Lin Hong: Western Populist Ideology and the Drivers of World Political Restructuring
The 21st century opened with three epochal crises for world politics. The "9/11" attacks in 2001, the 2008 global financial crisis, and the 2015 European refugee crisis dealt successive blows to the political order of the Western world, which is founded on neoliberal values. Domestic politics in Western nations first underwent varying degrees of right-wing and conservative shifts; an unprecedented wave of populist protests and intensifying Islamophobia fractured domestic social structures, weakened domestic political consensus, and led to constant criticism of the governance capacities of Western states. Subsequently, political turbulence within Western nations produced a radiation effect, triggering unprecedented "conspicuous and large-scale protest activities across the globe." The trend of extreme conservatism led by populism provided the conceptual impetus for these global protest activities. This trend generated a latent force sufficient to reverse domestic and international politics, bringing about states of tension such as domestic political polarization in Western countries and negative interactions between states.
Domestic politics and international politics are always linked in some manner, and there are many dimensions to the observation and discussion of this connection. The wave of Western populism in the 21st century reveals the necessity and feasibility of discussing this from the perspective of political trends. Populism is a political trend sufficient to stimulate extreme action, possessing a powerful conceptual force capable of altering power structures and institutional arrangements. At present, it is necessary to re-interpret world politics while the wave of Western populism surges forward; in the study of world politics, emphasis must simultaneously be placed on the influence of domestic politics and conceptual variables within Western nations. This article aims to provide a preliminary discussion on how the trend of populism influences changes in world politics, specifically examining how the populist trend connects domestic and international political processes in Western countries, thereby initiating the process of reconstructing world politics.
I. The Value Shift: Collective Insecurity and the Right-ward Turn of Populism
Like other political trends, populism is essentially a product of domestic political and economic change. Dani Rodrik argues that populism is a political backlash generated when the forces of globalization enter a nation's domestic social level and cause social fragmentation. This contemporary populist rebellion movement we are witnessing in the West is, in essence, an anti-liberal democratic rebellion. To use the words of Harold Lasswell, the era of populism is an era of "revolt of the masses," placing the emotions of the people in the most prominent position within political events. For the ruling elites of various countries, avoiding or quelling this "revolt of the masses" is a life-or-death political mission; it requires that any national governance aimed at eliminating adverse conditions must obtain the support of ordinary people, and that any social values aimed at re-strengthening national cohesion must be recognized by the ordinary people.
In Western countries, historical populist trends were strongly influenced by domestic economic factors, primarily responding to popular demands for economic equality and distributive justice. Populism in the era of globalization is similarly stimulated by the gap between rich and poor and the problem of inequality. For example, after the 2008 global financial crisis, fiscal austerity policies in European countries gave rise to a left-wing populism seeking equitable distribution, while simultaneously Bernie Sanders launched a left-wing populist movement of a social-democratic nature in the United States. However, due to the influence of neoliberal policies, markets, capital, transnational corporations, and supranational organizations were able to penetrate domestic political processes, causing relations between the people and the state, and between states themselves, to become strained. More and more ordinary people believe that the problem of economic inequality is related to the decline in the state's willingness and ability to look after its citizens, and that it is precisely globalization that has interfered with the state's will, weakened its capacity, and brought about even more severe cultural and value shocks. Arjun Appadurai argues that globalization has been weakening the nation-state, turning it eventually into an illusion of the national community—the final cultural resource for the state to achieve total rule. This anxiety regarding state capacity has bred a profound collective insecurity in Western societies, greatly fueling national conservatism centered on anti-immigration and a mono-ethnic national identity, which in turn has nurtured right-wing and conservative populist trends.
