This article explores the distinctive features of Latin American regionalism by examining its rhetorical justifications during the onset of the COVID-19 crisis. The pandemic offered an exceptional opportunity to witness the professed role of regional organizations in the Global South as bridges between national and international systems: how this role is discursively constructed and the practical limitations it faces in times of disruption. We address different attempts to (self-)justify the relevance of regionalist visions, analyzing how three (inter-)regional organizations of the Americas reacted discursively to the global public health crisis: the Common Market of the South (Mercosur), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Ibero-American Summits (SEGIB). We examine three features that have traditionally shaped Latin American visions of regionalism: coping with world hegemony; striving for regional autonomy; and expressing transnational solidarity. The findings provide insights for further understanding the legitimation of regional and global governance under conditions of uncertainty.

This article presents a conceptual and methodological framework that focuses on the interactivity, creativity, and variability of Holocaust images in digital media. Our argument unfolds in three stages. First, we introduce the concept of playful images: historical images that undergo recontextualisation, serving memetic, personal, and interactive engagements in and by digital media. Secondly, drawing on pivotal scholarship in digital methods, anthropology, sociology, and visual analysis, we identify a lacuna in contemporary methodologies and provide a rationale for an innovative approach to visual memory analysis in digital media that considers both digital media affordances and the appropriation of visual and historical materials in digital media. For that purpose, we thirdly outline a visual walkthrough method (VWM), a pragmatic performance of our approach tailored for analysing interactive digital experiences featuring playful images. By examining the playful appropriation of historical images in the video game Call of Duty: WWII (2017), we demonstrate how the interactive experience of playful images can be analysed with the help of the VWM. We conclude by discussing the position of our proposed conceptual and methodological framework within media and memory studies in the digital age.

The study of populism's international links has grown significantly. Yet, there are gaps in conceptualizing potential implications for the international order. Our study contributes to filling this gap by asking: if a ‘populist international order’ (PIO) were to emerge, and populists could envision the world close(r) to their liking, what would this order look like? We pursue answers through a plausibility probe of three deductively-derived normative pillars: 1) cooperation under a PIO is characterized by more fractured, mostly symbolic, small-scale multilateralism; 2) a PIO relies on a narrow, selective embrace of the rule of law, to be respected only when seen as representing the wishes of the ‘real people’; and 3) the commitment to pluralism in ‘international society’ is replaced by an anti-pluralist, monolithic notion of popular sovereignty as the primary behavioural driver. Our analysis is based on contemporary populist leadership from Latin America: Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro, Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and Mexico's Andrés Manuel López Obrador. We examine how these populists have addressed our proposed PIO pillars in different ways and shaped their world-order visions in relation to them. The lessons derived from this study can contribute to bridging gaps regarding the effects of global populism in International Relations, including prospects of mitigating the systemic impact of populism on the international order.

With the global rise to power of populist leaders over the past decade, research on populism, including its international implications, has flourished. However, we still lack a nuanced understanding of the international effects of this new populist wave. The special section that this article introduces seeks to bridge this gap by systematically examining three types of international effects of populism. One group of contributions addresses the impact of populism on the processes of foreign policy-making in countries governed by populists (politics). Another group focuses on effects in terms of foreign policy agenda and its substantive outcomes (policies). A third group of contributions studies the impact of populism on states' stances towards international institutions (international polity). This introduction proposes a theoretical framework that takes into account the existent diversity among populist governments, specifically addressing how the more or less authoritarian character of populism explains variations in international outcomes across politics, policies and polities. A better understanding of these varied characters and effects can contribute new insights to lively debates about the potential challenges posed by populism and populists in the contemporary international order, and the prospects for mitigation.

The quest for legitimacy has traditionally been intrinsic to the political phenomenon of populism, while legitimation struggles are increasingly relevant once populist leaderships take government control. However, the rich literature on populism and legitimacy has hardly interacted and, therefore, analysis of populists' international (de)legitimation strategies has been scarce. This chapter addresses the ways in which incorporating theoretical frameworks on legitimacy and (de)legitimation into the ideational approach can contribute to better understand the drivers, patterns, and impact of the global rise of contemporary populist leaderships, suggesting new avenues for research on the potential international mitigation of populism.

