On April 25, 2025, a joint paper by Assistant Professor HUYNH Khoi Nguyen (Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study) co-authored with Assistant Professor Minnie M. Joo (Department of Political Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell), Assistant Professor Brandon Bolte (Department of Political Science, University of Illinois Springfield), Professor Vineeta Yadav (Department of Political Science, Penn State University) and Professor Bumba Mukherjee (Department of Political Science, Penn State University) titled “Right-Wing Populist Leaders, Nationalist Rhetoric, and Dispute Initiation in International Politics” was published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution. This paper examines whether and when right-wing populist (RWP) leaders are more likely to initiate international disputes. While a RWP leader’s hyper-nationalist rhetoric can galvanize public support for militant internationalism, but such rhetoric only creates pressure on leaders in participatory democracies to act on their belligerent statements by initiating international disputes. Survey experiments conducted in India and Japan find that respondents are in favor of nationalist rhetoric of RWP leaders. In addition, cross-national statistical analyses further show that RWP leaders in participatory democracies are more likely to initiate militarized disputes.