contains a much thicker ideology. It is mainly driven by widespread distrust in politics and political parties that has built up from the 1960s onwards, as well as by dissatisfaction with the liberal policies promoted by non-majoritarian institutions like central banks, constitutional courts and international organizations. Authoritarian populism combines anti-elitism and people-centrism, the constitutive components of populist thincentred ideology, with nationalism, majoritarianism and decisionism.17 This understanding of authoritarian populism includes populists such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, as well as some leaders of leftist parties in western Europe with a strong exclusionary programme. There are, however, some parties and programmes on the left that may build on populist discourse, performance and style but can hardly be described as authoritarian populists in ideational terms.18 That said, our focus on authoritarian populists does not exclude other populists from our study on the international effects of this phenomenon. Instead, we look at the variety of populisms in recent times by taking fully authoritarian populists as the highest value of a continuous variable. Our basic expectation is that this variation leads to differences in foreign policy, its related decision-making and its impact on the international order. Such an approach also allows us to look at variation over time. While populists claim the need to hear the people (instead of the elites), authoritarian populism in power goes hand in hand with the weakening of democratic institutions. We can thus expect populist leaderships with longstanding governmental functions to become increasingly authoritarian over time. Authoritarian populists may evolve from a social movement to a party competing for power, or from a party to a government that aims at undermining the liberal principles on which democracy depends and—in the most extreme case—from such a government to an authoritarian regime.19 Indeed, in the long run, populist governments are more likely to reshape democratic institutions by undermining the separation of powers, making 16 Nadia Urbinati, ‘Political theory of populism’, Annual Review of Political Science, vol.22, 2019, pp.111–27, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050317-070753; Inglehart and Norris, ‘Trump, Brexit, and the rise of populism’; Armin Schäfer and Michael Zürn, The democratic regression: the political causes of authoritarian populism (Cambridge,UK: Polity, 2023). 17 Zürn, ‘How non-majoritarian institutions make silent majorities vocal’. 18 This nuance is incorporated in some of the articles in this special section. Podemos, discussed in Eklundh et al., ‘Left populism and foreign policy’, may be such a case, as may Syriza in Philip Giurlando and Carla Monteleone, ‘Institutional change, sovereigntist contestation and the limits of populism: evidence from southern Europe’, International Affairs 100: 5, 2024, pp. 2047–67, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae058; and Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Déborah Barros Leal Farias, Guilherme Casarões and DanielF. Wajner, ‘Populist international (dis)order? Lessons from world order visions in Latin American populism’, International Affairs 100:5, 2024, pp.2003–24, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae179. 19 See also Andrew Arato and JeanL. Cohen, Populism and civil society: the challenge to constitutional democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1822INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1822 8/29/24 9:49 AM8/29/24 9:49 AM The effects of global populism 1823 International Affairs 100: 5, 2024 all institutions pliable to their will, infiltrating them with loyalists and political appointees by increasingly controlling the media and, ultimately, by suppressing opposition forces.20 From this perspective, populism—a genuinely democratic phenomenon per se—is often considered to promote democratic backsliding and to have the potential to transform into authoritarianism over time.21 This all concurs with the centralization and personalization of political power, derived from populists’ peculiar understanding of representation as ‘embodiment’ of the popular will,22 as well as with the anti-pluralism that emerges from populists’ claim of being the only possible representatives of the ‘true people’.23 This implies that the effects of populism vary not only across different types, but also over time. In other words, this study draws on the understanding that the longer authoritarian populists stay in power, the more we would expect an effect not only on domestic politics, but also on foreign policy. Certainly, we must recognize that not all populists espouse ethnonationalist ideologies or have hollowed out decision-making procedures and democratic institutions to the same extent. We can expect the authoritarian component of populism to be more or less pronounced, depending on a series of exogenous and endogenous conditions that may constrain these authoritarian patterns. This also relates to populists’ duration in office: the weakening of democratic institutions does not happen overnight, and democratic