Collective insecurity in the era of globalization exists within the profound identity politics or culture wars of Western society. Ken Jowitt saw in the post-Cold War world order a re-drawing of boundaries and a re-shaping of identity, as well as a proliferation of conflict and a significant increase in uncertainty. From the real-world connections of "9/11" and terrorism, the financial crisis and the sharp reduction of welfare, and the refugee crisis and vanishing national borders, the masses have felt a crisis of the state, a crisis of identity, and a crisis of survival. Wealth, respect, and security are universal goals for members of society, but successive crisis shocks have seriously shaken people's confidence in pursuing these goals. Max Weber argued that humans are cultural beings, possessing the capacity and the will to adopt a specific stance toward the world and to endow the world with meaning; anxiety and insecurity are a pessimistic attitude toward the world, but they also contain a strong will to change the status quo and the order. Lasswell analyzed the complex relationship between world politics and individual insecurity, arguing that under the influence of the Industrial Revolution, drastic social changes led to people losing their identification with traditional authority or values. He believed that because individuals are deprived of a sense of personal security and lack a sense of belonging, universal anxiety is created, leading to the belief that ideas and psychology have a decisive significance for political processes. If the current political and economic system cannot sufficiently alleviate the mass anxiety, the masses will seek out minority groups as scapegoats to vent their hatred, while also listening to the inducements of out-of-power elites with ulterior motives to endorse their anti-establishment political programs; the result is that "the 'politics of resentment' becomes a useful tool for seizing power in domestic and even international politics." In Western and Northern Europe, this "politics of resentment" driven by collective insecurity manifests as the daily rise of nativism, xenophobia, and extreme racism. Various assumptions or judgments—such as foreign immigrants crowding out public service resources and weakening local cultural values, or the influx of refugees threatening local public safety—have stimulated xenophobic sentiments among the European populace. From a social perspective, several historical policy actions in the United States to restrict immigrant entry also stemmed from universal insecurity: "this universal insecurity was produced by America's new role in the world and its own internal reforms." In the present era, the universal insecurity of Americans comes from the crisis of culture and identity brought by the influx of immigrants; it is essentially a distrust of the external world, thereby producing a strong psychological mass demand for belonging and self-protection. In this sense, the trend of populism is the result of conflict between local collective activity and external socio-culture; it constructs values entirely different from liberalism or socialism, opening the door for the return of identity politics involving nation, religion, and tribe.
Western populism in the 21st century has awakened values and concepts within political culture that are more conservative, more localized, and thus more isolated and xenophobic. While emphasizing a class politics of "up-down" confrontation, it focuses even more on an ethnic politics of "inside-outside" confrontation, moving daily from radical left-wing positions toward extremist right-wing positions. From its roots, the reason the revived populist trend possesses a more distinct right-wing and conservative coloring is closely related to the ideological resources it has obtained from nationalism. Anthony Giddens argues: "Populism exists almost everywhere, but the extremists among them often trigger crises. In a sense, they are mostly nationalists and Euroskeptics." The confluence of populism and nationalism has created an extreme form known as national-populism or right-wing populism, establishing three core demands for the ultra-conservative domestic ideologies of 21st-century Western states.
First, it emphasizes the severity of external threats. Both populism and nationalism possess the ideological power to trigger adversarial politics; the former views the establishment elite as the enemy, while the latter views "those not of our kind" as the enemy. Lasswell pointed out: "To be able to sustain an offensive, there must be an enemy; sometimes this enemy can be found domestically, such as monopolists, capitalists, or Wall Street speculators, but more often the unconscious mind targets some foreign threat as the bullseye for attack." Due to the massive influx of immigrants and the emergence of the refugee problem, domestic ethnic groups feel an unprecedented crisis of identity and culture, holding a hostile attitude toward liberal elites who introduce relaxed immigration policies and toward foreign immigrants who "snatch" jobs and welfare. From the Trump administration in the U.S., the success of Brexit in the UK, and the "Yellow Vest" movement in France, to the collective rise of right-wing populist parties in European countries, one can find the social soil suitable for the confluence of populism and nationalism. In the West, a series of events expressing populist and nationalist demands have become symbols for expressing anger toward anything external. From anti-Semitism to hatred of people of color, Muslim groups, and other ethnic minorities, the expression of social grievances is externalized and emotional. Although Western social movements dominated by white groups also possess left-wing colorings of the working class and the grassroots opposing social injustice, this vertical resistance is increasingly giving way to horizontal resistance driven by nativist and xenophobic values.
Second, it emphasizes holistic interests centered on the state. Western practice shows that populism admires authoritarianism and statism; nationalism participated in the construction process of the modern state. Both possess an unswerving loyalty to the state, firmly believing that the state occupies a decisive position in ideology. Their confluence is a response to the weakening of state power and national interests by globalization and external threats; they work together to forge local-first or even exclusive national interest preferences into a new national interest, and together they revise open and pluralistic liberal foreign strategies. The initial goal of populism was the pursuit of equal rights and distributive justice, placing the hope for achieving equality and justice in a powerful state. Similarly, "the wave of nationalism sometimes rises in the name of the demand for equality, and expands into an imperialist demand for hegemony over those with heterogeneous cultures." Trump’s "Make America Great Again" and the "Country First" claims of other populist leaders all use the banner of national interest to promote anti-globalization concepts of xenophobia and isolationism. The far-right French presidential candidate Éric Zemmour, dubbed the "French Trump," used the campaign slogan "Mass immigration is a catastrophe for the nation," declaring that deepening "Islamization" puts "our country in danger." Unlike traditional nationalism or populism, national-populism no longer uses narrow ethnic or class concepts to explain the crises facing the state, but rather combines the "nation" (ethnos) with the "people" (demos) to provide a moral defense for its view of the state.
