Exploring the Foreign Policies of Populist Governments: (Latin) America First, Journal of International Relations and Development 24:1, 651–680 (original) (raw)
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Exploring the foreign policies of populist governments: (Latin) America First [fragments]
Journal of International Relations and Development, 2021
How do populists conduct foreign policy? The existing literature on populism focuses mainly on domestic patterns, and until recently the foreign dimension of populism has been largely overlooked. This paper aims to fill theoretical and empirical lacunae by mapping patterns of change and continuity in the formulation of geopolitical and economic international policy among Latin-American populist governments. Striving to conduct a systematic comparative analysis, this paper explores three waves of populist foreign policies in Latin America (classic, neoliberal, and progressive). While it is difficult to highlight a unified phenomenon, the findings reveal that several ‘unifying’ elements indeed exist: they are manifest in the tendency of such governments to jointly (re)construct transnational solidarities for legitimation purposes and to adopt economic foreign policies with a pragmatic bent. Moreover, in opposition to the two first waves of populist governments, the most recent wave has embraced personalist styles, emotional public diplomacy, and clientelist techniques with support networks abroad, thus actively projecting the domestic patterns of populism to the regional and global levels in an attempt to leverage both domestic and international legitimacy. This study offers critical lessons for IR scholarship’s increasing engagement with populism, contributing to the lively debate regarding the rise of populist trends across the globe.
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Under what conditions do populists embrace or reject “the international”? Some scholars of populism argue that populist leaders tend to neglect political (inter-)action in the international arena due to their stated preference for isolationist, nationalistic, and protectionist stances. Meanwhile, others claim that through their promotion of performative encounters and transnational solidarities between “People(s),” populists are actually more likely to engage with actors, ideas, styles, and agendas coming from abroad. This article explores this apparent contradiction, hypothesizing that three main elements influence the “populist mindset” to narrate the external world and thus adopt or rather resist new contingencies originating internationally: legitimacy, support, and opportunity. To examine the combination of these behavioral patterns, we compare two populist presidents who are paradigmatic of a fourth wave of populism in Latin America: Brazil's Jair Messias Bolsonaro and Mex...
Understanding Contemporary Populism Through the Latin American Experience
AARMS, 2022
This paper discusses how the Latin American experience can help us understand contemporary populism and its management. This topic starts from the assumption that structural change and social contexts help us explain the evolution of populism in the same way they helped explain the evolution of violence and management. To do so, we look at the state of the literature on populism, its relation to the Latin American experience, the evolution of the approach to populism, and the conclusions we can draw from these different perspectives. We conclude that contemporary populism is also limited in the same way the contextual approach to Latin American populism was limited. This also helps us understand why we still do not have a shared definition of populism. Overall, we lack the balance between generalisable and local definitions to help leaders manage the contemporary violence of populism.
Seeing and Not Seeing Populism in Latin America (A Contra Corriente, Fall 2019)
A Contra Corriente, 2019
To understand the current global surge of populist governments, scholars and commentators have pointed to the harms of neoliberalism, the breakdown of democratic norms (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018), the characteristics of populism and how they differ from fascism (Finchelstein 2017)), and the affects and experiences that drive support for nationalist leaders (Mazzarrella 2019). I suggest a different, if complementary approach to understanding populism by turning to the specificity and complexity of Latin American politics in the 20 th and 21 st century histories. First, I view populism in the context of Latin American nations'
The resurgence of populism in Latin America
Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2000
Contemporary manifestations of`neopopulisma are situated in an analysis of the role of political institutions in capitalist societies, and the idea of structural and institutional crisis. It is argued that`populista and`neopopulista discourse alike must be understood in terms of their relationship to speci"c conjunctural projects for the reorientation of capitalist reproduction. This approach directs attention back to the contrasting conjunctures in which classical populist and contemporary neopopulist political projects were launched. It also provides a basis on which contemporary projects which adopt elements of populist strategy and discourse can be compared and evaluated. : S 0 2 6 1 -3 0 5 0 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 7 6 -5
Critical Debates Populism in Latin America: Past, Present, and Future
Populism in Latin America: Past, Present and Future, 2019
Although populism has been growing in prominence in intellectual circles, the phenomenon is not new. Some academics assert that populism began with the People’s Party in the United States, the narodniki movement in Russia, or Boulangism in France (Judis 2016; Rovira Kaltwasser et al. 2017). Others trace its roots to Peronism in Argentina (Germani [1978] 2003; Finchelstein 2017) and populist mobilization in Peru (Jansen 2017). Although in Europe and the United States populism is normally viewed as a recent phenomenon associated with the radical right and postmaterialism (Inglehart and Norris 2017; Mudde 2014), in Latin America, populism has had a long, varied history. Literature on the subject has identified three populist waves in the region: classic populism (1930‒1950), characterized by a strong, charismatic leader and working-class mobilization (Di Tella 1965; Germani [1978] 2003); neopopulism in the 1990s, which saw a paradoxical alliance between populism and neoliberalism (Weyland 1996, 2001); and early twenty-first-century populism, linked with the appearance of a radical left (Collins 2014; Ellner 2003). As this brief survey suggests, analyzing Latin American populism is a complex task. Given the quantity and variety of populisms Latin America has experienced over its history (de la Torre 2017), studying the contemporary intellectual debate surrounding populism is particularly important. Therefore, this essay takes up the study of populism in Latin America, divided in three parts. First, it describes the principal theoretical approaches to populism; namely, the structural, discursive, political-strategic, ideational, and sociocultural approaches. Second, it briefly examines four recent books on populism in Latin America, written by a political scientist (Barr), a communications scholar (Block), a historian (Finchelstein), and a sociologist (Jansen). Third, it proposes some considerations for future research based on the four works reviewed and our own ideas, drawn from recent trends in the international literature on populism.
