{"id":615802,"date":"2025-12-06T11:12:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T11:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/615802\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T11:12:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T11:12:23","slug":"neo-royalism-a-new-way-to-understand-the-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/615802\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cNeo-royalism\u201d: A new way to understand the Trump administration"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"duet--article--unordered-list _1agbrixi _739u100 xkp0cg1 _1lbxzst7\">\n<li class=\"_739u101\">Two political scientists have proposed \u201cneoroyalism\u201d as a new framework to understand Donald Trump\u2019s foreign policy. The idea is that the administration often behaves more like a royal family in medieval Europe than a modern nation-state<\/li>\n<li class=\"_739u101\">Signs of neoroyalism are the degree to which the administration mixes private enterprise and diplomacy, Trump\u2019s 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. <\/li>\n<li class=\"_739u101\">Trump isn\u2019t 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.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">It was not a particularly subtle gift, but as the recipient himself would probably admit, he\u2019s never been a particularly subtle guy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">When President Donald Trump arrived in South Korea last month, President Lee Jae Myung presented him with a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/10\/29\/world\/asia\/trump-south-korea-crown-gyeongju.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">bejewelled golden crown<\/a>, a replica of one worn by ancient Korean rulers. The gift came just a few days after millions across the US <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c93xgyp1zv4o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">for the so-called No Kings rallies<\/a> against Trump\u2019s government. Trump has, in the past year, referred to himself as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/114032082899254855\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the king<\/a>\u201d on social media and posted AI-generated images of himself <a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/115398251623299921\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wearing a crown<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">This is all hyperbole, of course. Trump is not a king. But if you want to understand this administration\u2019s often unpredictable foreign policy, it might be useful to think of him as one sometimes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">That\u2019s what two political scientists argued in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/journals\/international-organization\/article\/further-back-to-the-future-neoroyalism-the-trump-administration-and-the-emerging-international-system\/ABB12906CA345BBCA5049B544363D391\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recent article<\/a> for the journal International Organization. Stacie Goddard and Abraham Newman coined the term \u201cneo-royalism\u201d to describe how the Trump administration behaves on the world stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">This is not just another argument that Trump is an authoritarian \u2014 the article isn\u2019t concerned with Trump\u2019s domestic governance at all.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Instead, they argue, Trump\u2019s reliance on a \u201cclique 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).\u201d The clique tends to mix private interest and national interests in an open and unashamed way that\u2019s totally alien to modern state bureaucracies.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Other countries have taken advantage of this tendency: The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/world\/russia\/russia-u-s-peace-business-ties-4db9b290?st=QPXTdX&amp;reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink&amp;utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Wall Street Journal recently reported<\/a> that as it seeks to sell the White House on its preferred peace plan for Ukraine, Russian representatives have been looking to \u201cbypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity\u201d involving energy, rare earth deals and even space exploration. It\u2019s not the hardest sell for a president who, back in the 1980s, tried to sell Soviet leaders on a plan to end the Cold War while building a Trump tower across the street from the Kremlin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">\u201cIt\u2019s misleading if you think of it just as corruption or just a degenerate category of neoliberalism,\u201d Newman, a political scientist at Georgetown University, told Vox. \u201cIt\u2019s an entirely different system of how actors distribute power amongst themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">It is an approach that has more in common with royal houses before the Enlightenment than modern nation-states and one that has the power to reshape not just American politics but the world order.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Much ink has been spilled over Trump\u2019s challenge to the so-called liberal international order \u2014 the systems of global institutions and norms that emerged after World War II \u2014 but Goddard and Newman suggest that, to fully understand Trump, we have to go back to an earlier war and an even more fundamental world order. This kind of analysis is having something of a moment. As Vox reported last year, other scholars have proposed \u201cneomedievalism\u201d to describe a world where great powers like the US, Russia, and China no longer seem to have the political power to match their military might.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Scholars often use the term \u201cWestphalian\u201d to describe the modern nation-state system, referring to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 that ended the 30 Years\u2019 War. Under Westphalian sovereignty, a state has exclusive political power within a set of defined borders. While states may differ in their overall military or economic power, they all have an equal right to sovereignty.