Furthermore, importance should be attached to the agentic power of values and ideas. For a long time, the influence of ideational factors in domestic and international affairs has been generally underestimated. Although ideational factors have been considered within a neo-utilitarian framework since the rise of neorealism and neo-institutionalism in the 1980s, people still emphasize only their instrumentality—that is, the significance of ideas for individual units pursuing material interests—and neglect the agentic role of values for political actors. In fact, ideas, identities, and values can help actors aggregate preferences and demands, thereby influencing collective action and political institutions. Helen Milner argues that the value preferences of political actors are more fundamental than institutional structures, because institutions are only important when combined with a preference structure. In historical practice, facts showing that ideas act upon human action beyond interests or institutions are everywhere. Friedrich Schiller once described the 17th-century European religious wars this way: "Seldom did any man fight voluntarily for the interests of the state and the prince; but for religion, the merchant, the artist, and the peasant alike took up arms... For religion, people were willing to give up wealth and blood and even renounce all earthly hopes." In the 21st century, identity politics, recognition politics, or the politics of faith have amassed enormous energy to drive political change. Extremely xenophobic national-populism relies heavily on the construction of values and ideology, emphasizing cultural differences in race, religion, and even language to provoke various cultural conflicts between groups with different identities.
II. Reshaping the Political Process: The Impact of Populism
Trends in the transformation of human life patterns are closely related to two structures: first, the social interest structure; second, the state institutional structure. The interaction of these two structures affects human activities at various levels—local, national, and global. When analyzing domestic and international factors in foreign policy, Western international relations academia has debated whether "social interests are important, or domestic institutions are more important," with all parties agreeing that both need to be incorporated into consideration in a consistent manner. Institutionally oriented researchers argue that values and interest preferences cannot provide a sufficient explanation for political change; they believe that the existence of social facts requires support and maintenance by institutions established by people. However, under the impact of globalization, whether in the industrialized West or the underdeveloped Third World, "the inability of existing institutions to constrain and regulate tensions and conflicts will encourage people to try new institutional arrangements." The greatest impact of globalization on the domestic politics of Western countries is the change in their social interest structures and value consensuses, especially bringing about wealth polarization and identity crises. In response, populism forms new values and policy demands out of the dissatisfaction and anxiety of mainstream ethnic groups, demanding reform of the neoliberal global political and economic order and influencing public policy by participating in the domestic political processes of Western countries.
The populist trend of thought inputs new interest demands and value preferences into the domestic political processes of Western countries, exerting a major influence on state-society relations, the pattern of party politics, and the formulation of public policy. First, populism has strengthened the "society-dominated" nature of the domestic political structures in Western countries. The so-called domestic political structure generally refers to a country's political institutions, social structure, and the policy networks that combine the two. From a compositional perspective, although decision-making organizations are at the center of the political structure, the relationship between the state and society—or rather, the social forces relative to the state—has a decisive influence on the political structure. "A country's domestic order structurally encompasses the institutions and practices, rules and procedures in the operation of political society, as well as the values and ideas deeply embedded in the political culture." Peter Gourevitch distinguished between state-dominated structures of "strong state-weak society" and society-dominated structures of "weak state-strong society." Historical practice shows that populism is more likely to appear in society-dominated structures, because anti-establishment politics is difficult to generate in a "strong state-weak society" structure, where a strong state has sufficient means to control social forces that might divide the nation. In political structures where institutional power is weak and social power is strong, social movements are frequent and radical trends of thought surge; in these cases, populism is a common phenomenon. Against the backdrop of globalization, with the rise of domestic democratic demands in Western nations and the escalation of external economic and social pressures—especially the continuous stimulation of practical problems such as economic inequality and identity crises—populist trends have more opportunities to incite social forces to launch attacks against the establishment elites, using social discontent to form public opinion pressure and strengthening civil society’s intervention in and dominance over domestic political structures. If traditional populism strengthened the antagonistic relationship between domestic elites and social masses, then under the impact of globalization, populism nourished by nationalism has further highlighted the antagonism between one's own country and other countries, as well as between one's own country and the international system, influencing domestic foreign policy choices and the exercise of international power by shaping exclusive policy preferences.
