Career diplomats and populist leaders: mediating or marketing estrangement?

If the career diplomat mediates estrangement between different polities through dialogue, then working under populist leadership throws some basics of the diplomat’s practices into question. The chapter lays out the structural tensions that characterise the conflictual relationship between career diplomats and populist leaders; analyses the strategies that career diplomats employ to adapt to or exit diplomacy under populist rule; and considers the variables that define the room for diplomatic manoeuvre left for career diplomats under populist leadership. The comparison is global. In addition to a broad range of cases from the USA and the European Union, the chapter draws especially on the cases of Indian diplomats under Prime Minister Modi’s Hindu nationalist rule and diplomats of Brazil’s foreign service under the populist radical-right regime of President Bolsonaro.