Abstract Populist foreign policy can be a powerful political tool. In some countries in the Global South, it has successfully mobilized civil movements and intensified calls for democratization. In others, it has weakened democratic institutions and pushed countries into competitive autocratic rule and, it has even helped to consolidate the rule of long-standing authoritarian incumbents. We know that, when conducting foreign policy, populists tend to: (1) domesticate foreign policy for a national audience; (2) critique global governance institutions; (3) personalize foreign policymaking; and (4) further centralize power. I contribute to these debates with insights on populism policy in a less-understood part of the world—post-colonial Sub-Saharan Africa. I propose a two-part mechanism of strategic use of populist foreign policy discourse with the intention to effect political change, arguing that populist leaders in a post-colonial context critique the continued dependence on colonial powers, which they see as self-servient “elites” and propose an alternative view of “the people” whose identity is grounded in regional (Sub-Saharan African and sometimes more generally African) solidarity and values. I illustrate this with an analysis of political communication by two competing politicians in Senegal—Macky Sall and Ousmane Sonko—who use foreign policy communication for radically different aims—to further personalize power leading to political instability versus advancing democratic consolidation and furthering a regional identity that is anti-colonial and pan-African.
Corina Lacatus (Tue,) studied this question.
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