Second, populism enters the political process through participation in party competition, leading to a loosening of the traditional party political landscape. Cass Mudde argues: "the populist surge is an illiberal democratic response to decades of undemocratic liberal policies." Globalization has brought problems such as unfair distribution, identity crises, and democratic deficits to the domestic politics of Western countries, exacerbating popular resentment toward establishment elites and disappointment with mainstream political parties. This resentment and disappointment have contributed to the success of populist parties in elections. Since 2010, support for populist parties in Western countries has reached its highest historical level since 1960. In 2017, populist support in EU countries reached 19% and maintained a continuous upward trend. Dani Rodrik explains the collapse of mainstream parties in Europe and America and the rise of extreme populist parties using a "supply-demand" paradigm. He argues that mainstream parties in Europe and America chose to exert their political role from the supply side—that is, providing interpretive narratives prior to social action to guide society toward specific programmatic directions—but offered few clear solutions or effective policy measures to address public dissatisfaction and concerns. In contrast, peripheral populist parties, based on considerations of political mobilization, actively responded to practical issues of common concern to the masses, striving to resonate with the demand side. The loss of voters for mainstream parties in Europe and America is actually the result of their declining responsiveness and the loss of appeal in the discursive mobilization of the center-right and center-left. This change provided a massive space for mobilization for identity politics and populist discourse, where policy issues such as anti-globalization, anti-immigration, and anti-EU became discursive tools for peripheral and extreme right-wing populist parties to expand their political influence. To cater to the masses, some European right-wing populist parties have even proposed mixed left-right policy programs—that is, maintaining a right-wing anti-immigrant stance socio-culturally while leaning toward a left-wing position politically and economically, demanding the strengthening of citizen welfare and the expansion of democratic political rights. John Judis observed the flexible strategies of European right-wing populist parties in recent years and found that these parties are changing their anti-tax and anti-government intervention stances, partially adopting social democratic left-wing propositions and beginning to oppose neoliberalism and support the welfare state; for example, in France, "Le Pen's National Front became the defender of the welfare state." In Western countries, the flexible adjustment of political strategies has increased the social support for populist parties, making their impact on the traditional party landscape more durable and powerful. For now, although populist parties in European countries have not developed to the extent of replacing mainstream parties, their vote shares and positions in parliaments have undergone fundamental changes, bringing major challenges to the traditional political order and public policy choices. In the United States, although the institutional penetration of populism lacks the party-political path found under European multi-party systems, the social rifts and political polarization caused by this penetration have largely changed the two-party landscape, making it increasingly difficult for the two parties to reach a consensus on domestic issues.
Third, populism participates comprehensively in Western political parties, elections, parliaments, and other activities, inputting policy preferences into the political process. Political science research usually focuses on pluralist actors and their competitive or cooperative policy preferences in domestic politics, holding that national politics is rarely a complete hierarchy with only a single policy maker. Especially in Western countries that hold themselves out as democratic regimes, legislative and executive branches jointly influence policy-making, and ruling parties, ruling coalitions, and opposition parties are often in a state of competition during the policy-making process, forming a kind of "veto system." However, existing theories of international relations understand domestic politics differently, tending to view the state as a unitary actor: "domestic politics is often seen as organized according to hierarchical principles, with a single actor at the top of domestic politics exercising final decision-making." Milner questioned this, arguing that the interior of a state is a polyarchy composed of actors with different preferences. Based on this premise, she proposed a parsimonious model explaining how domestic forces impact international politics, emphasizing the important influence of domestic preference differences and political institutional differences on international politics. The anti-establishment politics of Western populism reflects the fact that different value preferences exist within the state, and even more so, reflects the complexity of political maneuvering among pluralist actors. In the process of policy formulation, domestic actors possess four key powers: the ability to initiate and set the agenda, the ability to amend policy proposals, the ability to approve or veto policies, and the ability to refer them to a referendum. Populist parties and their supporters in different countries possess these four powers to varying degrees, especially in initiating agendas, vetoing policies, and pushing for referendums. George Tsebelis focused on domestic actors as "veto players," arguing that as the number of these actors increases, their preferences diverge, and their internal consistency decreases, the difficulty of decision-making will increase accordingly. In Western countries, populism plays the role of a widely influential veto player in the decision-making process of both internal and foreign affairs. Its opposition to neoliberalism and globalization has not only set off biased political mobilization domestically but has also formed political alliances on specific issues such as anti-immigration and anti-establishment, directly affecting the preferences and choices of foreign policy.
Foreign policy serves the national interest, but the perceptions among various groups within Western countries regarding what constitutes the national interest are often inconsistent. In Western political practice, governments and ruling parties define the national interests they pursue based on domestic political goals and formulate corresponding foreign policies. For example, they may take adventurous or aggressive foreign policy actions to divert domestic public attention from economic hardships or unfair distribution, thereby improving the public opinion environment for the government’s rule or influencing election results. The influence of populist parties on domestic public policy is concentrated in social fields such as welfare, taxation, income, and employment, vigorously promoting public policies aimed at expanding state intervention, increasing welfare, and raising employment rates. In terms of foreign policy, they advocate for decoupling and non-cooperation, opposing immigration, free trade, and international norms. The domestic political mobilization of populist parties in Europe and America is full of various anti-globalization demands. After entering the domestic political process through social movements, party politics, and parliamentary activities, they subsequently steer foreign policy toward a conservative direction that opposes global mobility and transnational cooperation.
