As the refugee crisis transforms the EU-Turkey relationship, there are no easy choices for Greek foreign policy

The EU-Turkey summit of last Sunday cemented Turkey’s status as an indispensable partner in the management of the refugee flows towards Europe in the eyes of EU leaders – despite mounting concerns over the state of democracy in Turkey. To this end, the summit codified a broad array of rewards the EU will extend to Turkey should it actively assist in the refugee issue. Chief among them is the revival of Turkey’s long-stalled EU accession process

How Brexit will affect the balance of power in the European Parliament

Given the UK has one of the largest contingents of MEPs, how will Brexit change the way political parties are aligned in the European Parliament? Angelos Chryssogelos writes that the effects of removing British MEPs from the Parliament will be wide-ranging, with sovereigntist forces potentially strengthened inside the centre-right EPP, the centre-left S&D becoming more oriented toward an anti-austerity platform, and Eurosceptic forces more likely to consolidate around the ENF group led by Marine Le Pen

Hopes and doubts: Kyriakos Mitsotakis as New Democracy leader

On 10 January the supporters of New Democracy (ND), Greece’s centre-right opposition party, elected in the second round of a primary Kyriakos Mitsotakis as the party’s eighth leader since 1974 (not counting two interim leaders). After a year of dominance of Greek politics by Syriza and Alexis Tsipras, Mitsotakis’ election by hundreds of thousands of voters carries the promise of a real alternative slowly materializing. This note will present some conclusions from the election process, and the questions and prospects that are opened up by Mitsotakis’ victory

Nato’s new migrant mission in the Aegean is a victory for Turkey and proof of Europe’s strategic irrelevance

A plan to deploy Nato ships in the Aegean sea to tackle people smugglers operating between Turkey and Greece was agreed in early February. Angelos Chryssogelos writes that the new mission will do little to influence the dynamics of the migration crisis, with effective management of the problem still reliant on Turkish cooperation. He also argues that by signing up to the Turkish demand to make Nato the main arena for deliberations over the crisis, Europe’s interests are now in danger of being entangled with Turkey’s agenda in Syria

Still Europeanized? Greek foreign policy during the Eurozone crisis

The Eurozone crisis is now widely seen as a threshold for Greek politics, society and state structures. While there has been heightened attention in Greece and internationally on the impact of the crisis across a range of policy areas, there has been less attention on the impact of the crisis on Greek foreign policy

Creating a ‘multi-speed Europe’ would divide the EU and diminish it as a foreign policy actor

The notion of creating a ‘multi-speed Europe’, in which some EU members pursue closer integration than others, has been frequently raised since the UK’s EU referendum. Angelos Chryssogelos argues that while the idea may appear to be a neat solution to the current pressures the EU faces, a multi-speed Europe could end up burdening the EU with even bigger strategic challenges in the long-run

The EU’s vaccine debacle has revealed its limitations as a strategic actor

The European Commission has faced intense criticism over the slow rollout of Covid-19 vaccination programmes in EU states. Angelos Chryssogelos assesses what the affair tells us about the EU’s aspirations to become an effective strategic actor

Vladimir Putin’s popularity among populist parties in Europe illustrates the depth of the challenges facing European democracy

Although most mainstream political actors in the European Union have criticised the actions of Russia during the Ukraine crisis, not all parties have been critical of Vladimir Putin. Angelos-Stylianos Chryssogelos writes on Putin’s popularity among several far-right and far-left parties within the EU. He notes that while some of this support reflects compatible ideological positions, the real common ground between these parties and Putin’s regime is a belief in the use of populist politics to oppose foreign influence. He argues that the extent to which this style of politics has proved successful illustrates the challenges facing European democracy

NATO’s migrant mission in the Aegean raises major questions for Greek foreign policy

On 11 February the ministers of defense of NATO agreed to a joint proposal by Germany, Greece and Turkey to involve NATO in the efforts to stem the wave of migrants moving into the Aegean islands from Turkey. While there are still many unclear points about the exact activities of the NATO mission, the political framework of the agreement can be considered prima facie as very problematic for Greek positions and interests

Populism in foreign policy

The topic of populism in foreign policy is receiving growing attention in academic and public discourse as populist parties and movements proliferate around the world. Yet foreign policy analysis (FPA) scholars interested in the role of populism in foreign policy have to deal with a concept that is notoriously slippery and contested. The existing literature on populism and foreign policy has already offered interesting insights. Focused primarily on Europe, it usually applies the conceptualization of populism as a thin-centered ideology that attaches to thicker ideological traditions and reformulates them in terms of the elite-people divide. Following this conceptualization (that is today the dominant framework for the comparative analysis of populism, particularly in Europe), this literature argues that populist parties of the right have foreign policy positions that reflect their nativism, opposition to immigration, focus on national sovereignty, and rejection of economic and cultural globalization. Populist parties of the left on the other hand reject in their foreign policy positions neo-liberalism and open markets. Together, European populist parties of all persuasions are Eurosceptic, anti-American, and usually pro-Putin’s Russia. Highlighted are the breadth of critical and discursive approaches on populism that scholars of populism and foreign policy can use, particularly because they have been applied successfully to cases outside of Europe, where populists have long held political power and have influenced foreign policy in practice. Such conceptualizations commonly view populism as a reaction to crises of political representation engendered by dislocations caused by globalization and other shifts in international politics. These dislocations will take different forms, but populism in the West and populism in the Global South can be seen, despite more specific differences of outlook, at the very least as a specific type of reaction to concurrent political and economic crises in a rapidly denationalized and deterritorialized world. In this context, most populist foreign policies reflect a preoccupation with popular sovereignty and unmediated projection of popular demands and national interests outside of established processes of global governance. Populists will also tend to perceive and analyze foreign policy issues through the lens of the elite-underdog opposition. Populism is commonly associated or conflated with nationalism (especially in the case of the European radical right) and isolationism, but in practice this does not always have to be the case. The “people” for whom populists speak in international affairs can very well transcend national borders, as evidenced, for example, in the foreign policies of Hugo Chavez and Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who aimed to represent transnational constituencies like the Global South, the Islamic world, the world poor, etc. And while populists generally eschew commitments to broader milieu goals of the international system, they can still engage with foreign affairs if they see immediate material benefits. The same goes for trade: populists (particularly in the United States) are seen usually as ideological protectionists, but most often they do not mind striking trade deals if these favor their interests (see, e.g., Donald Trump’s discourse on this issue). In terms of theoretical and methodological advancements, foreign policy scholars interested in populism are urged to embrace the large variety of conceptual approaches on populism (ideological, critical, discursive) and to build on the growing literature on cross-regional comparison of populist politics, something particularly pertinent in a world characterized by the presence and prominence of populism in almost all world regions