backsliding under populist governments will play out more intensely as time passes, modifying the pre-existing checks and balances.24 Expectations about the international impact of populism This leaves us, therefore, with a key question, namely: how does populism, in its more or less authoritarian variants, affect foreign policy and international politics over time? In the following, we develop a set of expectations that serves as an overarching framework for the analysis of the international effects of populism in the contributions to this special section. We employ three broad expectations that will guide the analysis in those articles, according to the three groups of effects mentioned above (politics, policies and international polities). Expectation 1: All populists in power will change the processes of foreign policy decisionmaking, aiming at centralizing and personalizing foreign policy to some degree. The effect increases with authoritarian populists and over time. 20 Urbinati, ‘Political theory of populism’; Jan-Werner Müller, What is populism? (London: Penguin, 2017); Anna Grzymala-Busse, ‘Conclusion: the global forces of populism’, Polity 51:4, 2019, pp.718–23, https://doi. org/10.1086/705322; Kim Lane Scheppele, ‘Autocratic legalism’, University of Chicago Law Review 85:2, 2018, pp.545–84. 21 TakisS. Pappas, Populism and liberal democracy: a comparative and theoretical analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Kurt Weyland, ‘Latin America’s authoritarian drift: the threat from the populist left’, Journal of Democracy 24:3, 2013, pp.18–32, https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2013.0045. 22 Urbinati, ‘Political theory of populism’. 23 Müller, What is populism?. 24 Pappas, Populism and liberal democracy, Levitsky and Ziblatt, How democracies die. INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1823INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1823 8/29/24 9:49 AM8/29/24 9:49 AM DanielF. Wajner, Sandra Destradi and Michael Zürn 1824 International Affairs 100: 5, 2024 This expectation concerns the politics dimension outlined above. Being anti-elitist by definition, all populists will be extremely sceptical of traditional foreign policy elites, most notably diplomats. They will therefore tend to marginalize foreign ministries, diplomatic echelons and expert advisers.25 Given populist leaders’ claim to embody the popular will, foreign policy will also become more personalized. The populist leader and their inner circle (often with familial ties) is more often at the helm of both the country’s private and public diplomacy, which includes fostering the cult of leadership among regional and global audiences and patron– client relations with transnational networks.26 Both centralization and personalization can be expected to intensify as populist governments become more authoritarian—indeed, decisionism entails the notion that there is no need for political procedures and deliberations. Highly authoritarian populist governments will strongly rely on leader-level meetings and decisions in their foreign policy, entirely sidelining conventional bureaucratic procedures. Since they put emphasis on direct representation by populist leaders,27 they can also be expected to avoid the participation of transnational civil society in the processes of formulating and implementing foreign policy. Furthermore, other governments that interact with populists in power—and especially with authoritarian populists, who are internationally perceived as muscular, proactive and successful—are more likely to end up adapting to such changed diplomatic practices after learning from the legitimation gains of their international performances.28 We, therefore, expect all populist governments to centralize and personalize foreign policy decision-making, and to do so in more extreme ways according to how authoritarian the populist government is. Expectation 2: All populists in power will tend to emphasize national sovereignty in foreign policy. The effect increases with authoritarian populists and over time. This expectation focuses on the dimension of policies: that is, on the introduction of actual changes in the foreign policy course of a country under populists in power. Generally speaking, populists will claim to govern for the ‘people’ narrowly defined and to be the only defenders of the good and virtuous ‘will of the people’.29 This will contribute to inducing them to put great emphasis on the notion of popular sovereignty;30 but they will possibly also be less amenable to cooperating in international negotiations and seeking a compromise in international disputes as compared to non-populist governments, given their tendency to see the world in dualistic, Manichean terms.31 25 Destradi and Plagemann, ‘Populism and IR’; Christian Lequesne, ‘Populist governments and career diplomats in the EU: the challenge of political capture’, Comparative European Politics, vol.19, 2021, pp.779–95, https:// doi.org/10.1057/s41295-021-00261-6. 26 Wajner, ‘Exploring the foreign policies of populist governments’, pp.660–63. 27 See Zürn, ‘How non-majoritarian institutions make silent majorities vocal’. 28 Wajner, ‘The populist way out’, p.429. 