Populism and the Politics of India’s Foreign Policy

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Mar 4, 2026

Sandra Destradi, an academic on India and international relations, discusses her research on populism and foreign policy. She explores how personalization and domestic mobilization shape foreign-policy change. Conversations cover why India treats Pakistan and China differently, populist engagement with global public goods, and contrasts between Global North and Global South populists.

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INSIGHT

Populism Changes How Foreign Policy Is Made

Populist foreign policy change depends on personalization and mobilization rather than being automatic.
Personalization centralizes decisions around the leader and sidelines diplomats, while mobilization politicizes foreign policy to create audience costs.

ANECDOTE

India's Escalation Against Pakistan Under Modi

India escalated against Pakistan under Narendra Modi with high-profile strikes after Uri (2016) and Pulwama (2019).
Destradi links this to strong personalization plus deliberate domestic mobilization framing Pakistan as linked to excluded Muslim groups.

INSIGHT

Why India Was Restrained With China

By contrast, India’s response to China showed high personalization but low mobilization, producing restraint after serious border clashes.
Modi avoided large-scale anti-China mobilization because India felt strategically vulnerable and thus chose measured responses.

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We tend to think of populist leaders around the world as disruptive—skeptical of international institutions, impatient for change, and prone to upending foreign policy norms.

But a new book by scholars Sandra Destradi and Johannes Plagemann argues that—while populists can have dramatic impacts on foreign policy—the extent of change depends on two key factors: the personalization of foreign policy and leaders’ ability to use foreign policy as a tool of domestic political mobilization.

The book is called Populism and Foreign Policy, and it looks at transitions from non-populist to populist governments in Bolivia, the Philippines, Turkey, and India.

To talk more about the book’s findings—especially as they relate to Indian foreign policy—Sandra Destradi joins Milan on the show this week. Sandra holds the Chair of International Relations at the University of Freiburg, Germany, and she is currently serving as a DAAD long- term Guest Professor at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel. She is the author of several articles and books on India, including the 2012 book, Indian Foreign and Security Policy in South Asia: Regional Power Strategies.

Milan and Sandra discuss the definitional debates around populism, the conditional effects of populism on foreign policy, and the reasons for the Modi government’s differential approach to Pakistan and China. Plus, the two discuss why populists might express an enhanced willingness to contribute to global public goods, the limited opportunities for mobilization against multilateral institutions, and the differences between populists in the Global North versus the Global South.

Episode notes:

1. “Populism, South Asian Style (with Adnan Naseemullah and Pradeep Chhibber),” Grand Tamasha, December 18, 2024.

2. Johannes Plagemann and Sandra Destradi, “Populism and Foreign Policy: The Case of India,” Foreign Policy Analysis 15, no. 2 (April 2019): 283–301.

3. Sandra Destradi, “Domestic Politics and Regional Hegemony: India’s Approach to Sri Lanka,” E-International Relations, January 14, 2014.