III. The Formation of a Global Political Trend: The Spillover of Populism
Populism is a domestic political trend formed under the external stimulus of globalization. Within the domestic political systems of Western nations, it has shaped anti-globalization and anti-liberal value systems and policy preferences, serving as a major driver of social fragmentation and political polarization. Simultaneously, populism responds to the actions of other states and the international system through increasingly conservative foreign policies, forcing these nations to adopt nativist and xenophobic external stances. This externalizes conservative internal issues onto the international stage; as a result, populist trends spill over into the world political system through institutionalized channels. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, the United States and Western European countries—which benefited most from globalization—have shifted their domestic populist pressures outward, implementing exclusive and uncooperative populist foreign policies and global strategies. This has profoundly impacted the distribution of power and interests in world politics. It is said that "the progress of science and technology and the human demand for recognition are the fundamental driving forces of change in world politics." [10] Populism represents the most radical portion of the human demand for recognition. In its process of rightward shift and extremization, it has triggered identity politics, religious wars, or cultural conflicts, echoing the collective insecurity of domestic mainstream populations. It has also become an ideological tool for states to enhance their national autonomy and expand national interests within world politics.
Current Western populist trends have not yet reached the point of subverting the U.S.-led liberal international order, and they even occasionally retreat under the counter-offensives of liberals in various countries. However, through the interaction of the following three mechanisms, this deconstructive domestic political trend has inevitably crossed national borders and developed into a global political current with far-reaching influence on the world political landscape.
First is the outward transfer of domestic political and economic contradictions within Western countries. Liberals claim that liberal governments advocating free trade can create a favorable world order. Populists, however, argue that globalization has brought about a "runaway world" [11] that, instead of creating a good order, has led to more severe economic inequality and identity crises. Noam Chomsky argues that neoliberalism is "little more than a modern name for the struggle by a tiny minority of the rich to limit the political power and rights of the people." Therefore, in the eyes of populists, globalization is the chief culprit behind domestic wealth polarization. In post-WWII Europe, when many countries fell into severe economic troughs, foreign tourists and businessmen were viewed as threats by local residents. Middle-class citizens and workers, seeing no direct benefits from foreigners, easily deduced that they were suffering losses. To please domestic voters, political elites choose to deflect domestic economic contradictions and alleviate public opinion pressure by actively shaping external enemies and implementing tougher foreign policies. In the United States, Donald Trump’s rise to power was the result of the decline of traditional manufacturing and the intensification of white identity crises—both domestic predicaments brought to the U.S. by globalization. After lower- and middle-class white voters propelled Trump to the presidency, he immediately transferred these economic and social contradictions outward through a foreign policy of "tough decoupling."
Second is the demonstration effect of anti-globalization movements in the core states of the world system. Stimulated by globalization, populist trends exist to varying degrees in most Western countries, but their impact is most significant in the U.S. and Europe, which occupy the center of the world political system. Yang Guangbin has pointed out that "the political trends or discourse systems catalyzed by the political development of core states are promoted externally by those states as factual national interests, even to the point of organizing international mechanisms to spread their ideas, thereby making a piece of local knowledge or thought into a global trend." [12] The United States is the leading nation of globalization, but since the "9/11" attacks, its hegemonic status has become difficult to sustain. U.S. domestic opinion generally holds that the diffusion of technological innovation and capital flows increasingly favor competitors. Combined with the immense costs of maintaining global order, more and more citizens believe that the U.S.'s dominant position as the leading state has been seriously eroded. This sense of national loss has placed the U.S. at the forefront of the wave of internationalizing right-wing populism. Influenced by the "America First" concept, the three pillars of the U.S.-led "liberal hegemonic order"—namely, U.S. superpower strength, U.S.-led international institutions, and U.S.-promoted liberal values—have all come under assault to varying degrees. The shift toward conservatism in American politics has also influenced the values and policy orientations of many other countries. In particular, Trump’s policy measures, such as evading international responsibilities and emphasizing the primacy of domestic interests, have triggered significant international effects. Imitators like the "Trump of Brazil," "Trump of Britain," and "Trump of France" have appeared one after another. Many countries have increasingly moved toward anti-globalization conservatism through adjustments to their domestic and foreign policies.
