Leaders, Parties, and Bureaucracies: How Populism Impacts Foreign Policies and Diplomatic Practice
This work package explores and theorizes the diplomatic international dimensions of populism and studies the impact of populism on foreign policy by focusing on specific actors within the state. It thereby draws on insights from the fields of foreign policy analysis, political psychology, studies of diplomacy, and sociology of elites. So far, we know that populist foreign policy making is often more centralized and more personalized as compared to decision making under non-populist democratic governments. Indeed, populist leaders have usually been associated with charismatic leadership. In addition, existing works in political psychology have emphasized that populist leaders have some special personal characteristics that make them different from conventional leaders. Yet, we still do not know much about what is peculiar of populist leaders’ foreign policy making. We also need to gain more systematic knowledge about gendered components of personalistic populist leadership, with populist leaders frequently emphasizing masculine traits as an element underscoring leadership claims. At the same time, in several cases populist leadership is embedded in strong political parties, that is, populist leaders can rely on an institutionalized party structure and are deeply bound to the ‘thick’ ideologies of their parties and their traditional foreign policy positions. The political strategy of centralization of foreign policy making under populist governments is also accompanied by conflicts between foreign policy elites (bureaucracies, and diplomats) and populist leaders. Indeed, populists can be expected to be sceptical of diplomats as by definition: diplomats are the elite in charge of foreign policy, far removed from the ‘common people’. This will lead populist governments to weaken and sideline foreign ministries, thereby potentially reconfiguring the very processes of foreign policy making. We can also expect populists to translate their policies of exclusion of specific minorities as well as their skepticism of gender-equality policies into their efforts to re-shape bureaucracies, for examples via changes of recruitment procedures like the abolition of quotas or affirmative-action programs.
This WP delves deep into populist foreign policy making, focusing on individual leaders, parties, and bureaucracies, both from an empirical and a theoretical perspective. It relates to WP1 as leaders’ and parties’ understandings of the international contribute to shaping their foreign policy practice. It also speaks to WP2 since the processes of foreign policy making will contribute to determining populist governments’ positioning in international institutions.