We, the Peoples of the Earth

Abstract

<p>Over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of scholarship on the relationship between populism and international law. Some of this scholarship depicts populist politics as hostile to international law. Specifically, there is an assumption that populist leaders and governments favour nationalism over multilateralism and have an antagonistic relationship with international institutions. Yet, across the South, there are historical instances of leaders promoting regional unity, creating multilateral alliances, and engaging with international law and its institutions, all while advancing a populist discourse based around an idea of ‘the people’. Moreover, since the early 2000s, Latin America has attracted international attention for electing presidents who have not only embraced a populist style of politics in their own countries, but who have brought that style to the international by pursuing alliances with other states in the South in a way that has disrupted the dominant international legal order. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) is an example of such a form of populist internationalism. In this article, we explore ALBA’s populist approach to international law. Focusing on ALBA as a coalition within international institutions between 2009 and 2019, we demonstrate how ALBA developed a unique technique of international legal engagement and contestation, based around claims to represent ‘the people’ (or ‘peoples’) of the earth. In this way, ALBA shows how the adoption of a populist register can provide an alternative way of both belonging to, and resisting, the international legal order. </p>