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Before the 17th century in Europe, nation-state borders were less defined, with power often overlapping. The king of Spain could be the duke of Burgundy. The king of Prussia could be an absolute ruler in his own territory, but also subordinate to the Holy Roman Empire. Alliances were often cemented through marriage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">This kind of politics might seem remote in today\u2019s world of standing national armies and UN Security Council debates. \u201cI think sometimes we have a little bit of historical amnesia,\u201d said Goddard, a professor of political science at Wellesley College. \u201cIt\u2019s not that long ago that these actors were dominant, and families like the Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns were still coexisting right along sovereign states up until World War I.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">They never entirely went away. In today\u2019s Persian Gulf, royal families that blur the lines between private business interests and national affairs are still the norm. (Saudi Arabia is a country named after the Saud family that rules it, after all.) So it\u2019s not all that surprising that Trump broke precedent by making the first foreign trip of his term to the Gulf and seems to have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/11\/22\/opinion\/trump-saudi-crown-prince-fossil-fuel.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">such an affinity for the region\u2019s absolutist rulers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What makes Trump\u2019s foreign policy \u201cneo-royalist\u201d? <\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">First, the extent to which it\u2019s a family business. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/466269\/trump-peace-deals-ended-wars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Important diplomatic agreements <\/a>are often negotiated by family members like his son-in-law Jared Kushner or his daughter\u2019s father-in-law Massad Boulos, or longtime business associates like Steve Witkoff with often ill-defined job descriptions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">The neoroyalist framing can shed a little light on the recent confusion over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/469993\/trump-ukraine-peace-plan-zelenskyy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">whether the 28-point Ukraine-Russia peace plan, <\/a>negotiated by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/world\/europe\/russia-ukraine-us-peace-plan-kremlin-f144d498\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Witkoff and Kushner with a prominent Russian businessman<\/a> but partly disavowed by <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/ukraine-peace-plan-security-confernece-halifax-senators-6041a181cbe0de6498e1043d9a982f4b\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Secretary of State Marco Rubio<\/a>, was actually a US plan or not. It was not really a Trump administration document \u2014 but it was a Trump family one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Trump has also mixed his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/05\/25\/us\/politics\/trump-money-plane-crypto.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">family\u2019s business interests and American foreign polic<\/a>y in an unprecedented way, whether it\u2019s Vietnam circumventing its own laws to approve a Trump golf <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/05\/25\/world\/asia\/trump-vietnam-golf-project.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">course during trade talks<\/a> or Trump\u2019s sons\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/05\/05\/us\/politics\/eric-donald-jr-trump-family-deals.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">real estate deals in the Middle East<\/a>. There was a telling hot mic moment at a Gaza-focused summit in Egypt in October when Indonesia\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/asia-pacific\/indonesian-president-asks-trump-meeting-with-son-eric-hot-mic-moment-2025-10-13\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">president asked Trump for a meeting with his son, Eric<\/a>. Trump\u2019s suggestion for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/world-politics\/398894\/trump-gaza-clean-out-riviera-egypt-jordan-palestinians-netanyahu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">redeveloping an ethnically cleansed Gaza into a beachfront resort<\/a> was the most extreme example of this tendency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Trump also has little regard for the Westphalian notion that all countries have equal sovereignty. In his world, some countries are a little more sovereign than others. According to Newman and Goddard, his talk about purchasing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/world-politics\/394464\/trump-greenland-purchase\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Greenland<\/a> or making <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/403927\/canada-tariffs-alcohol-steel-trump-51st-state-boycott\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Canada the 51st state<\/a> is not actually about traditional territorial expansion, spheres of influence or a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/cbc9d2c3-7d77-48a2-b5e7-5bda4cc6c4e6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Donroe Doctrine<\/a>.\u201d (There are few benefits to controlling Greenland that the US doesn\u2019t currently enjoy, as well as some new costs.) Rather, Newman said, \u201cit\u2019s about dominance, about saying [to Canada and Denmark], you are not equal to us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Foreign leaders seem to be accommodating themselves to the new pecking order (or at least the more explicitly defined pecking order), most explicitly and hilariously when NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte referred<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/06\/25\/nato-chief-calls-trump-daddy-00423485\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> to Trump as \u201cdaddy\u201d<\/a> at a meeting last June.