International relations and foreign policy

This chapter provides an overview of the growing literature on populism in international relations and foreign policy. It presents prominent accounts of how structural transformations of world politics, like globalization, condition the rise and shape of populism at the national level, as well as influential analyses of populism’s role in foreign policy. The chapter aims to systematize this literature by drawing conceptual links between the main analytical perspectives of international relations and the principal theoretical traditions in the study of populism. While all such approaches provide important insights, the chapter argues that building bridges between critical approaches in international relations and populism studies is particularly promising for developing novel understandings of populism as a phenomenon of world politics.