Populist foreign policy: The cases of Turkey, Hungary, Venezuela and Greece

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2748990_(Table of contens)

Populist foreign policies constitute a growing part of the populism literature. The rising numbers of populist cases, and their increasing impact on world politics lead to the question of what kind of foreign policy agendas populist leaders prefer. Considering the gap in the literature in terms of applying the method of comparison to systematically analyze populist foreign policies, this study will compare four populist foreign policy cases, Turkey, Hungary, Venezuela, and Greece. This thesis argues that populist foreign policies have common and different points that can be systematically explained. To prove this fact, the ideological component, namely right-wing or left-wing populism, and the revisionism level in the foreign policy goals, i.e., revisionist or defensive foreign policies, are used to explain the similarities and differences between populist foreign policies. Drawing a two-paired comparison table in the end, the four cases will be examined under four foreign policy indicators that can be considered the attributes of globalization, and that populist leaders construct an important part of their foreign policies on. In the end, the results show that populist foreign policies can be categorized in accordance with their ideological stances, and revisionism levels. Also, they imply that populist foreign policies have similar and divergent features under four foreign policy indicators.