The Resurgence of Radical Populism in Latin America
Constellations, 2007
A specter is haunting Latin America: radical populism. Former presidents such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso and respectable media analysts have cautioned us about the dangers of charismatic and plebiscitary domination for democracy. They have warned us of the risks of irresponsible economic policies. A holy alliance is trying to exorcize the ghost of populism that periodically reappears even though its death has been constantly announced and predicted. 1 In contrast to the apocalyptic warnings of the media analysts and politicians we have an accumulated knowledge of populism that can help us arrive to more nuanced conclusions about its relationships to democracy. Over the last three decades we have seen a renaissance of studies. If previous scholarship based on modernization and dependency theories tied populism to specific economic and social forces, 2 this new wave of research has uncoupled politics from what were understood as deeper structural determinants. Scholars have shown that populism is not necessarily linked to the transition to modernity or to import-substitution industrialization. The unexpected affinities between populism and neoliberalism stimulated research on the politics of structural adjustment under neo-populist leadership. 3 More recently, the nationalist and anti-imperialist rhetoric of Presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador have provoked passionate debates on whether or not we are experiencing a rebirth of radical-national populism. 4 Unsurprisingly, scholars have tended to reproduce the cleavages produced by populist leaders. What for some are authentic forms of expression of the popular will by leaders who empowered those previously disenfranchised, for others are forms of charismatic, authoritarian, and messianic domination. Behind the smoke screen provoked by the praise for national populism or its condemnation we can identify important debates over the meanings and interpretations of democracy. Instead of arguing that populism is the negation or the essence of democracy this article draws on current experiences to explore the uneasy and ambiguous relations between populism and liberal democracy. Populism has been an important democratizing force that has mobilized those previously excluded. It has incorporated common people into the political community. However, the distinctiveness of these processes of inclusion and democratization needs to be specified. What are the forms of political participation and representation privileged by populism? How is democracy understood by the friends and foes of populism? What are the effects of populist rhetoric for the democratization of society? Why do common folk continue to support populist leaders?
Populist International (Dis-)Order? Lessons from World Order Visions in Latin American Populism
International Affairs , 2024
The study of populism’s international links has grown significantly. Yet, there are gaps in conceptualizing potential implications for the international order. Our study contributes to filling this gap by asking: if a ‘populist international order’ (PIO) were to emerge, and populists could envision the world close(r) to their liking, what would this order look like? We pursue answers through a plausibility probe of three deductively-derived normative pillars: 1) cooperation under a PIO is characterized by more fractured, mostly symbolic, small-scale multilateralism; 2) a PIO relies on a narrow, selective embrace of the rule of law, to be respected only when seen as representing the wishes of the ‘real people’; and 3) the commitment to pluralism in ‘international society’ is replaced by an anti-pluralist, monolithic notion of popular sovereignty as the primary behavioural driver. Our analysis is based on contemporary populist leadership from Latin America: Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador. We examine how these populists have addressed our proposed PIO pillars in different ways and shaped their world-order visions in relation to them. The lessons derived from this study can contribute to bridging gaps regarding the effects of global populism in International Relations, including prospects of mitigating the systemic impact of populism on the international order.
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The Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies , 2023
This article explores the normative foundations of the contemporary populist turn in Latin America from a theoretical perspective. We argue that the ongoing structural crisis of representative democracy, defined by its inability to identify and respond to growing social demands to provide valuable results for the majority of the population, negatively affects its legitimacy. This facilitates the irruption of a more radical political project, which, in the case of Latin America, is based on a populist discourse. The discussion focuses on the theoretical determination of the arguments used by populism to justify political action.