Populism and Foreign Policy

Sandra Destradi, Chair of International Relations, University of Freiburg, Germany

Tuesday, March 31, 2026
12:15 PM (Pacific Time)
Bunche Hall, Rm 10383 & online

ABOUT THE EVENT

This event will be a hybrid event. It will take place in-person as well as virtually. See the address above for the in-person event location.

If you register for and attend a Burkle Center virtual event, you will not be seen or heard via video or audio. We will live-stream this event on the Burkle Center’s YouTube page. The YouTube livestream will be available below at the start of the event.

ABOUT THE BOOK

How and why does the formation of populist governments lead to changes in foreign policy? This book theorizes and empirically analyses how populism, understood as a thin-centred ideology, impacts foreign policy. It argues that two features of foreign policy making under populist governments, the use of foreign policy issues for domestic political mobilization and the personalization of decision making, are key to explain different intensities of foreign policy change. The strongest change can be expected if both mobilization and personalization in a specific issue area are strong, while more moderate changes are a result of a combination of strong mobilization and weak personalization, or weak mobilization and strong personalization. The framework also explains cases of foreign policy continuity in issue areas that populists do not use to mobilize support and in which populist leaders do not personally engage. The empirical analysis focuses on transitions from non-populist to populist governments in Bolivia, India, the Philippines, and Turkey. It addresses foreign policy change in four fields: the escalation of international disputes, the provision of global public goods, the engagement in multilateral institutions, and the reorientation of each country’s international partnerships. As a part of an abductive research process, the theory of populism and foreign policy initially applied to cases from the Global South is then also used to analyze populist governments’ foreign policies in Hungary, the UK, and Italy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sandra Destradi is a professor and chair of International Relations at the University of Freiburg, Germany. She is currently serving as a long-term guest professor at Reichman University, Israel, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service. Her research interests include the effects of populism on foreign policy and international politics, questions of regional security, and the role of emerging powers in global governance. She is currently leading the research project Populism and Foreign Policy, funded by the German Research Foundation, and the MSCA Doctoral Network "International Dimensions and Effects of Populism" (IDEoPOP), funded by the European Union. Her recent publications include the monographs "Reluctance in World Politics: Why States Fail to Act Decisively" (2023, Bristol University Press) and "Populism and Foreign Policy" (co-authored with Johannes Plagemann, 2025, Oxford University Press).

Photo Copyright: Paolo Sant

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Margaret Peters is Associate Director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Chair of the Global Studies major at UCLA. She is also a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research on the political economy of migration. She is currently working on a book project on how the process of forced displacement affects migrants’ sense of dignity and how these dignity concerns affect decisions of whether to move from the crisis zone, where to move, and when to return. She is additionally writing a book on how dictators use migration, including forced migration, to remain in power. Her award-winning book, Trading Barriers: Immigration and the Remaking of Globalization, argues that the increased ability of firms to produce anywhere in the world combined with growing international competition due to lowered trade barriers has led to greater limits on immigration, as businesses no longer see a need to support open immigration at home.