Populism, the International and Methodological Nationalism: Global Order and the Iran–Israel Nexus
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321718817476 |
| Author | Shabnam J Holliday |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
817476PSX0010.1177/0032321718817476Political StudiesHolliday
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Political Studies
2020, Vol. 68(1) 3 –19
Populism, the International
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321718817476
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Nationalism: Global Order
and the Iran–Israel Nexus
Shabnam J Holliday
Abstract
This article contends that the international is integral to populism. Thus, it calls for populism
scholarship to embrace the interconnectivity between the domestic/internal and international/
external. By borrowing from Global Historical Sociology, Global International Relations
and Ernesto Laclau’s notion of populist discourse, the article puts forward a new conceptual
framework for the study of populism that bridges the gap between Comparative Politics and
International Relations. It shows how populist discourse simultaneously constructs several aspects
of the social world: the actor who is articulating it and its relationship with its own population,
that actor’s relationship with others in the international system, and global order. To illustrate its
case, it examines populist discourses of Islamic Republic of Iran elites. Their discourses articulate
the need to maintain the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy and populist credentials inside and outside
Iran, delegitimise Israel, and construct global order. These discourses are grounded in a historical
trajectory: the 1979 Revolution.
Keywords
populism, Global IR, global order, Iran, revolution
Accepted: 14 November 2018
Introduction
Recent years have seen a surge in the prevalence of populist agendas. While these include
European states such as Poland, Hungary, Italy, France, the UK (Gusterson, 2017) and
Greece (Chryssogelos, 2017), a ‘global rise of populism’ involving the Asia-Pacific, Latin
America, Africa, and the US has also been identified (Moffitt, 2016: 1–2). Furthermore,
issues that affect the ‘international’ – that is ‘relations between social orders’ (see Go and
Lawson, 2017: 2, fn. 3) – have featured heavily in populist agendas, from immigration
to trade and environmental multinational agreements. Yet, the extensive scholarship on
Lecturer in International Relations, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK
Corresponding author:
Shabnam J. Holliday, Lecturer in International Relations, University of Plymouth, 20 Portland Villas, Plymouth
PL4 8AA, UK.
Email: shabnam.holliday@plymouth.ac.uk
4
Political Studies 68(1)
populism largely remains the domain of Political Theory and Political Science (Jones,
2018) focusing primarily on populism’s relationship with democracy, or lack of it (Hadiz
and Chryssogelos, 2017). Consequently, much of this scholarship seeks to explain pop-
ulism’s emergence within individual states, rarely looking at the influence of and its
implications for the international. Meanwhile, there is a surprising poverty of discussions
of populism in International Relations (IR).1 Yet, the interrogation of populism in IR is
crucial for a better understanding of how populists simultaneously challenge domestic
politics, endeavour to maintain their populist political order, and explicitly engage with
how politics are conducted on the international level.
For instance, Donald Trump’s election as US president highlights the relationship
between the US, Israel and Iran. Notably, Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and the Islamic Republic of Iran have each been identified as ‘populist’
(Abrahamian, 1993; Ansari, 2008; Dorraj and Dodson, 2009; Filc, 2011; Gusterson, 2017;
Holliday, 2016). For Trump (2017a, 2017b), Iran is a ‘rogue regime’, a ‘threat’, and a
destabilising, destructive force that fuels sectarianism and requires isolating. Following
repeated criticisms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or ‘Iran nuclear
deal’) on 8 May 2018, Trump (2018) announced US withdrawal from the JCPOA, refer-
ring to Iran as ‘the leading state sponsor of terror’. A week later, the new American
Embassy was opened in Jerusalem following Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s
capital. These international actions are favourable to Netanyahu (see Netanyahu, 2017).
