This document provides an overview of research on the impact of populism on multilateral institutions. It defines key terms like globalism, globalization, and populism. It also outlines an approach to understand how ideas have impacted institutions like the Bretton Woods organizations using a model of path dependent, punctuated equilibrium. This model treats ideas as exogenous events that can act as critical junctures shaping the evolution of these institutions over time. The research aims to apply this model and case studies to analyze how populism has affected the nature and role of multilateralism.

1. From Globalization to Globalism: The Impact of Populism on
Multilateral Institutions
PPN Brisbane 2020
Dr Michael de Percy

2. Research Overview
• Book Chapter forthcoming: De Percy, M.A. (forthcoming) Chapter 3: Populism and
the New World Order, in Viktor Jakupec and Max Kelly, Rethinking Multilateralism in
Foreign Aid: Beyond the Neoliberal Hegemony. New York: Routledge.
• HI approach to understand the impact of ideas on the Bretton Woods institutions
(and parallel institutions)
• Adopting ideas as exogenous events and applying as critical junctures in my model
of path dependent, punctuated equilibrium (De Percy, M.A. & Batainah, H.S. (2019)
Identifying historical policy regimes in the Canadian and Australian communications
industries using a model of path dependent, punctuated equilibrium, Policy Studies,
DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2019.1581161

3. Key terms
• Globalism: The process of interacting with multilateral institutions) as
something that nation-states freely enter into, rather than something
that nation-states are subjected to without choice.
• Globalization: The ‘inevitable’ and increasing interconnectedness of the
global political economy including institutions, labour, capital, people,
technologies.
• Populism:
• Empiricist generalisations draw on case studies to identify ‘definitional characteristics’ or to
‘construct typologies of the concept’
• Class-based political alliances with charismatic leaders
• An anti-status-quo dimension where the people are being held back from their ‘just desserts’ – an
identity of ‘the people’ through ‘the relation of antagonism’ with some ‘other’ or ‘enemy of the
people’

4. Applying the Model

5. THANK YOU
Questions?
PPN Brisbane 2020