How oil rents fuel populist foreign policy

International relations literature has begun to focus on the foreign policy corollaries of populist ideologies. Populist leaders reject hegemonic Western powers, the transnational elites associated with them, and the liberal international institutions they have created. But how impactful is populist foreign policy really, given that rejection of the global liberal order potentially carries significant costs?

Steffen Hertog and Ferdinand Eibl argue that populist leaders in all but the largest countries can afford radical policies only if they enjoy autonomy from international economic constraints. The main factor providing such autonomy are natural resource rents. The combination of populist leadership and resource rents creates a particular brand of radical foreign policy in which leaders combine sharp anti-Western rhetoric and diplomacy with a withdrawal from liberal international organizations. They illustrate these arguments with case studies of Bolivia, Ecuador, Iran and Venezuela and then demonstrate the wider applicability of our theory through a range of econometric tests. Our speakers identify the combination of rents and populism as an important driver of the disintegration of the liberal international order.

Meet our speakers and chair

Ferdinand Eibl is programme director of the MA Politics and Economics of the Middle East at Kings College, London. He completed his PhD in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford. He also holds an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA in Political Science from the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and the IEP Rennes. Before joining King’s College London, he was a research officer at LSE's Middle East Centre.

Steffen Hertog is Professor in Comparative Politics in the Department of Government at LSE. He joined the Department of Government in 2010 as a lecturer. He was previously Kuwait Professor at Sciences Po Paris, lecturer in political economy at the University of Durham and post-doctoral research fellow at Princeton University. He holds an MA from the University of Bonn, an MSc from the School of Oriental and African Studies and a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford.

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