Populism, foreign policy and FPA theorizing: The way forward

Populism is now a truly global phenomenon, having an immediate impact on international politics. Under populist leadership, for example the US has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and put significant pressure on the NATO alliance. Similarly, decision-making within the EU has become increasingly difficult as a result of populist parties rising to power in Hungary and Poland. To date, the study of the effect of populism on international politics has been limited to the (exploratory) empirical examination of particular populist regimes, mostly through general case studies based on data from existing scholarship. These studies categorize different types of populist parties, establish examples of the impact of specific populist regimes on foreign policy, and identify hypotheses for the impact of populism on foreign policy. Other studies focus on identifying what is uniquely ‘populist’ about these actors. Within this last category, scholars are working specifically on distinguishing between nationalist and populist discourse, often employed by the same actors. These studies approach the issue from either an ad hoc or an exploratory angle, lacking a solid theoretical foundation. To gain a broader perspective on the structural impact of populism on international politics, I argue that the application of insights from established IR and FPA theory is required. In this article, I fill this gap by providing a structured analysis of the current state of the field, which results in a research agenda. I apply the insights from different strands of IR and FPA theorizing to the study of the impact of populism on foreign policy. Exploring what these theories can offer, the article identifies new directions for the field, and illustrates the usefulness of these directions with empirical examples. This article uses a mixed-methods approach. A quantitative analysis of the field will be used to show (a) to what extent populism and FP scholars engage with existing IR and FPA literature and (b) to produce a categorization of the publications in the field so far (for instance by their conceptions of populism, geographical focus, or the methodologies that are centered). This is followed by a close reading of a selection of articles, through which I identify the main themes within the literature and explore the theoretical and empirical gaps in the knowledge, which results in a research agenda.