Confused by the Trump administration? Think of it as a royal family. |
Key takeaways
Two political scientists have proposed “neoroyalism” as a new framework to understand Donald Trump’s foreign policy. The idea is that the administration often behaves more like a royal family in medieval Europe than a modern nation-state Signs of neoroyalism are the degree to which the administration mixes private enterprise and diplomacy, Trump’s habit of handling negotiations through family members and old business partners rather than the traditional bureaucracy, and his habit of enforcing global hierarchy by undermining the sovereignty of weaker nations. Trump isn’t the first modern leader to act this way, but given the importance of the United States system, he has the power to shape the global system and turn this type of politics into the norm.It was not a particularly subtle gift, but as the recipient himself would probably admit, he’s never been a particularly subtle guy.
When President Donald Trump arrived in South Korea last month, President Lee Jae Myung presented him with a bejewelled golden crown, a replica of one worn by ancient Korean rulers. The gift came just a few days after millions across the US for the so-called No Kings rallies against Trump’s government. Trump has, in the past year, referred to himself as “the king” on social media and posted AI-generated images of himself wearing a crown.
This is all hyperbole, of course. Trump is not a king. But if you want to understand this administration’s often unpredictable foreign policy, it might be useful to think of him as one sometimes.
That’s what two political scientists argued in a recent article for the journal International Organization. Stacie Goddard and Abraham Newman coined the term “neo-royalism” to describe how the Trump administration behaves on the world stage.
This is not just another argument that Trump is an authoritarian — the article isn’t concerned with Trump’s domestic governance at all.
Rather, they argue that the traditional methods of studying international relations, which assume that sovereign nation-states are the primary actors on the world stage, are inadequate when it comes to talking about an administration that acts in often puzzling ways from a traditional international relations perspective, for instance by ratcheting up pressure on allies like Canada and Denmark while seeking deals with adversaries like China and Russia.
Instead, they argue, Trump’s reliance on a “clique composed of family members (primarily his children), fierce loyalists (Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem), and elite hyper-capitalists (often tech elites like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen).” The clique tends to mix private interest and national interests in an open and unashamed way that’s totally alien to modern state bureaucracies.........