When Populist Friends Abroad Hurt You at Home: How Populist Leaders in Italy and the Netherlands Coped with the Russian-Ukrainian War

Chryssogelos A., Jenne E.K., LaRoche C.D., Verbeek B., Zaslove A., Destradi S., Cadier D., Coticchia F., Donelli F., Lequesne C.

Abstract In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the international dimensions of populism, by now a major political phenomenon around the world. This interest, however, has been confined largely to the state level, especially the influence of populism on foreign policy. In this Forum, we argue that it is important for analysis to move beyond the state level and view populism as a concept and phenomenon of international relations (IR) rather than simply a factor of foreign policy. The Forum discusses implications of the rise of populism for IR theory, the role of international systemic change in the emergence of populism in national arenas, and the ways that regime type, state structure and institutions, ideational content, and the political strategies of populists condition the impact of populism on world politics. In this way, the Forum identifies specific directions for the study of populism in IR that scholars can follow in the future.

Bordignon F., Diamanti I., Turato F.

Diodato E.

Coticchia F.

In Italy, the Five Star Movement (M5S) and the Northern League (LN) formed a coalition government after the legislative elections of March 2018. What has been the actual impact of the populist executive in the Italian foreign policy? Relying on the (few) existing analyses that have developed specific hypotheses on the expected international repercussions of populist parties-ruled governments, the paper examines Italy’s foreign policy under the Italian “Yellow–Green” cabinet (June 2018–August 2019). The manuscript advances three hypotheses. First, the foreign policy of the Conte’s government has been featured by a personalistic and a centralized decision-making process. Second, the Yellow-Green executive has adopted a vocal confrontational stance on the world stage, especially within multilateral frameworks, to “take back control” over national sovereignty. Third, such sovereignist foreign policy was largely symbolic because of “strategic” populist attitudes toward public opinion and due to domestic and international constraints. The manuscript—which is based on secondary and primary sources, such as interviews with former ministers, MPs, and diplomats—aims at offering a new perspective on populist parties and foreign policy, alimenting the rising debate on foreign policy change.

Snegovaya M.

Scholarship analyzing Russia’s influence in Europe has focused primarily on the supply-side of this relationship, especially on the links between the Kremlin and specific parties. Surprisingly few studies have focused on the demand-side. My paper fills in this gap. First, I compile a dataset of pro-Russian parties in the European Union and show that Russia-sympathizers are found across different (left and right) party families. Second, I demonstrate that supporters of these parties across different party families show stronger Eurosceptic attitudes than the electorates of mainstream parties. This finding explains the endorsement of narratives and policies indirectly favorable to the Kremlin by political actors whose electorates harbor Eurosceptic sympathies. It also sheds some light on the opportunistic rather than ideological nature of Russia’s influence operations in the European Union, which exploit opportunities presented in respective regions. In other words, these parties are the Kremlin’s fellow travelers.

Cancino-Montecinos S., Björklund F., Lindholm T.

Cognitive dissonance has been studied for more than sixty years and many insightful findings have come from this research. However, some important theoretical and methodological issues are yet to be resolved, particularly regarding dissonance reduction. In this paper, we place dissonance theory in the larger framework of appraisal theories of emotion, emotion regulation, and coping. The basic premise of dissonance theory is that people experience negative affect (to varying degrees) following the detection of cognitive conflict. The individual will be motivated to alleviate these emotional reactions and could do so by reducing dissonance in some manner. We argue that detection of dissonance will follow the same principles as when people interpret any other stimuli as emotionally significant. Thus, appraisal theory of emotion, which argues that emotions are generated via the cognitive evaluation of surrounding stimuli, should be applicable to the dissonance-detection process. In short, we argue that dissonance-reduction strategies (attitude change, trivialization, denial of responsibility, etc.) can be understood as emotion-regulation strategies. We further argue that this perspective contributes to reconciling fragmented (and sometimes contrary) viewpoints present in the literature on dissonance reduction. In addition to proposing the general model of dissonance reduction, we illustrate at the hand of empirical data how research on dissonance reduction can be performed without relying on experimental paradigms that focus on a specific reduction strategy.

Prontera A.

Italy is the second largest market for Russian gas in the EU, and Italy–Russia energy relations stretch back to the Cold War period. By developing an original framework for the study of the politic...

Makarychev A., Terry G.S.

Onderco M.

The connection between Russia and European political parties has been in the scholarly and popular spotlight recently. While scholars focus on the connection between the far right (and populist) pa...

Zulianello M.

AbstractDespite the explosion of populism research, there is a shortage of comprehensive analyses of the ideational varieties of populist parties and of the different roles they play in contemporary party systems. In order to overcome such limitations, I provide a state-of-the-art review of the literature on the classification of populist parties and make three innovative contributions to populism research. First, by adopting a truly pan-European perspective to cover, in addition to EU member countries, contexts that are generally overlooked, including but not limited to Liechtenstein, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine, this review article provides an empirical application of the ideational approach to populism to 66 contemporary parties. Second, it highlights the major shortcomings of common approaches to the study of populist parties in contemporary party systems, which almost invariably treat them as ‘challengers’ or ‘outsiders’. Finally, it pushes the agenda further by providing a classification and empirical overview of the three interactive patterns characterizing the 66 populist parties under analysis: non-integration, negative integration and positive integration.

Destradi S., Plagemann J.

AbstractAs populists have formed governments all over the world, it becomes imperative to study the consequences of the rise of populism for International Relations. Yet, systematic academic analyses of the international impact of populist government formation are still missing, and political commentators tend to draw conclusions from few cases of right-wing populism in the Global North. But populism – conceptualised as a ‘thin’ ideology based on anti-elitism and anti-pluralism – takes different shapes across world regions as populists combine it with different ‘thick’ ideologies. To reflect such diversity and gain more systematic insights into the global implications of populism, we focus on cases of populist government formation in the Global South. We find that populists in power are not, per se, more belligerent or less willing to engage globally than their non-populist predecessors. Factors like status seeking or a country's embeddedness in international institutions mitigate the impact of populism. Its most immediate effect concerns procedural aspects: foreign policymaking becomes more centralised and personalised – yet, not entirely unpredictable, given the importance of ‘thick’ ideologies espoused by populist parties and leaders. Rather than changing course entirely, populists in power reinforce existing trends, especially a tendency towards diversifying international partnerships.

Mosca L., Tronconi F.

AbstractBorn in 2009, the Five Star Movement (FSM) has been one of the most electorally successful European populist parties since 2013. While its classification as a populist party is unanimously ...

Orsina G.

Coticchia F., Vignoli V.

AbstractSince the end of the bipolar era, the military activism of several Western powers has raised questions about parliamentary control, fostering growing research and analyses on the features, drivers and consequences of the different kinds of oversight exercised by legislative assemblies. Within this scholarly debate, this article focuses on the under-studied case of Italy. How did Italian parties vote on military operations abroad in the post-Cold War era? In order to answer this question, the article presents the first detailed and comprehensive set of data on parliamentary votes over the deployment of the Italian armed forces in the post-Cold War era (i.e. from the beginning of the 1990s to the recent operation against ISIL). Thanks to this extensive new empirical material, the article assesses selected arguments developed by the literature on political parties and foreign policy, paving the way for further research.

Siddi M.

Perron N.

Vignoli V., Coticchia F.