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Trump\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/467530\/trump-tariff-foreign-policy-supreme-court\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">preferred all-purpose foreign policy tool<\/a>, tariffs, also make sense through a neo-royalist view: They are likely attractive to the administration because they reinforce these power dynamics. The \u201cliberation day\u201d tariffs and pledge to negotiate \u201c90 deals in 90 days\u201d created a dynamic where countries had to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/08\/04\/us\/politics\/trump-tariffs-foreign-investment.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pony up the cash in the form of investment pledges in the US <\/a>to negotiate more favorable trade terms. The ruling clique often stands to benefit from these pledges, as in the case of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick\u2019s sons, who are helping to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/11\/20\/us\/politics\/howard-lutnick-family-ai.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">finance the data center projects<\/a> in the US that South Korea is building as part of its investment pledge.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Then there are the literal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2025\/11\/15\/trump-gifts-gold-bar-rolex\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">gifts<\/a> from countries seeking the \u201cking\u2019s\u201d favor. The crown from South Korea, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/nov\/21\/swiss-gold-and-rolex-gifts-to-trump-raise-questions-over-personalisation-of-us-presidential-power\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a gold bar and a Rolex from Switzerland<\/a>, and, most <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/05\/21\/nx-s1-5406420\/trump-accepts-qatar-plane-air-force-one\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">famously, a jet from Qatar<\/a>. While these lavish gifts have raised ethics concerns, Trump often appears not even to understand why they would be an issue, <a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/trump-defends-qatar-jumbo-jet-offer\/story?id=121715591\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">telling reporters <\/a>that he would have to be \u201cstupid\u201d to turn down such an expensive plane.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">The authors point to some recent precedents for Trump\u2019s neoroyalism, such as how former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi \u201cdepended on an exclusive media and financial clique\u201d to solidify political power, rather than traditional power. The factions of friends, business partners, and old security service colleagues that hold (and often compete for) power in Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia have drawn many comparisons to a czarist court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">But, Newman and Gannett stay, what makes the Trump clique distinctive is that because of the economic and military power of the country it governs, it has the power to shape the international order in its own image, and that the changes might be hard to roll back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">Consider how, under Trump, the US has taken a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/politics\/what-economic-and-policy-experts-think-about-the-u-s-governments-stake-in-intel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">partial ownership stake in Intel<\/a> and is t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/legal\/government\/trumps-unusual-nvidia-deal-raises-new-corporate-national-security-risks-2025-08-12\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">aking a cut of NVIDIA\u2019s sales of AI chips to China<\/a>. Trump now regularly travels the world with a retinue of tech CEOs like Elon Musk and Nvidia\u2019s Jensen Huang in tow, intermingling US geopolitical power and business interests in a way that will be hard to roll back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">\u201cIt starts as a series of practices, you know, people might not even take it very seriously,\u201d said Goddard. \u201cBut over time, it becomes not only the norm, but you get infrastructures that are built up over this. You know, you can\u2019t easily move the data centers from Saudi Arabia. You can\u2019t get the F-35s back, right? The chips are already in the UAE, right? These types of things are much stickier.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">If this isn\u2019t rolled back, where is it headed? Newman said to Vox that \u201cin these types of orders, succession is always a point of incredible instability. Some people may think [when Trump leaves] then it will just be over, but our bet is that it will not be over. It will be a moment of international crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1agbrixi lg8ac51 lg8ac50 xkp0cg1\">All of which suggests it may be time for all of us to brush up on our <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Prince\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Machiavelli<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two political scientists have proposed \u201cneoroyalism\u201d as a new framework to understand Donald Trump\u2019s foreign policy. The idea&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[285,5105,7710,519,448,8048],"class_list":{"0":"post-615802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-politics","9":"tag-royal","10":"tag-royal-families","11":"tag-royal-family","12":"tag-royals","13":"tag-world-politics"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115672327337396419","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}