Populism is often assumed to undermine the liberal world order, but this claim has never been tested systematically. In this study, we do so for the first time. Based on an understanding of populism as a “thin-centered ideology” entailing anti-elitism and people-centrism, we expect populist governments to have foreign policy preferences opposed to the core features of the US-led liberal international order. Our empirical analysis assesses government preferences on the liberal international order as expressed through UN General Assembly votes. Our findings support the expectation that populism has a strong and statistically significant negative impact on foreign policy preferences related to the core norms of the liberal international order. Moreover, we find that populists with a left-wing ideology and those in less democratic countries tend to be more opposed to the US-led liberal international order. However, populist governments do not reject the UNGA as such, as they are not more likely to be absent from UNGA votes than other states. Thereby, this study makes a contribution both to the burgeoning literature on the international implications of populism and to debates on the crisis of the liberal order.

民粹主义经常被认为会破坏自由主义的世界秩序，但这种说法从未得到系统性的检验。在这项研究中，我们第一次这样做。基于将民粹主义理解为一种需要反精英主义和以人民为中心的“以薄弱为中心的意识形态”，我们预计民粹主义政府的外交政策偏好将与美国主导的自由国际秩序的核心特征相反。我们的实证分析评估了政府对通过联合国大会投票表达的自由国际秩序的偏好。我们的研究结果支持这样一种预期，即民粹主义对与自由国际秩序的核心规范相关的外交政策偏好具有强烈且具有统计学意义的负面影响。此外，我们发现，具有左翼意识形态的民粹主义者和不太民主国家的民粹主义者往往更反对美国领导的自由国际秩序。然而，民粹主义政府并不排斥联合国大会本身，因为它们并不比其他国家更有可能缺席联合国大会投票。因此，本研究为关于民粹主义国际影响的新兴文献和关于自由秩序危机的辩论做出了贡献。