Sovereignty Intrusion: Populism and Attitudes toward the International Monetary Fund

Abstract

The global populist backlash is considered threatening to the multilateral order, but its impact on individual attitudes toward international organizations, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is understudied. We bridge insights from research on the IMF and populism to develop a theoretical framework centered on three propositions. We argue that populist individuals should be more prone to blame the IMF for economic problems than non-populists, but that this effect is highly conditional on sovereignty intrusion, escalating when an IMF program exists and as the program becomes more onerous. In contrast, IMF scapegoating by populist politicians should be largely ineffective. Analyzing survey data from across the European Union and an original survey experiment in Greece, we find support for each contention. The paper advances understanding of the partisan politics of the IMF and shows that the implications of the populist wave for international order are more complex than often assumed.