Third is the weakening of national autonomy by globalization. The external behavior of a state is essentially determined by the pattern of power allocation within the state system, which links international and domestic power politics together. "In a polyarchy, reaching internal compromises is crucial, and international and foreign policies become part of the domestic power struggle and the achievement of internal compromise." [13] Two-level game theory also posits that domestic and international politics are both power-centered gaming processes; the domestic level is a process of ratification games, while the international level is a process of negotiation games, forming a coherent whole of power politics. Peter Gourevitch explored how the international system constrains domestic politics, how domestic structures affect state behavior, and the importance of domestic society. "Global integration and universal cosmopolitanism have reduced the past sense of independence, identity, and autonomy, pushing many states to cede part of their sovereignty to obtain benefits through cooperative participation in a competitive global market." [14] Therefore, economic globalization based on the priority of capital and markets has, to some extent, limited the state's ability to respond appropriately to the external environment. The concomitant result is restricted national autonomy, giving international or supranational mechanisms more opportunity to influence domestic power distribution. In Europe, the constraints of European Union mechanisms on the actual choices of sovereign states are an important reason for the emergence of Euroscepticism and anti-EU social movements. If the exercise of state power is further constrained, "the most likely consequence is the emergence of a network of contracts, associations, and interactions between and within national societies that escapes the effective control of centralized government institutional policy." Populism is generated within decentralized domestic social networks, but it is essentially the domestic political consequence of the global economy.
Therefore, populist trends have emerged in an era of globalization characterized by escalating crises of governance and identity, creating an image in the West of nations spinning out of control and globalization disintegrating. This anti-globalization global political trend has brought about three important transformations. Regarding interstate relations, populist trends have strengthened national identity, and policy preferences favoring "national interests first" have changed the patterns of interaction between states. "Managing globalization means the opening of new political fields, mixed with the restructuring of governance and political power." [15] Due to the lack of effective domestic and global strategies to deal with the internal and external crises brought by globalization, crises of sovereignty, governance, and identity have intensified and become increasingly intertwined. Driven by domestic extremist forces, exclusive conceptual frameworks and policy choices "place national foreign policy within a mindset of conflict and 'beggar-thy-neighbor' thinking, doubly internalizing 'us' versus 'them' identity differences at both domestic and international levels." The decline of globalization and the rise of ethno-populism occur simultaneously; together, they weaken interdependence and mutual trust between states. Various trade frictions, economic decoupling, and political conflicts occur frequently, and the purpose of state action may return to "maintaining power, increasing power, and demonstrating power." In this context, so-called active participation in international politics may even mean preparing for or becoming embroiled in some form of interstate war.
Regarding international mechanisms, populist trends have weakened trust in international institutions and norms. Ethno-populism generally maintains an unfriendly attitude toward the outside world, especially holding skeptical or hostile views on issues of trade, migration, or integration. This attitude affects not only trust and interdependence between states but also trust in the international mechanisms that handle these issues. Trump’s rejection of international organizations and conventions, and the dominance of the "America First" concept in U.S. foreign policy, possess clear right-wing populist characteristics, seriously weakening domestic belief in the U.S. regarding international cooperation and multilateralism. As the willingness of various countries to participate globally continues to decline, it becomes difficult for international mechanisms to function. This will result in the intensification or even loss of control of power games and interest competition between states amidst mutual suspicion and fear. John H. Herz pointed out that the sense of insecurity arising from mutual suspicion and fear forces states into power competition to seek more security. Since absolute security can never be finally attained, such competition can only lead to self-defeat. The weakening of international mechanisms will not only lead to a stronger collective sense of insecurity within states but will also cause states to fall back into an insolvable "security dilemma" within the world system, leading to intensified arms races and a surging risk of war.
Regarding the global consensus on values, ideologies supporting globalization—such as neoliberalism, multiculturalism, globalism, and cosmopolitanism—have faced joint attacks from populism and nationalism. The antagonistic relationship between populism and globalization demonstrates that there is an irreconcilable contradiction between domestic democratic politics and global capital markets. Dani Rodrik argues that to resolve this contradiction, states have three choices: first, limit domestic democracy to win international market competitiveness; second, limit globalization to establish the legitimacy of domestic democratic politics; and third, pursue democratic globalization at the cost of national sovereignty. The first choice is what neoliberalism requires; the second is a typical populist option; and the third is inconsistent with mainstream views on sovereignty and democracy—this choice of ignoring national interests lacks realism. However, regardless of the choice, a state cannot simultaneously have globalization, democracy, and national self-determination. Populism pursues democracy and equality internally while demanding sovereignty and self-determination externally. It views global civilization as a threat to its own national culture and opposes cultural communication and civilizational dialogue based on mutual understanding and tolerance, thereby earning a reputation for being narrow-minded, extreme, and selfish. However, under the influence of the "nativism-first" values of populism, the politics of local and ethnic identity constantly demand expanded space for action. Ideologies such as regional separatism and extreme nationalism have invaded domestic and international political processes; etatist and localist ethics are currently transcending globalist and cosmopolitan ethics.
