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This debate comment addresses populism within the US under Trump, and Venezuela under former President Hugo Chavez. It draws out some of the parallels and disconnects between them, and provides a discussion of politics, human rights, and social policy under them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, several sociologists have moved beyond grand theories of international relations, and empirically examined the motivations of US foreign policy leading into the 21st century. This article discusses the work of three political sociologists who have examined US foreign policy from three prominent perspectives: Michael Mann, William Robinson, and Julian Go. Working from a neo-Weberian perspective, Mann highlights the rise of neoconservatism within the US government that has encouraged foreign expansion. From a neo-Marxist perspective, Robinson emphasizes the importance of transnational capitalist class interests, including the promotion of neoliberal policies, on US foreign policy. And working from a world-systems perspective, Go underscores how the US is a hegemon in decline attempting to regain its imperial footing through military aggression. While these researchers cover much ground and raise important questions, their perspectives also contain several blindspots that future work on issues of US foreign policy could address. Most importantly, these three theoretical perspectives have neglected the importance of ideology in making sense of contemporary US foreign policy, and this article argues that future work should more intensively examine how ideology influences foreign policymaking in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how the Venezuelan government has discursively justified passing legislation that forbids NGOs that promote political rights from receiving foreign funding. Existing theories of globalisation theory fail to fully explain this phenomenon, including world polity/ society and world-systems theories. Instead, I argue that although existing cultural scripts promote the spread of democracy and human rights through NGOs, the Venezuelan government has utilised a discourse of national sovereignty to justify its anti-NGO efforts. I argue that instead of one overarching set of cultural scripts, the world polity/ society contains conflicting cultural scripts. In doing so, I develop the concept of the world cultural toolkit in order help us make sense of these contradictory cultural scripts concerning state policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, several governments have targeted nongovernmental organizations ( NGOs) by enacting legislation that prohibits foreign funding for them. This article uses diplomatic cables, newspaper articles, and interviews with representatives from NGOs and donors to explain the Venezuelan government's passage of legislation prohibiting foreign funding for political NGOs in 2010. Existent political, sociological, and globalization-oriented theories fail to explain the passage and timing of this legislation. Instead, I utilize and extend global fields theory to examine the Venezuelan government's redirection of its foreign relations, which I argue generated the political opportunity for the government to pass this legislation. I show that the government initially remained keyed into a global subfield involving groups that successfully pressured it to reconsider a more radical form of legislation prohibiting direct foreign funding for all NGOs when it came up for discussion in 2006, including the U.S. and Western European governments, and domestic NGOs. By 2010, however, the government had become embedded within a global subfield involving authoritarian and anti-imperial governments that had already passed similar legislation, and domestic community councils. These newfound relations insulated the government from reconsideration and allowed it the political opportunity to pass a new, less radical piece of legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]