Seeing that the culture and governance of competition determines relations among social actors, we turn to the concept of referentiality to investigate the institutional order of competition in higher education. Defining referentiality as the description of a model standard for comparison, this study explores how higher education organizations (HEOs), specifically universities and colleges in Israel, conceive of their positions in a landscape of multiple competitions. Through text analysis of 33 excellence statements made by Israeli HEOs since 2020, the study identifies components of referentiality, namely the substantive dimension of excellence (such as research, innovation, teaching, or sports), the basis for referencing (ranking scales and agencies), and the referent (global or local models). Findings reveal that the multiplicity of components for comparability, as well as the multiple categories of HEOs, create a complex array of referentiality and competition and outline the reference universe of Israeli HEOs. Our study underscores the performative and agentic nature of referentiality in shaping organizational identity and status in the expansive and highly competitive global academic field.

Political parties commonly experience internal disagreements. Recently, evidence is accumulating that outright internal discord makes a party much less attractive to voters. However, we do not understand well when citizens perceive a party to be internally conflicted in the first place. We here explain citizens’ perceptions from a democratic life cycle perspective: Factors related to the periodic conduct of elections induce higher levels of intra-party conflict and make it more visible to citizens. To test this argument, we combine survey data on citizens’ perceptions of political parties in Germany spanning 16 years with indicators moderating (the visibility of) intra-party conflict. The analysis shows that citizens perceive more internal conflict when parties are heterogenous, when they are governing, when election day is distant, and when electoral losses accumulate. This demonstrates the recurring patterns in citizens’ perceptions of political parties and suggests self-reinforcing dynamics between citizen assessments and election outcomes.

Populist politics in Southern Europe displays several distinctive patterns related to a shared history, geography, culture, and economy, while being subject to similar geopolitical pressures. In the last decade, moreover, the Euro-Mediterranean region has been struck by destabilizing shocks: the Eurozone crisis and the refugee crisis, which led to a realignment of party politics, with populist parties of both the left and the right enjoying high levels of popular support and taking, or have gotten close to taking, governmental power. These patterns make Southern Europe an interesting case for the study of populism and foreign policy through a (sub-)regional comparative approach. This article applies a structured, focused comparison of the populist foreign policies (PFP) of France, Italy, Spain, and Greece, seeking to explain how populist leaderships have shaped foreign policy in these countries and the conditions under which their PFP were translated into action. After putting Euro-Mediterranean populism in context, we examine four structural themes of catalysts or constraints that populists face when ‘navigating’ PFP around the European Mare Nostrum: international power distribution, ideological underpinnings, domestic political system, and policy domains. The comparative analysis reveals how; while, populist performances are often aimed at executing a rupture and, as a result, gaining legitimacy, the implementation of PFP in Southern Europe has ultimately been affected by structural pressures to discard these revolutionary impulses and align with the mainstream.

Populist parties are held to be the drivers of unprecedented emotionalisation in electoral politics. Advancing theories of realignment and detachment, this article studies the temporal development in the affective alignments between voters and parties. In particular, it analyses the relationship between social structure, voters’ affective orientations towards political parties, and vote choice over time by drawing on 625 representative population surveys from Germany over 44 years. The results show that voters’ affective orientations are indeed becoming more important to vote choice. However, this reflects a return to the close link that already existed at the heyday of the original cleavages rather than something novel. What seems to have changed is the degree to which affective orientations are rooted in social structure. This not only qualifies overly myopic interpretations of populist success but has more general implications for the contemporary linkages between parties and voters.

Practitioners, pundits, and scholars increasingly recognize the role that international organizations play in conflicts. Regional organizations (ROs), as brokers of collective security, welfare, and identity, have become particularly active agents during violent crises by granting legitimacy to certain protagonists and discrediting the legitimacy of others, thus affecting international policymaking. However, existing research generally assesses the legitimizing effects of ROs in either a static way, in which the stances of their member states do not change over time, or in an institutional vacuum, where ROs are not challenged by other ROs. This study aims to shed light on the impact of multiple ROs dynamically and simultaneously intervening in legitimation struggles. It focuses on the 2014–2020 regional “battle” over the legitimate authority of the Chavista–Madurista regime in Venezuela, examining how multiple Latin American ROs articulated their discourse seeking to influence the crisis’ outcomes. To this end, a multi-step process tracing based on four phases (opening, deliberation, judgment, and denouement) is applied. The findings reveal the lively competition between involved actors for the recognition of ROs as the relevant legitimating agents, and the limits faced in achieving collective action when polarization over such a regional legitimating role prevails. The study has novel implications for scholarly understanding of the role of legitimation dynamics in promoting international cooperation during periods of disruption.