Forum: Populist Radical Right & Illiberal Foreign Policymaking

Abstract What makes current radical right populists different from other historical radical right leaders of the 20th century? Are there more differences or similarities among populist radical right (PRR) in the Global South regarding how they perform foreign policy? How does the context – marked by contemporary globalization, regional interdependencies and power (geo)politics – influence their perceptions about their own capabilities and interests, but also about the international liberal order, its values and multilateral mechanisms? This forum addresses questions like these, offering theoretical, historical and contextual insights with concrete examples and case studies situated out of the Anglo-American spectrum. Different from traditional approaches to foreign policy analysis, the authors advance reflections about current phenomena such as illiberal foreign policymaking, anti-cosmopolitanism, religious nationalism and its transnational ties, and the re-personalization of sovereignty in the figure of the PRR. Therefore, it enriches the study of populism, radical right and foreign policymaking in IR, bringing to the debate the erosion of the liberal international order and the necessary questioning of Western-led globalization.