Populism, Roles and Foreign Policy

This chapter explores the potential synergies between role theory (RT) and populist foreign policy (PFP). Roles can be used as explanatory factors of the foreign policy of populist governments and leaders. Yet, roles can also be explanandums allowing to unpack how populism in all its varieties shape the enactment of specific roles or different patterns of foreign policy role behaviour. The chapter introduces a set of role concepts to then analyse the different existing works that directly bring together RT and PFP. These works are seen as initial steps to constitute a future research agenda at the interplay roles and populism in the international and throughout the individual, state, and systemic level of analysis in foreign policy. The chapter puts an emphasis on how roles can illuminate pending research topics in PFP as much as on how PFP cases can also help amplifying RT theoretical leverage in foreign policy.