Borders and Orders in International Politics: Exclusion and Inclusion in Populist and Nationalist Geopolitical Discourses

It is observed that in populist and nationalist discourses the geopolitics, in which the imagined communities procure a transnational identity, crosses the limits of national boundaries. The populist geopolitical discourses might serve at least two fundamental purposes: Firstly, they might help constructing an imagined territory and population across the current formal borders. This would justify the expansion of physical boundaries through interventions (Russia, Turkey) or spread of influence through less coercive policies in more moderate manners. Secondly, populist geopolitical discourses might reinforce the demarcations between the ‘real’ nation and state (inside) and the undesired Other (outside) (Trump and Mexico). In this version, the discourse rationalizes strict border policies, demonises the migrant Other and glorifies the Self`s own ‘nation’. In both cases, populist and nationalist discourses of borders, land and people may contribute populist leader’s charisma at home. But more important than that it may discursively organize the ideational background of foreign policy activism. Discussions about the critical border and geography studies usually neglect the current populist uproar and its geopolitical repercussions. This Section aims at bridging this gap by a comparative inquiry including both Western and non-Western populist leaders and movements. Populism, just like an elephant at the center of the room, has brought together many experts from diverging disciplines sharing the common objective to define it. Despite the fact that our social scientific interest to understand and explain the nature of the concept has fabricated a remarkable literature, the ongoing debate on whether it is a unitary concept or whether it is the substitute of other political phenomena (Ionescu and Gellner, 1969) continues. Is it a specific movement, a political ideology or a discursive strategy? Can we make generalizations based on the shared characteristics of populism(s)? What forms of populisms do we identify? What is the best way to approach it? Should we handle the issue by enlarging our scope through including many comparative cases? Or should we study it in line with the socio-political dispositions attached to it? Is it a term which finds its true meaning with the adjectives? Or do the adjectives just complicate our understanding? Notwithstanding the burgeoning literature on it, these questions have been multiplied in the last decades to the extent that populism has been incarnated in different forms. What complicates our scholarly attempts to define it, stems from the liquidity of the term. Its liquid character, rooted in the populist discourses’ flexibility in identity articulation, promises populist leaders political success. Regardless of its political affiliation, populism is articulated as a discursive practice in which collective identities are constructed and crystalized by binary oppositions and antagonisms between “corrupted elites” and “underdog masses”. This alternative interpretation of society gives hand populist leaders from left to right wing political ideologies to mobilize people under the discourse of “underdog majority”. Populist leader, as projecting itself as the voice of silent majority, plays a significant role in designating who is a part of people and who is not. Populist leader’s consubstantiation itself with “people” generates an idiosyncratic “us” and “them” distinction. These discursive practices of inclusion and exclusion provide populist leaders an authoritative position at national politics to the extent that the audience - people under construction - embarks on. With this respect, the new wave populist resurgence is more than a strategy, rather it is a discursive practice in which collective identities are being articulated within the boundaries differentiating “us/the people” and “them/internal or external Other”. From established democracies to authoritarian regimes, populist political elites frame their audience as the “oppressed or underdog” people. Sometimes the very same elite constructs an alternative (or additional) hegemonic discourse in which the category of ‘oppressed people’ is enlarged beyond the national borders. This gives them an opportunity to expand their zone of influence and status. Or they can ‘delimit’ the category of people to keep outsiders out. This increases their status as true nationalist leader before their imagined national audience. It is very interesting and important for scholars to understand the ways how alternative or new geopolitical orders and borders are being established, constructed or deconstructed. This scholarly attempt would, at the same time, deepen our understanding of non-Western IR. Interestingly, discussions about the critical border and geography studies usually neglect the anti-Western elements in the discourses of the non-Western subject. It is important to understand why and how the non-Western Other (or Global South and Asia) positions itself vis a vis other states, be it Western or non-Western. Usually due to ontological insecurities of the relevant subject and rapidly changing global conjunctures, non-Western actors might feel the necessity or pressure to define their borders and nations, which are usually controversial and contested. In this context, concepts like