Populism, the International and Methodological Nationalism: Global Order and the Iran–Israel Nexus

Abstract

This article contends that the international is integral to populism. Thus, it calls for populism scholarship to embrace the interconnectivity between the domestic/internal and international/external. By borrowing from Global Historical Sociology, Global International Relations and Ernesto Laclau’s notion of populist discourse, the article puts forward a new conceptual framework for the study of populism that bridges the gap between Comparative Politics and International Relations. It shows how populist discourse simultaneously constructs several aspects of the social world: the actor who is articulating it and its relationship with its own population, that actor’s relationship with others in the international system, and global order. To illustrate its case, it examines populist discourses of Islamic Republic of Iran elites. Their discourses articulate the need to maintain the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy and populist credentials inside and outside Iran, delegitimise Israel, and construct global order. These discourses are grounded in a historical trajectory: the 1979 Revolution.

Rethinking Populism Geopolitically: Authoritarian Populism and Migration Politics in Britain and Turkey

“…The ' global 'has become an oft-cited analytical category 3 not only in terms of 'the retreat of the state ' (Strange, 1996) vis-à-vis the increasing relevance of globalisation in world politics, but also as a challenge to the Orientalist knowledge production (Hobson, 2020). Debates around 'global populism 'resonates across the discipline of Politics & IR in a similar vein (Hadiz and Chryssogelos, 2017;De la Torre, 2018;Stengel, MacDonald, and Nabers, 2019;Holliday, 2019;Wajner, 2021b;Ostiguy, Panizza, and Moffitt, 2021;Moffitt, 2016). For example, Carlos de la Torre expresses his intention very clearly in the introduction to his edited volume, Routledge Handbook of Global Populism: "Differently from Eurocentric studies that relegate the multiple populist experiences of the global south to footnotes, this book aims to look at populism globally" (2018, 2).…”

Contestations of the Liberal International Order

“…This means that neither group is necessarily confined to national boundaries. Building on these thoughts, International Relations scholars have pointed out that the elite may take on a transnational dimension (Copelovitch & Pevehouse, 2019;Holliday, 2019). Especially when populists assume power domestically, they may frame their interests against the outside world, not least against established multilateral and regional institutions such as the European Union (EU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), or the World Trade Organization (WTO) (Chryssogelos, 2017).…”

Populism and Post-Truth in International Politics: Climate Change, Migration, and Covid-19

“…The first one is Shabnam J. Holliday's work "Populism, the International and Methodological Nationalism: Global Order and the Iran-Israel Nexus" published in the journal Political Studies (Holliday, 2019). In this article, Holliday claims that the concept of 'international' is inherent to populism and invites populism studies to address internal-external relations globally and relationally.…”