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?

In his inaugural lecture (based on his research with Ferdinand Eibl) Steffen Hertog argues 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. He illustrates these arguments with case studies of Bolivia, Ecuador, Iran and Venezuela and then demonstrates the wider applicability of our theory through a range of econometric tests. Professor Hertog identifies the combination of rents and populism as an important driver of the disintegration of the liberal international order.