When analyzing political developments within states, it is common to see them framed as the outcome of internal dynamics alone. By this lens, election results and domestic policy choices are seen as the product of interest group lobbying, local economic conditions and insular cultural debates with little connection to the outside world.
When it does come to thinking about the connections between domestic and international politics, we tend to emphasize how the domestic politics within a state can shape that state’s foreign policy and, through it, events abroad. In his seminal work “Man, the State and War,” the international relations scholar Kenneth Waltz also explained how domestic political factors—including a leader’s risk-tolerance and a state’s governance system—can often be key contributing causes of war in the international system. Democracies, in particular, are less inclined toward war because citizens can and often do punish leaders once casualties mount and the war’s costs become evident. Similarly, we can trace the global economy’s ebbs and flows to the relative influence on state decision-making of domestic interest groups, which can drive trade policy in terms of opening or closing domestic markets to foreign goods and capital.
But in focusing on the domestic determinants of world events, it is often easy to miss the reverse: when international developments influence domestic politics. And it turns out that 2024 is a clear example of international events affecting domestic political outcomes.