Populist Moralization of Foreign Policy Issues

This chapter explores the extent to which policy statements on International Relations are moralized by both populist and non-populist parties. We do so by performing an automated content analysis on manifesto data from 22 elections in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (using the Comparative Manifestos Project—CMP; n = 215,625 policy statements) to parse the extent to which a moralized, Manichean outlook is unique to populist rhetoric or not. We argue that moralization may occur as (populist) political leaders perceive a moral obligation to place ‘the people’s’ interests above all else, including when they conduct international politics. Alternatively, moralization could also serve the strategic purpose of building coalitions or of mobilizing support on morally salient issues such as humanitarian aid or climate change. Our analyses show that communication on foreign policy issues lends itself well to moralization, more than most other policy domains. While populist parties do not moralize foreign policy statements more, the analysis offers a fine-grained view of important differences between populist and mainstream parties in their statements on foreign policy.