This book explores contemporary populist politics through the lens of ontological security theory. It shows that the 'divisionary politics of populism' is fostered by narratives of crisis and insecurity surrounding the imagined Self that gives shape to 'the people' that populism claims to represent. The loss of faith in mainstream political parties and moderate electoral candidates seems characteristic of the Zeitgeist in much of the Western world and beyond. Politicians and agendas propped up by a discourse that antagonizes established political elites on behalf of a reified, and homogenized people has become a trend in the politics of several countries. This book has brought together a team of worldwide renowned specialists on ontological security to grapple with the contemporary populist challenge through the conceptual lens of ontological security theory. From crises of democracy in the West, to backlashes against democratization in the Global South, this collection not only unveils fundamental structures underpinning these significant and current phenomena. It also provides us with the analytical tools to understand other occurrences of populist politics that are gaining traction across the globe. This book will be of great interest to upper-level students, researchers, and academics in Politics, International Relations and Security. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Cambridge Review of International Affairs.

The Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis provides an inclusive and forward-looking assessment of this subfield. Edited and written by a team of word-class scholars, it sets the agenda for future research in FPA and in IR.

This book demonstrates how populist security narratives served as the driving force behind the mobilization of Republican voters and the legitimation of an ‘America First’ policy agenda under the Trump presidency. Going beyond existing research on both populism and security narratives, the author links insights from political psychology on collective narcissism, blame attribution and emotionalization with research in political communication on narrative and framing to explore the political and societal impact of a populist security imaginary. Drawing on a comprehensive range of sources including key interviews, campaign and policy speeches, presidential addresses, and posts on social media, it shows how progressives, political opponents, immigrants, racial justice activists, and key institutions of liberal democracy collectively became an internal Other, delegitimated as ‘enemies of the people’. Developing an innovative conceptual-analytical framework of nationalist populism that expands on established concepts of political identity and ontological security, the book will appeal to students of critical security studies, critical constructivist approaches in International Relations, and US politics.

Populism has lately experienced a meteoric rise to become one of the most widely used terms in academic and wider public discourses and a supposedly defining feature of both domestic and world politics. Situated at the intersection of International Relations (IR), Political Theory and Comparative Politics, this book makes a critical intervention into the burgeoning IR scholarship on populism and problematizes the often hyperbolic and sweeping usage of the term as a general descriptor for non-centrist politics of different persuasions. The book seeks to move into a different theoretical direction and broaden the empirical focus of existing IR research. Theoretically, it bridges the gap between theories of populism and IR by bringing the Laclauian, discursive approach and IR poststructuralism together in a theoretical framework. The proposed framework moves away from the search for the policy preferences and impact of populism, and instead conceptualizes foreign policy and world politics as potential sites for practicing populism, ranging from the articulation of societal grievances to the construction of populist identities such as ‘the people’. Empirically, the book takes IR scholarship beyond the predominant focus on the populist radical right and single-country and -region studies. Building on the discourse analysis of an original data set, it offers a comparative analysis of right-wing and left-wing populist discourses in different world regions as well as populist cross-border collaboration and identity construction.

This edited collection explores the intersections of populist communication, performative leadership and international politics. It investigates the mechanisms and dynamics connecting these core conceptual fields and offers empirical examples. Together, the contributors to the volume argue that populist communication, i.e. the language, deliberation and discursive performance of populist ideas, has a profound and lasting impact not only on domestic politics, but in terms of foreign policies as well as the conduct of international politics writ large. First, populist communication shapes how global, regional and transborder issues are debated and strategically used for political purposes domestically. Second, populist communication changes when and how states and other actors in turn formulate responses and policies vis-a-vis, for example, migration, global health, climate change, trade, or war. Finally, populist communication affects the nature of international politics. It influences how actors conduct themselves internationally, and how we may conceive of core concepts and practices such as diplomacy, security, cooperation, and order. To illustrate these mechanisms, the contributors explore cases from around the world, demonstrating the relevance of populist communication for international politics in both the Global South and the Global North.

This book examines and establishes the sociological relevance of the concept of populism and illuminates the ideological use of sport, leisure, and popular culture in socio-political populist strategies and dynamics. The first part of the book — Themes, Concepts, Theories — sets the scene by reviewing and evaluating populist themes, concepts, and theories and exploring their cultural-historical roots in and application to cultural forms such as mega-sports events, reality television programmes, and the popular music festival. The second part — National Contexts and Settings — examines populist elements of events and regimes in selected cases in South America and Europe: Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Italy, and England. In the third part — Trump Times — the place of sport in the populist ideology and practices of US president Donald Trump is critically examined in analyses of Trump’s authoritarian populism, his Twitter discourse, Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl, and populist strategy on the international stage. The book concludes with a discussion of the strong case for a fuller sociological engagement with the populist dimensions of sport, leisure, and popular cultural forms. Written in a clear and accessible style, this volume will be of interest to sociologists and social scientists beyond those specialising in popular culture and cultural politics of sport and leisure, as the topic of populism and its connection to popular cultural forms and practices has come increasingly into prominence in the contemporary world.

