Aman Kumar
With Trump back to presidency, discussions about Populism are bound to restart. In fact Trump himself has jumpstarted the discussion by issuing a notice to withdraw from the World Health Organisation (something he did in 2020 too), putting America first in international environmental agreements (a step which goes beyond his 2020 withdrawal from the Paris Agreement), an America First Trade policy, and a general America First policy. India is already doing a legal review of the trade policy.
India’s (or Bharat) Minister of External Affairs Jaishankar was asked ‘how do you see Trump – as a friend or as a threat to India’s interest’? Jaishankar called Trump ‘an American nationalist’. After noting that India-USA relations are good and that Modi and Trump share a good relation, he noted that in Trump’s policy, he sees nothing against India. Noting that Trump’s decisions will be ‘out of syllabus’, he said that ‘if (India) can conduct foreign policy out of syllabus, it will work well’. He further said that ‘there may be a few issues where we may think differently, but in many areas there will be a lot in our shared interest’. Whether it is pragmatism or Realpolitik, only time will tell. For now, it seems like the next few years will be significant for international law. Hence, it is an appropriate moment to take stock of the literature produced on the broader theme of ‘Populism and International Law’. The following list is not exhaustive. Readers are encouraged to add more titles to it by commenting below.
2018
Pasha L. Hsieh, Against Populist Isolationism: New Asian Regionalism and Global South Powers in International Economic Law, Cornell International Law Journal 2018.
2019
Heike Krieger, Populist Governments and International Law, EJIL 2019 (free pdf)
Marcela Prieto Rudolphy, Populist Governments and International Law: A Reply to Heike Krieger, EJIL 2019, (free pdf)
Paul Blokker, Populist Governments and International Law: A Reply to Heike Krieger, EJIL 2019 (free pdf)
Janne E. Nijman and Wouter G. Werner (eds.), Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2018: Populism and International Law, Springer 2019.
2020
Gerald L. Neuman (ed.), Human Rights in a Time of Populism: Challenges and Responses, CUP 2020.
Special Issue of Brazilian Journal of International Law, Volume 17, Issue 2, 2020.
Prabhash Ranjan, Narendra Modi’s Nationalist-Populism in India and International Law, EJIL Talk.
2021
Jan Petrov, When Should International Courts Intervene? How Populism, Democratic Decay and Crisis of Liberal Internationalism Complicate Things, EJIL 2021
2022
Anne Peters, Against a Deconstitutionalisation of International Law in Times of Populism, Pandemic, and War, Journal of Constitutional Justice 2022 (SSRN link)
2023
Margaret Young, Alice Palmer, Peter Danchin and Jolyon Ford, The Role of International Law in the Rise of Populism, The IILAH Podcast 2023.
2024
Peter Danchin, Jeremy Farrall, Jolyon Ford, Shruti Rana and Imogen Saunders, International Law and the Rise of Populism, ANU College of Law Research Paper No. 24.2, Virginia Journal of International Law (forthcoming 2025) [SSRN link]
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