Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals

No. 119
Call for papers

“The new age of populism? Theoretical, empirical, and comparative perspectives”

Barcelona, May 2017


Timetable of the call for papers:

June 30th 2017: Submission deadline for abstracts (300 words) and a short biographical note (100 words).
September 7th 2017: Authors will be notified of the results of the selection.
December 7th 2017: Submission deadline for complete articles (see: instructions for authors).

All written correspondence should be sent to the CIDOB publications email address: publicaciones@cidob.org.


Monograph editors: Camil Ungureanu (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain) and Ivan Serrano (Open University of Catalunya).

The global rise of populism, from Venezuela, the United States, France and Hungary to India and the Philippines poses an existential challenge to constitutional democracy and human rights, and is currently shaping the political and economic agenda worldwide. These recent populist waves have led to a more polarised and unstable world, and are a reminder of the fragility of democracy in times that are “out of joint.” Contrary to the widespread expectation of the consolidation of market-oriented liberal democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a deep crisis of representation has emerged. The treatment of the recent economic and financial crisis as well as the handling of the new migration and refugee flows has intensified a sense of rupture between political elites and citizens. Capitalising on the alleged corruption of the financial and political elites, the populist parties and politicians have exalted the truth of the “People” and rejected traditional politics based on expertise, compromise, and consensus-building.
However, the actual causes, the full significance, and the impact of the current changes are still difficult to fathom, and require new theoretical and empirical analyses. The present fashion for speaking about populism among social scientists, IR scholars, policymakers, and politicians of different stripes comes with the risk of turning it into a catch-all concept and rhetorical tool. Populism as a category of analysis has a long-standing tradition in the literature, and its present power cannot be fully understood without taking into account a historical and comparative perspective considering well-established cases – for example, Latin America and interwar Europe. This special issue of Afers Internacionals seeks rigorous contributions that delimit the populist phenomenon and draw on political science, International Relations, economics, political theory, and history. What is populism and is it a useful tool for better understanding current economic-political transformations around the world? What are the political and economic consequences of contemporary populism for the international order? Can we establish similar causes to the current wave of populism in different parts of the world or are there some regional factors at play? What is the relationship between different populisms in the global arena? Are we moving into a new age of populism where the right/left-wing axis becomes obsolete or secondary?
With issue 119, Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals seeks to contribute to the study of these and other questions regarding the topical subject of populism with a focus on the current situation. We are calling for the submission of original articles on the varieties of populism that emphasise their impact on politics and economics in the international arena. We welcome contributions offering original empirical-comparative or theoretical work on the following themes (the list is not exhaustive):

1. Populism as response to globalisation: comparative perspectives from different geographical and cultural areas.
2. Is there an economic populism, and what is its national and international impact?
3. Populism and the reshaping of international relations.
4. The EU and the populist challenge.
5. Populism and the rise of illiberal democracies.
6. The significance of the new populism: beyond left and right?
7. The doctrines, practices, and interactions of the new populisms in the international arena.

Abstracts will be accepted in Spanish (preferably) and English.
The editorial board of the magazine – coordinated for this issue by Camil Ungureanu and Ivan Serrano – will be responsible for the final selection of the articles to be published in the second issue of 2018 (September 2018).

Created in 1982, Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals is a scientific publication on international relations that publishes original work. Each issue is a monograph, coordinated by an expert, which provides in-depth analysis of an aspect of the international state of affairs from a multi- and trans-disciplinary perspective. The articles pass through an external double-blind peer review process and are indexed and summarised in the main academic social sciences databases, such as Scopus and Thomson Reuters. The publication is aimed at the academic community and the interested public in general. It is published in print and digital versions.