29 Müller, What is populism?, p.3. 30 See Thorsten Wojczewski, The inter-and transnational politics of populism: foreign policy, identity and popular sovereignty (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023); Corina Lacatus, Gustav Meibauer and Georg Löfflmann, eds, Political communication and performative leadership: populism in international politics (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2023). 31 Hawkins and Rovira Kaltwasser, ‘The ideational approach to populism’, p.516. INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1824INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1824 8/29/24 9:49 AM8/29/24 9:49 AM The effects of global populism 1825 International Affairs 100: 5, 2024 At the same time, existing research on foreign policy implementation among populist governments has revealed a gap between discourse and policy and a corresponding coexistence of confrontational rhetoric and pragmatism in populists’ policy-making in fields such as security, finance and trade.32 According to Andrew Moravcsik, despite their deep criticism of the current international order most right-wing populist parties in Europe may be ‘more bark than bite’ in terms of foreign policy, while liberal democratic societies show more resilience in confronting such populist challenges than previously thought.33 Thick ideologies are particularly important in explaining these variations.34 While the core populist categories of ‘people’ and ‘elites’ are, as empty signifiers, extremely vague and malleable (and therefore functional for political pragmatism), the overlap with other categories that originate in thick ideologies (usually grounded on ethnicity, religion, class, and so on) provide more rigid boundaries for the definition of the ‘people’. In other words, the thick ideologies that are combined with populism help populists specify and define who belongs to the ‘people’ and who constitutes the ‘elite’. Thus, left-wing populists will consider the ‘people’ to encompass the working classes and marginalized social groups, while ethnonationalist populists will define the ‘people’ as the members of an ethnic majority (e.g. Hindus in the case of Hindu nationalists in India). This can be expected to have implications for the content of foreign policies. Given the precise features of authoritarian populism, the more authoritarian a populist government is, the more it will be sceptical of any limitation to national sovereignty, whether internal or external. Ethnonationalism and majoritarianism, related to the claim that the people are always right, will also have implications for populists’ approach towards international responsibility: the more authoritarian a populist government, the more it will be inclined to deny historical responsibilities, for example concerning climate change or historical wrongdoing. Ethnonationalist thick ideology, which at the domestic level leads to the exclusion of minorities not belonging to the ‘true people’, will lead to a more restrictive migration policy.35 Moreover, the notion that the people’s will corresponds to that of a silent majority constrained by individual and minority rights can be expected to lead to a rejection of human rights and international law.36 32 See Destradi and Plagemann, ‘Populism and IR’, pp.717–23; Stephan Fouquet and Klaus Brummer, ‘Profiling the personality of populist foreign policy makers: a leadership trait analysis,’ Journal of International Relations and Development, vol.26, 2023, pp.1–29, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-022-00270-2; Amy Skonieczny, ‘Emotions and political narratives: populism, Trump and trade’, Politics and Governance 6:4, 2018, pp.62–72, https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v6i4.1574; DanielF. Wajner and Philip Giurlando, ‘Introduction to populist foreign policy (PFP)’, in Giurlando and Wajner, Populist foreign policy, pp.1–35 at pp.2–4. 33 Andrew Moravcsik, ‘More bark than bite? The effect of extreme-right parties on foreign policy’, American Academy Lecture at Freie Universität Berlin, 11December 2023. 34 Verbeek and Zaslove, ‘Populism and foreign policy’; Destradi and Plagemann, ‘Populism and IR’, pp.712–14. 35 See for example Philipp Lutz, ‘Variation in policy success: radical right populism and migration policy’, West European Politics 42:3, 2019, pp.517–44, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2018.1504509; Alexander Rossell Hayes and Carolyn Marie Dudek, ‘How radical right-wing populism has shaped recent migration policy in Austria and Germany’, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 18:2, 2020, pp.133–50, https://doi.org/10.1080/1 5562948.2019.1587130. 