Such dynamics reaffirm the need for further interrogation of populism that explores the
relational nature of domestic, regional and international politics. The Islamic Republic’s
construction of Israel, which is grounded in a populist domestic political context, provides
an ideal case study. In addition to the international affecting the domestic, the domestic
populist agendas often extend beyond a state’s borders. This can be, as shall be illustrated
below, the articulation of global order, whose norms and values that are said to govern the
international, through populist discourse. Furthermore, not only is the construction of
global order ‘international’ in that it provides a framework for ‘relations between social
orders’, it is also both transnational and global because that framework both represents
‘transboundary relations’ and is ‘spatially expansive’ (see Go and Lawson, 2017: 2, fn. 3).
Thus, the interconnectedness between the ‘domestic’ and ‘international’, or ‘internal’ and
‘external’ (Go and Lawson, 2017), that is integral to populism, needs to be probed. In light
of this, borrowing from Global Historical Sociology (GHS), Global IR and Ernesto
Laclau’s notion of populist discourse, this article puts forward a new conceptual frame-
work for the study of populism bridging the gap between Comparative Politics and IR.
While GHS facilitates exploring the interconnectivity between the ‘internal’ and
‘external’ of populism, Global IR provides the epistemological framework for how we
address something that is ‘spatially expansive’ in the field of IR. As a means of better
understanding our world, we must embrace diversity in the articulation of populism and
ensure that certain actors and/or localities are not marginalised in that process. Building
on previous critiques of IR’s Eurocentricity and debates on how to rectify this (Acharya
and Buzan, 2010; Tickner, 2011; Tickner and Waever, 2009), Amitav Acharya (2014a:
647) criticised IR for marginalising ‘those outside the core countries of the West’, calling
instead for a Global IR that ‘transcends the divide between the West and the Rest’. Doing
Global IR includes recognising multiple forms of agency that embrace local constructions
of global order, integrating the study of regions and area studies, and a having pluralistic
universalism that recognises and respects diversity (Acharya, 2014a: 649). Notably, IR
would benefit from embracing the existing comparative approach across regions evident
Holliday
5
in populism studies (see Hadiz and Chryssogelos, 2017) as it is indicative of a pluralistic
universalism. It acknowledges similarities between populist agendas regardless of their
location.
In light of IR’s marginalisation of non-West actors, and bearing in mind the case study
at hand, it is contended that doing Global IR requires a better understanding of actors that
are often constructed as the ‘other’ in academia and/or the practice of politics by position-
ing such actors as the ‘self’. This involves area studies knowledge, facilitates reducing the
division between the ‘West’ and ‘the rest’, and enables appreciation of marginalised con-
structions of global order. Thus, this article also responds to reductionist analyses that
present Iran’s actions as being dominated by a single static characteristic, for instance, as
a ‘threat’ (see Amidror, 2007; Duus, 2011; Sherrill, 2012). Such constructions are perhaps
not surprising because the Islamic Republic has been considered ‘the enemy’ by many
Western policymakers since its establishment in 1979. The implication in such works is
that Iran is always the rogue, static ‘other’ that is fundamentally different from the forever
benign, yet (paradoxically) fluid ‘self’ in the context of both IR and foreign policy.
The article draws on Laclau’s understanding of ‘populist discourse’ to highlight the
interconnectivity between the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ integral to the populism of two
Islamic Republic presidents: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani. Although the
Islamic Republic is a multi-institutional government with varied political stances, and
despite the Supreme Leader being head of state, the president presents Iran’s portrayal of
itself to the world. It is argued that these populist discourses simultaneously articulate the
need to maintain the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy and populist credentials both inside and
outside Iran, delegitimise Israel, and construct global order in terms of the
‘oppressor’/‘oppressed’ binary. This is done by equating the Islamic Republic not only
with Iranian ‘people’, but also with a ‘people’ in the international, the Palestinians. This is
articulated in opposition to Israel, which is constructed as not being of ‘the people’ because
of its occupation of Palestine. Crucially, these populist discourses are grounded in the par-
ticular social, intellectual and historical context of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Consequently, the article provides a novel approach to examining Iran’s construction of the
international contributing to other studies that highlight the complexity of its relationship
with the international (see Akbarzadeh and Barry, 2016; Warnaar, 2013; Wastnidge, 2015;
Zaccara, 2016) and the...
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