This book examines the South China Sea territorial disputes from the perspective of international order. The authors argue that both China and the US are attempting to impose their respective preferred orders to the region and that the observed disputes are due to the clash of two competing order-building projects. Ordering the maritime space is essential for these two countries to validate their national identities and to achieve ontological security. Because both are ontological security-seeking states, this imperative gives them little room for striking a grand bargain between them. The book focuses on how China and the US engage in practices and discourses that build, contest, and legitimise the two major ordering projects they promote in the region. It concludes that China must act in its legitimation strategy in accordance with contemporary publicly accepted norms and rules to create a legitimate maritime order, while the US should support ASEAN in devising a multilateral resolution of the disputes.

This book rethinks the body in global politics and the particular roles bodies play in our international system, foregrounding processes and practices involved in the continually contested (re/dis)embodiment of both human bodies and collective bodies politic. Purnell provides a new, innovative, and detailed theory of bodily (re)making and un-making that shows how bodies are simultaneously (re)made and moved and (re)make and move other bodies and things. Presented in the form of reflective/reflexive and theoretically innovative essays, the book explores: bodies in general and their precarious, excessive, ontologically insecure, and emotional facets; the fleshing out of contemporary necro(body)politics; and the visual-emotional politics embodied through the COVID-19 pandemic. The empirical analyses feed into contemporary IR debates on British and American politics and international relations and the Global War on Terror, while also speaking to broader and interdisciplinary, theoretical literature on bodies/embodiment, visual politics, biopolitics, necropolitics, and affect/emotion, and feelings.

This book explores the global phenomenon of populism in relation to states' foreign policy, addressing two key questions: How do populists mold their foreign policies? What are the domestic and external factors that enable and constrain it? To this end, the book brings together a diverse group of scholars who have already researched on populist foreign policies (PFP) in specific countries to contribute shared chapters that examine their drivers, patterns, and effects according to distinctive regions: North America, Western Europe, Southern Europe, Central-Eastern Europe, Latin America, South-East Asia, the Middle East, Oceania, and Africa. The empirical analysis sheds new light on how populists’ distinctive conception of a world divided antagonistically between “the people” and “the elites” influences behaviour towards multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union, and regional or global hegemonic powers like the United States, Germany, Russia, and China. The book also shows how ideas related to identity, ideology, status and emotions, impinge on populists’ conduct vis-à-vis other international actors, and how national and international structures affect the implementation of populist foreign policies in the regional, interregional, and global arenas. The wide geographical diversity and regional representation are also valuable in identifying cultural similarities and differences. Hence, the findings contribute to lively debates on whether there is a unified and coherent foreign policy among populist leaderships, and whether populism leads to a gradual “corrective” of transnational trends in contemporary politics or, conversely, to a more radical, structural shift in the liberal international order.

This book addresses a central puzzle in ontological security theory, namely the relationship between identity continuity and change, and the role anxiety plays in fostering and inhibiting change. The work argues for a more nuanced perspective on how change and threats to national identity relate, thus advancing our understanding of the role anxiety plays in shaping state choices. The case studies of Sweden and Germany show that national identity can experience highly disruptive challenges when the external security environment changes. According to extant ontological security theory, these structural challenges should lead to heightened anxiety and identity crises as national narratives become unstable and fragile. Instead, empirical evidence shows that states turn ontological anxiety into strategies of anxiety abatement, management, and ontological innovation. The evidence also reveals that states go to extraordinary lengths to maintain existing narratives, discursively maneuvring between the twin needs of biographical continuity and responsiveness to change. In their efforts to adapt and preserve identity, states embrace ontological ambiguity; they neither fully respond to change, nor do they ignore it. Rather, they strive for discursive innovation where new interpretations of how to be are balanced with new interpretations of the meaning of necessary change. In the process, ontological ambiguity becomes the new normal. These findings suggest that Sweden and Germany may not be outliers, and that being and becoming is an inherent feature of social life all state actors must engage with. This book will be of interest to students of security studies, European politics, foreign policy, and international relations.