Levantine populisms: the role of conflicts, civilizationalism, and militarism in populist foreign policymaking

This article examines how populism operates in foreign policymaking under conditions of protracted conflict, focusing on the Levant as a distinctive subregional setting. Existing theorization of populism, largely derived from Latin American and European cases, struggles to explain contexts shaped by territorial contestation, transnational identity cleavages, and chronic securitization. Building on the core dynamics of populist foreign policy—politicization, personalization, and centralization—the article argues that their expression in the Levant is structurally conditioned by contested territoriality, cross-border ethno-religious cleavages, and securitized state–society relations, and on four scope conditions: incumbency, state capacity, ideological alignment, and material costs. The argument is developed through a comparison of Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (2003–) and Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu (1996–1999, 2009–2021, 2023–). Despite differences in regime type and ideology, both cases exhibit similar patterns in the reorganization of foreign policymaking. The findings contribute to comparative populism scholarship and the study of populist governance in hard-security environments.