Populist Conceptions of World Order and the International: How Populists See the World
One of the main contentions in the literature on the international implications of populism is that the formation of populist governments constitutes a serious challenge to the so-called liberal world order. Most studies making this claim argue that the rise to power of Donald Trump in the US and the Brexit campaign were clear indicators of an erosion of the liberal order ‘from within’, that is, from the very countries that promoted and shaped such order over the past decades. While there are indeed good reasons to see populism as fundamentally contrasting to liberalism, there is still relatively little research on how populists conceive of world order and of the international, and even less on how populist understandings of the international have contributed to their success. There is also little research on how the international manifestations of populism and its potential inter- or transnational understandings of the people and the elite require a rethinking on the very concept of populism. In other words: is there anything like a genuinely ‘populist’ way of seeing the world? How do understandings of ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ translate into conceptions of world order? And what are the central norms emphasized by populist actors – is it all just about sovereignty or are there other important driving principles? What is different about the sources of populism in the international vis- à-vis its domestic dimensions? And what do we learn from the international dimensions of populism that might induce us to rethink or refine existing understanding of populism? Besides conceptions of world order, this WP will also take into account how populists see and delimit the scope and practices of foreign policy within regional orders (this will lead to synergies with WP3). Thus, research projects in this WP can also address the interplay of international and regional orders and how populists conceive of them. This will have substantial implications for populists’ engagement in global governance and multilateralism (see WP2). Additionally, the questioning and characterizations of populism through its international expressions will also lead to a better nexus with its domestic understanding and manifestation and thus will produce key synergies with WP4 of this project. We will also take into account how populist representations of the international are gendered, e.g. the use of imaginaries of vulnerable white femininity threatened by racialized others in right-wing populist discourses on migration.