Contestations of the Liberal International Order

Abstract

A seemingly never-ending stream of observers claims that the populist emphasis on nationalism, identity, and popular sovereignty undermines international collaboration and contributes to the crisis of the Liberal International Order (LIO). Why, then, do populist governments continue to engage in regional and international institutions? This Element unpacks the counter-intuitive inclination towards institutional cooperation in populist foreign policy and discusses its implications for the LIO. Straddling Western and non-Western contexts, it compares the regional cooperation strategies of populist leaders from three continents: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. The study identifies an emerging populist 'script' of regional cooperation based on notions of popular sovereignty. By embedding regional cooperation in their political strategies, populist leaders are able to contest the LIO and established international organisations without having to revert to unilateral nationalism.

Legitimation and Delegitimation in Global Governance

“…We therefore expect that the balance between various (de)legitimation justifications changes over time depending on the prevalent normative structures. Previous research has shown democratic and neoliberal norms to be highly influential in global governance (Grigorescu 2015;Stephen and Zu ¨rn 2019;, but in light of political developments in recent years, we also expect that norms related to nationalism and populist notions will influence the composition of normative (de)legitimation justifications (So ¨derbaum et al 2021).…”

“…Research on global social movements and contentious politics has examined how protests target GGIs (e.g., O'Brien et al 2000;Kalm and Uhlin 2015;. Contestation in global governance is also derived from populist nationalism So ¨derbaum et al 2021). While most of the literature on contentious politics and global governance does not explicitly refer to contestation as delegitimation, we argue that doing so by using our framework could contribute to this field of research.…”

“…Democracy is only one of several normative justifications employed to legitimate and delegitimate GGIs. Non-democratic (and anti-democratic) normative justifications are increasingly common, not least related to populist nationalism (So ¨derbaum et al 2021). How to handle conflicts between different normative justifications is an important question that calls for further research that more explicitly engages with the ethical dimensions of scholarship on the normative justifications of (de)legitimation.…”

The populist way out: Why contemporary populist leaders seek transnational legitimation

“…Through the creation or reform of like-minded fora, populist leaders give symbolic meaning to their ‘soft-balancing’ of transnational elites. These ‘populists only’ clubs strengthen populists’ common sense of ‘We feeling’, as they legitimise one another by appearing as primus inter pares (Chryssogelos, 2017: 14; Destradi and Plagemann, 2019: 2–4; Söderbaum et al, 2021: 10–13). Aware that the perception of agreement within a community speaks with more credibility than any single political actor, especially if this sense of collectivity is embedded in cultural delineations, populists seek ‘collective legitimisation’ (see Claude, 1966: 368–369; Franck, 1990: 202–203).…”

“…These alternative encounters do not necessarily include institutional or policy substance; collective legitimation is primarily about performativity, style and identity symbolism (Drezner, 2017: 28–33; Moffitt, 2016: 7–8). This is highlighted in the preference for highly mediated meetings, either bilateral or multilateral, in ad hoc institutional settings, in a kind of à la carte international cooperation (Söderbaum et al, 2021: 10–13). For instance, right-wing populism in Europe promotes a club that embodies ‘Europeanness’, speaks for ‘Europe’s peoples’, and partially adopts the institutional form of the ‘Europe of Nations and Freedom’, but maintains a Eurosceptic attitude towards regional institutions (Chryssogelos, 2020: 11; Stengel, 2019: 6–7; Verbeek and Zazlove, 2015: 15–16).…”