King's College London

TY - JOUR

T1 - Trump, Populism, and American Foreign Policy

AU - Wojczewski, Thorsten

PY - 2019/8/23

Y1 - 2019/8/23

N2 - Employing a discursive understanding of populism and combing it with insights of poststructuralist International Relations theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, this article examines the conceptual links between foreign policy and populist forms of identity construction as well as the ideological force that populism can unfold in the realm of foreign policy. It conceptualizes populism and foreign policy as distinct discourses that constitute collective identities by relating Self and Other. Identifying different modes of Othering, the article illustrates its arguments with a case study on the United States under Donald Trump and shows how the Trumpian discourse used foreign policy as platform for the (re)production of a populist-nationalist electoral coalition. Unlike common conceptions of populism as ideology that misrepresents reality, the article argues that the discourse develops its ideological appeal by obscuring the discursive character of social reality and promising to satisfy the subject’s illusive desire for a complete and secure identity.

AB - Employing a discursive understanding of populism and combing it with insights of poststructuralist International Relations theory and Lacanian psychoanalysis, this article examines the conceptual links between foreign policy and populist forms of identity construction as well as the ideological force that populism can unfold in the realm of foreign policy. It conceptualizes populism and foreign policy as distinct discourses that constitute collective identities by relating Self and Other. Identifying different modes of Othering, the article illustrates its arguments with a case study on the United States under Donald Trump and shows how the Trumpian discourse used foreign policy as platform for the (re)production of a populist-nationalist electoral coalition. Unlike common conceptions of populism as ideology that misrepresents reality, the article argues that the discourse develops its ideological appeal by obscuring the discursive character of social reality and promising to satisfy the subject’s illusive desire for a complete and secure identity.

KW - Populism

KW - US Foreign Policy

KW - Identity

KW - International Relations

KW - Nationalism

KW - Psychoanalytic Theory

KW - Poststructuralism

U2 - 10.1093/fpa/orz021

DO - 10.1093/fpa/orz021

M3 - Article

VL - 16

SP - 292

EP - 311

JO - Foreign Policy Analysis

JF - Foreign Policy Analysis

SN - 1743-8586

IS - 3

ER -