Donald Trump has articulated foreign policy ideas at variance with the prior status quo of liberal internationalism. Trump’s status as an ideological outsider poses an interesting question: Can an executive institutionalize unorthodox foreign policy ideas in the face of bureaucracies dedicated to an alternative set of norms? This article argues that the Trump administration has failed to create new institutions or reorganize existing foreign policy bureaucracies to better serve its policy aims. Trump’s brand of populism succeeds more in the weakening of bureaucracies embodying liberal internationalism than in the creation of populist alternatives. While the institutional foundations for populism are likely to remain weak in the future, this administration’s erosion of existing institutions will make any post-Trump restoration of liberal internationalism a difficult enterprise. This suggests that the literature on bureaucratic control cannot treat all ideas equally. Some ideas are likelier to thrive in a de-institutionalized environment than others.
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