Old Ghosts in New Sheets

European Populist Parties and Foreign Policy

This research paper analyses the foreign policy positions of five populist parties of the Right and Left in Western Europe. It focuses on foreign policy, an often ignored dimension of their ideas. It aims to fill a hole in policy debates by showing that European populism poses a coherent threat to mainstream politics, that foreign policy can be instrumental to the challenge mounted by populist parties against centrist politics and that the impact of those positions is practical and real for European states and the European Union.