This book describes the global spread of nationalist-populism by rightwing and racist political parties; their impact on political, economic, and sociocultural globalization; and the corrosive impact of this ideology on the global liberal order that emerged after World War II under United States leadership. The global liberal order is a system of norms including peace and security, democracy, human rights, free trade, financial stability and support for a broad range of international governmental organizations and treaties fostering interstate and transnational cooperation to advance those norms and resolve collective problems. Examples of these organizations are the United Nations, European Union, NATO, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the Paris Climate Accord. Suitable for interested scholars and general readers as well as a classroom text.

Populism and globalization are shorthand for the temper of our times. Populism is usually cast as globalization’s nemesis, a backlash against worldwide connectivity, while globalization is often said to be in retreat or even demise. This book takes issue with both interpretations, claiming instead that while populism of all shades tends to be anti-globalist, the globalism it is pitted against has changed dramatically in recent years and is increasingly decentred, destabilized, contingent, multipolar, and multidirectional. Axford paints a picture of this new globalization and dissects the strains of postmodern populism that both contest it and are its expression. Attention to the current surge of populism also affords purchase on an axial feature of our turbulent and globalized world—the imbrication or antithesis of local and global, of difference and sameness. This is an interdisciplinary examination of populism as a factor in global change, drawing on international politics, sociology, and global studies.

This volume illustrates the diversity of populism globally. When seeking power, populists politicize issues, and point to problems that need to be addressed such as inequalities, the loss of national sovereignty to globalization, or the rule of unresponsive political elites. Yet their solutions tend to be problematic, simplistic, and in most instances, instead of leading to better forms of democracy, their outcomes are authoritarian. Populists use a playbook of concentrating power in the hands of the president, using the legal system instrumentally to punish critics, and attacking the media and civil society. Despite promising to empower the people, populists lead to processes of democratic erosion and even transform malfunctioning democracies into hybrid regimes. The Routledge Handbook of Global Populism provides instructors, students, and researchers with a thorough and systematic overview of the history and development of populism and analyzes the main debates. It is divided into sections on the theories of populism, on political and social theory and populism, on how populists politicize inequalities and differences, on the media and populism, on its ambiguous relationships with democratization and authoritarianism, and on the distinct regional manifestations of populism. Leading international academics from history, political science, media studies, and sociology map innovative ideas and areas of theoretical and empirical research to understand the phenomenon of global populism.

Around the world, populism has weaponized anxieties over globalization and other forms of cultural, social, and economic change. Many populist leaders have succeeded in conflating trade concerns with apprehensions over immigration, thereby creating potent campaigns to overturn existing trade agreements and the multilateral cooperation they embody. In the United States, avowed protectionist Donald Trump set out not only to raise tariffs, but to dismantle the system of global trade embodied in the World Trade Organization. In the UK, the Brexit referendum resulted in that country's withdrawal from the European Union, ending its commitment to trade integration with the continent. Populism and Trade explores the impact of populist regimes on protectionism and the damage they have inflicted on global trade and trade policy institutions. Focusing on the disruption caused by the Trump administration and the Brexit referendum, the book traces the influence of populism on trade policy today. Kent Jones shows how these methods will continue to damage global cooperation--something that is essential when faced with international crises like a deadly pandemic--until the sources of populist anger can be addressed. He argues that economic and institutional reforms, along with better education and adjustment policies, will be necessary to break the populist fever. In an age of global populism, open trade policy has become a victim of anti-globalization and economic nationalism. Populism and Trade traces the impact of these divisive political tactics to explain the fragile nature of global trade institutions and the steps needed to save them.

This book propounds the thesis that it was the dysfunction of globalization and liberalism that prompted the rise of nationalism and populism. Recent developments in global affairs are challenging assumptions and the basis upon which international relations, as a broad field of specialization, and foreign policy analysis, as a sub-field, rests. In a world that is changing in fundamental and irreversible ways, this book intervenes to enable an improved sense of understanding of these developments and what they mean for people-people, state-state, continent-continent, and global relations, moving forward. The author shows anti-globalization and the growth of nationalism and populism have been particularly necessitated by the failures of liberalism and America’s abdication from the world. With reference to Brexit, the pandemic, the US 2020 elections and consequent shifts in power, with a focus on their respective impacts on Africa, and Africa-Sino relations particularly, and developing countries, more broadly, this book situates these discussions within a global context. It effectively illustrates the insufficiency of the West’s soft power, especially as it is foisted or supposedly imposed on the rest of the world without regard to the demands of cultural relativity. Relevant to postgraduate students, researchers, and policymakers, this is must-read within the fields of international relations and political economy.

Deftly navigating the tensions among globalization, national sovereignty, and democracy, Straight Talk on Trade presents an indispensable commentary on today's world economy and its dilemmas, and offers a visionary framework at a critical time when it is most needed.

"Populism, a political movement with anti-elite, authoritarian and nativist tendencies, typically spearheaded by a charismatic leader, is an old phenomenon but also a very new and disturbing one at that. The Populist Temptation is an effort to understand the wellsprings of populist movements and why the threat they pose to mainstream political parties and pluralistic democracy has been more successfully contained in some cases than others"--