territory, nation and population acquire several and usually unstable meanings in order to gain or expand influence or status. Even to further this argument, one can observe that the relevant agents might incorporate these constructions such as nation, border and land to their actual practices, and policies to feel more powerful or when they imagine an existential threat. Furthermore, recent research about (different forms of) populism also touches these issues. Based on this background, we argue that “discourse as practice” approach best fit with our aim to understand the distinctive and common character of Western and non-Western populist claims which authoritatively draw boundaries within and beyond national identities. Papers presented in this Section, are all designed to understand how populist leaders rearticulate an alternative hegemonic discourse through discursively challenging national and global establishment. With respect to this, this Section aims at bringing scholars and researchers who are working on the critical border and geography studies, cross-border nationalism, transnational populism, diaspora politics and inclusive and exclusive discourses of US versus THEM and identity politics together. The main purpose is to discuss and evaluate the applicability of the critical border and geography studies (transnationalism) in the context of Asia, Americas, Europe and Africa. As such the Section critically discusses discursive construction of the “people/us” and “Other/them” at domestic and international level in the nexus of populist nationalism. We are also interested in debating under what conditions and in what ways leaders turn to expansive populist discourses moving across/beyond borders and to more restrictive/exclusive populist discourses drawing a line between the Self and the Other. We aim at contributing to the diversity and pluralism of the debates within the schools of critical border, geography and transnationalism studies by bringing the research about the populism both in the Western and non-Western subjects. For these purposes, our objective is to discuss above-mentioned issues/problems and to invite all interested researchers to our Section. In short, this Section will cover: • Populist antagonistic politics of “exclusion” and “inclusion” in a comparative perspective. • Role of populist discursive practices, emotions, representations, technologies for the creation of “people”, “nation”, “trans-border community”, “borders” etc. • An overview of the Western and non-Western critical geopolitics in line with the new wave of populism. • Populist discursive strategies in which the borders and national/regional and global orders are articulated. • Possibility or/and impossibility of a transnational imagined community of oppressed peoples in international politics. • The common traits and diverging patterns of the new populists’ geopolitical codes in interpreting the world order. POSSIBLE PAPER TOPICS - THIS LIST IS LIMITED AND CAN BE ENLARGED: • Geopolitics and Populism Applied to Cases • Common Elements in Populist Discourses Regarding the Construction of Self and Other • Exclusionary or/and Inclusive Populism and Geopolitical Imagination • Western Antagonisms within the Southern or Eastern Populist Discourses • Border Politics and Reinforcement of Nation(alism) • Borders and Construction of Local, National, Regional and Global • Discourses of Oppressed Cross-Border Communities • Discourses of Othering and Borders • Popularity of Populist Leaders and Reflections on this • Meaning making on the National Identity, State Borders and People • Contestations and Challenges against Nationalist and Populist Discourses • Reflections about the State of IR regarding Critical Border, Geography, Nationalism and Populism Studies/Research Fatma Fulya Hisarlıoğlu is an Assistant Professor in Political Science Department at Doğuş University. She received a bachelor’s degree in international relations from Bilkent University. She completed her PhD research on the impact of Turkey’s Europeanization on Turkish foreign policy at Bilkent University Political Science Department. Her research interests lie in the area of contemporary Turkish politics, identity politics, Europeanization, Turkish-EU relations and Turkish foreign policy. She has several book chapters in edited books and articles in academic journals including Geopolitics and International Relations. She also served in the Association of International Relations Council of Turkey as a full-time project coordinator. She has participated ISA and EISA conferences as Convenor, Discussant and Section Chair. Birsen Erdogan is a full-time lecturer of International Relations at the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University. She teaches several IR courses at the University College Maastricht. Since 2016, she works on discourse analysis and foreign policy. She finished a book on R2P, humanitarian interventions and the Turkish foreign policy discourse (Routledge,2017). After this book project, she has been working on several projects and coordinating research on the foreign policy discourses of several European countries including Germany and the UK on interventions abroad and EU-Turkey deal. Her recent study is about Turkey's Africa foreign policy and state discourses. She has regularly attended EISA conferences and EWIS workshops acting as Convenor and Section Chair. birsen.erdogan@maastrichtuniversity.nl