IV. The Reconstruction of the World Political System: The Driving Force of Populism
Since entering the 21st century, progress in science and technology has driven a structural shift in the drivers of development. With the decline of traditional manufacturing, the rapid development of artificial intelligence, and the increasing intensification of unbalanced development and unfair distribution, the layout of the world economy and politics has undergone unprecedented changes. As in any historical period, the driving force for global change comes first from within states. The world political changes of the 21st century stem largely from domestic anti-globalization forces led by populism. Populist trends are a powerful driver of domestic economic and social change; especially after merging with nationalism, they exhibit a stronger defensiveness and exclusiveness, with their political influence reaching its highest point since the 1930s. In her new book, For a Left Populism, the British left-wing political scientist Chantal Mouffe declared the arrival of a "populist moment," referring to a moment of crisis for the contemporary Western neoliberal hegemonic order. In fact, a series of "populist moments"—the financial crisis, the European debt crisis, the Tea Party movement, the election of Trump, Brexit, and the European refugee crisis—have forged an unprecedented "populist era" for the Western world. Amidst this era's tide, the reconstruction of the world political landscape has become inevitable. The following major transformations signal the beginning of this reconstruction process.
First, the influence of domestic politics within world politics is rising rapidly. The field of International Relations (IR) does not deny that domestic political order exerts a significant influence on a state's external behavior, yet traditional scholarship has not accorded this sufficient attention. Helen Milner argues that key paradigms of IR research, such as realism and neo-institutionalism, have overlooked the vital role of domestic politics as a crucial component of international relations. The view that domestic factors, rather than international events, are the root of a state's external behavior is not new. The ancient Greek historian Thucydides observed long ago that events occurring within the Greek city-states shaped their external behavior more than the interactions between those city-states. In explaining the so-called "security dilemma," modern IR theory also maintains that "states are often the primary source of international insecurity," because a state may adopt external policies that provoke others to satisfy domestic political needs. Kalevi J. Holsti argued that one cannot assume the problem of war is merely a matter of inter-state relations, as security between states increasingly depends on the security within those states; "the problems of contemporary politics and future politics are essentially problems of domestic politics." Robert O. Keohane criticized the debates in IR after "9/11," arguing that analyzing the consequences of the attack on the United States required grasping not only factors of power structure, but also changes in subjective beliefs and their impact on strategy. One must consider the factors of world politics emphasized by different schools of thought—that is, exploring the links between domestic politics and international politics. Therefore, to understand the contemporary transformations of world politics, one should attach high importance to the critical role of domestic political processes.
The populist trend is a major topic of domestic political analysis in 21st-century Western countries, highlighting the intensifying antagonism, pluralism, and uncertainty of domestic political processes in these nations. Interpreting the phenomenon of populism requires breaking through the traditional understanding of the state as a unitary unit of analysis. It is necessary not only to focus on the varying roles of executive organs, legislative departments, bureaucracies, political parties, and interest groups in domestic political processes and their different impacts on a country's foreign policy, but even more so to focus on populist parties as anti-establishment forces and the demands and influence of their broad base of supporters on national foreign policy. In domestic politics, populism emphasizes the values of distributive justice and identity security, forming conservative and exclusionary foreign policy preferences. This both weakens a country's willingness to participate in international affairs and its level of investment in international institutional building, while also hindering the country's normal relations with the outside world and undermining the functional performance of regional or global norms. Therefore, the various challenges launched by the populist trend against the current liberal world order demonstrate that the study of world politics should start from the domestic level and fully consider the complex changes in domestic political processes.
Second, values have become an important driving force for change in world politics. Realistic power politics theory, proceeding from strict rationalism, views the state as the most important actor in world affairs, emphasizes the distinction between domestic and international politics, and overlooks or even refuses to acknowledge that the ideas and institutions playing an important role in domestic politics might also influence world politics. However, realist theory finds it difficult to fully explain how populism acts simultaneously on domestic and international politics, or how identity politics has transcended class politics to become the primary force of the anti-establishment movement. Judith Goldstein and Robert Keohane examined the causal pathways through which ideas influence foreign policy, arguing that ideas can help people determine preferences, serving as a "road map"; ideas can serve a "focal point" function by concentrating individual actors together; and ideas can influence policy choices through institutionalized pathways. Yang Guangbin has explored the internal mechanisms by which political trends influence world political transformation, arguing that domestic needs give rise to political thought, inducing changes in the domestic political and economic order. Central states then become the main drivers for the external dissemination of these political ideas. While political ideas change the world order, they simultaneously shape new international relations. Domestic political trends formed around specific value preferences and political concepts enter the political process through institutionalized paths, influencing foreign policy and international strategy; meanwhile, changes in the world political economy input new preferences and concepts back into domestic political processes. Therefore, the movement from the domestic to the global is a coherent and cyclical political process, in which ideas and values play a role in triggering and driving change.
