Agenda over Authority: Why Right-Wing Populists Contest the Liberal International Order

Right-wing populist (RWP) governments are widely regarded as major challengers of the liberal international order (LIO), yet existing scholarship has not systematically established why they contest some international organizations more strongly than others. Is such contestation driven by populist opposition to supranational authority, or by substantive conflicts between right-wing ideology and particular international organizations’ agendas? We distinguish these mechanisms and derive expectations across the domains of human rights and the rule of law, trade, and security. To test them, we draw on an original cross-national expert survey measuring RWP governments’ approval of individual international organizations in 13 countries. The results show that an organization’s agenda matters more consistently than its authority. RWP governments are least supportive of organizations promoting human rights and the rule of law, display mixed attitudes toward trade-related bodies, and are more approving of security organizations. In the security domain, greater international organization authority is associated with higher rather than lower approval. These findings challenge explanations that attribute RWP contestation primarily to populist anti-elitism or generalized resistance to supranational authority. Instead, such contestation is selective and reflects a deeper conflict between right-wing ideological commitments and the egalitarian norms advanced by parts of the LIO.