36 In this special section, this is discussed in particular in the article by Monika Barthwal-Datta and Shweta Singh (‘Populism and foreign policy: India’s refugee policy towards the Rohingya’, International Affairs 100:5, 2024, pp.1983–2002, https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiae173); and that by Barros Leal Farias and colleagues. INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1825INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1825 8/29/24 9:49 AM8/29/24 9:49 AM DanielF. Wajner, Sandra Destradi and Michael Zürn 1826 International Affairs 100: 5, 2024 Even among populist leaders who initially pursue pragmatic policies, the hardening of authoritarian practices after long periods in power can be expected to concur with a radicalization in their foreign policies across multiple thematic areas: in other words, revisionism.37 The combination of ethnonational, majoritarian and decisionist beliefs with self-assigned roles as leaders of civilizational clashes, along with nostalgic claims of ‘restoration’ of an imperial past and a declared preference for radical revolutionary ends, makes authoritarian populists more likely to distance themselves from the policies of previous governments in fields such as security, trade, human rights, international aid or the environment.38 Expectation 3: Populists will increasingly tend to contest international institutions and the liberal international order the more power they gain and the more authoritarian they become. When it comes to the impact of populism on states’ foreign policy stances towards international institutions (the international polity dimension), we expect that it will be mainly the current authoritarian wave of populism which is detrimental to multilateralism in the long term. Generally speaking, we expect authoritarian populists to be increasingly sceptical of and vocal against international institutions, which, like intermediate institutions at the domestic level, are considered to stand between the leader and the people.39 Particularly where a high degree of authority has already been ceded to international institutions, as in the case of global governance institutions and regional organizations with supranational powers, populists will use the issue for politicization and mobilization.40 Indeed, the perceived increasing influence of ‘international bureaucracies’ is often considered a driver of the emergence of authoritarian populism,41 as these bureaucracies are seen as transnational elites detached from the needs of the people.42 At the same time, authoritarian populists are identified as being particularly averse to those institutions that embody the core values of the LIO.43 Contemporary authoritarian populist leaderships, nevertheless, have shown a greater tendency not only to erode and delegitimize existing international institutions, but also to recreate and legitimize ‘alternative’ institutions that better fit their identities, interests and ideas.44 In this sense, we also expect that the more 37 See Jenne, ‘Populism, nationalism and revisionist foreign policy’, pp.329–32; DanielW. Drezner, RonaldR. Krebs and Randall Schweller, ‘The end of grand strategy: America must think small’, Foreign Affairs 99:3, 2020, pp. 107–17, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/2020-04-13/end-grand-strategy. (Unless otherwise noted at point of citation, all URLs cited in this article were accessible on 23July 2024.). 38 See Rogers Brubaker, ‘Between nationalism and civilizationism: the European populist moment in comparative perspective’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 40:8, 2017, pp.1191–1226, https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2017.1 294700; Jelena Subotić, ‘Antisemitism in the global populist international’, The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 24:3, 2022, pp.458–74, https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211066970; Ihsan Yilmaz and Nicholas Morieson, Religions and the global rise of civilizational populism (Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). 39 Johannes Plagemann and Sandra Destradi, ‘Populism and foreign policy: the case of India’, Foreign Policy Analysis 15:2, 2019, pp.283–301 at p.287, https://doi.org/10.1093/fpa/ory010. 40 See Michael Zürn, A theory of global governance: authority, legitimacy, and contestation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp.137–67. 41 Michael Zürn, ‘Global governance and legitimacy problems’, Government and Opposition 39:2, 2004, pp.260–87 at p.285, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00123.x. 42 Destradi and Plagemann, ‘Populism and IR’, p.710. 43 Söderbaum, Spandler and Pacciardi, Contestations of the liberal international order. 44 DanielF. Wajner and Luis Roniger, ‘Populism and transnational projection: the legitimation strategies of Pink INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1826INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1826 8/29/24 9:49 AM8/29/24 9:49 AM The effects of global populism 1833 International Affairs 100: 5, 2024 for some years after the First World War were increasingly challenged. The foreign policies of the fascist and communist challengers of that period may also point to some significant similarities to today’s foreign policies; for instance, the deepening of transnational solidarities and emotional polarization in international interactions. A careful historical comparison would allow us to understand the current wave of populism better, in terms of its historical meaning, and would also allow for long-term lessons that may guide contemporary responses to the current populist challenge. INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1833INTA100_5_FullIssue.indb 1833 8/29/24 9:49 AM8/29/24 9:49 AM