The replacement of liberalism and socialism by populism as a driver of change is a new trend in the domestic and international political transformations of 21st-century Western countries. This trend poses a challenge of paradigm shift to international political research: namely, the need to fully consider the role of domestic political processes, and even more so, the role of values, ideas, and ideology. In this sense, "world politics" is conceptually more capable of accommodating these two roles than "international politics." "What truly links the world together and forms 'world politics' is a certain political trend centered on ideology—a jurisdictional political phenomenon formed by the drive of ideological (including religious) theory." Like liberalism and socialism, populism emphasizes that ideas are generated from social change, holding that social structures shape the identities and preferences of actors, as well as their ideas and behavior. Although populism is merely a value system with a "thin core" and a loose structure, it pursues an illiberal world political order. By aligning with nationalism, it has established a set of value symbols and behavioral norms used to reshape state authority and repair the loopholes in the existing order. It remains to be seen whether the current challenges of right-wing populism to the liberal world order will succeed, but the formidable power of ideas has already become manifest. The conservative values of populism, which demand a return to the nation-state and the pursuit of "country first" interests, are modifying the evolutionary direction of world politics.
Finally, anti-systemic movements will exert a lasting impact on the world political system. World politics is a systemic movement that is sometimes turbulent and sometimes stable, influenced by domestic and inter-state politics of specific periods; it is the collective result of political, economic, and cultural factors. Since the 1980s, economic globalization has not brought about a truly stable world political system, nor has neoliberalism integrated the world into a unified system in terms of ideas and institutions. Instead, it has led to severe polarization between rich and poor [16] and identity crises within states, and even "national imaginaries of relative deprivation exist between states." Wang Zhengyi points out that the capitalist world system benefits only a few, while the majority harbor sentiments of resistance; although the resistance of the majority has changed the balance of power and led to new political reconciliations, every such reconciliation integrates the anti-systemic movement into the framework of political stability of the capitalist world system. Anti-systemic movements are transformative factors in the world system; the sentiments of resentment and acts of protest against the world political system shake the stable structure of the current system, creating a trend of fragmentation with the state or even the local level as the unit of action.
The extreme conservative trend formed by the convergence of populism and nationalism is an ideology targeted at non-material interests such as identity and religious culture, stimulating powerful anti-globalization resistance. Domestic and foreign policies are the result of games between diverse domestic actors; therefore, "a country's actions do not arise from a consensus formed by calculations of strategic interest, but from the struggles between individuals with different perceptions and interests." The emphasis by ethno-populism [17] on ideational and value-based national differences or cultural rifts makes it extremely difficult to establish trans-national or trans-ethnic value consensuses, and renders compromises on ethnic contradictions or identity conflicts nearly impossible. Subject to the centrifugal forces of populism and nationalism, the world political order will become more fragmented, loose, and increasingly "in-itself and for-itself." Fundamentally, the reason populism causes political polarization and identity conflict in the domestic societies of Western countries, while fostering inter-state conflict and weakening international norms in world politics, stems from its rebellious mindset and conservative values. Consequently, populist-oriented foreign policies typically maintain clear defensive, contractionary, and exclusionary stances, demanding that the state refuse to take on additional international responsibilities and reject international cooperation that might require interest compromises or the cession of power. Populist policies will undoubtedly exacerbate skepticism in world politics, encouraging fragmentation, opposition, and aggressive extremist behavior. If populism—especially right-wing ethno-populism—is allowed to spread unchecked, it will be difficult for world politics to form value consensuses or unified actions, and it will instead slide toward a more fragmented future.
Conclusion
The world political system is like a loosely connected political jigsaw puzzle. Behind every piece lies a different understanding of the world by diverse entities, and behind these different understandings are different values. These include liberalism and multiculturalism that lead globalization, populism and nationalism that resolutely oppose globalization, as well as post-materialist concepts such as the "globalization of culture" and the "clash of civilizations" that remain subjects of endless debate. The various facets of the world that these ideological concepts seek to understand combine to form the panorama of world politics.
From a historical perspective, populism is a radical trend formed within states. It has triggered contentious social movements of unprecedented scale, bringing a series of changes in power, institutions, and ideas from the domestic political stage to the world political stage. From the moment it first appeared on the political stage, populism has been an intellectual link connecting domestic politics and world politics. Today's world has been profoundly changed by globalization and new technologies. To understand the construction and transformation of the world political order, one must possess a broader vision. It has become a matter of necessity to understand world politics by transcending the "international politics" shaped by the Peace of Westphalia. People need to examine the interlacing of domestic and international politics from a worldwide perspective, and focus on the interactions between power, institutions, and ideas across different political processes. Practice since the 21st century has repeatedly shown that populism is not only participating in but also profoundly influencing the political changes of today's world, becoming a force that cannot be ignored in the political landscapes of Western countries and the global stage at large. Due to the enduring nature of populism, the future evolution of world politics will be fraught with uncertainty.