Populists In Power Research Articles

Populists in the Shadow of Unanimity: Contestation of EU Foreign and Security Policy

The arrival of populist political parties to power in several member states and the increasing politicisation of EU foreign policy has made intra-European consensus more difficult to reach in the past decade. This article examines the impact of populist contestation on EU foreign policy negotiations in the Council, a policy area governed by unanimity. This decision-making mode makes the policy especially vulnerable to the impact of contestation and, at the same time, gives power to those willing to use their veto. Drawing on the idea of unpopulist politics, this study shows how Hungary and, to a lesser degree, Poland have contested the established formal and informal norms (such as consensus-building or reflex coordination) through discursive and behavioural non-compliance. The “domestication” of EU foreign policy has meant that, in general, populists show less willingness to compromise and resort to non-decisions to demonstrate the EU’s weakness. However, there are exceptions, and it is possible to see variations in populist strategies when faced with similar challenges, as exemplified by the EU’s response to Russia’s war in Ukraine. By testing the scope conditions under which unpolitics might be activated, we show that the same crisis situation did not lead to a uniform response amongst populist governments. This is because both the nature of the crisis and perceptions of risk/gain were understood differently (and actively constructed as such) by populists in power. This finding emphasises the social, relational, and multi-level nature of unpolitics as a phenomenon.

Do populists escalate international disputes?

Abstract Among the potentially most consequential effects of populism is its impact on countries' international conflict behaviour. However, empirical evidence about populists' approach to international disputes is inconclusive. We develop a theoretical framework focused on mobilization and personalization, which we argue are particularly relevant characteristics of populist foreign policy-making. We hypothesize that, on a conflict–cooperation continuum, a country's approach to a bilateral dispute will become more conflictive under a populist government if that dispute is strongly used for domestic political mobilization, and if decision-making on that issue is highly personalized. Conversely, foreign policy will not become more conflictive in cases of weak mobilization and personalization. We carry out in-depth qualitative within-case comparisons of non-populist and populist governments' policies in Bolivia (2002–2019), India (2004–2022), and the Philippines (2010–2022), focusing on two selected bilateral disputes per country. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including 71 expert interviews conducted in the three countries, we find that populists in power escalate international disputes if they strongly use foreign policy issues for domestic mobilization and, at the same time, strongly personalize decision-making. This finding nuances existing assessments about the effect of populism on foreign policy change.

Паттерны трансформации партийных систем стран ЕС: направление перемен и причины различий

The article presents an original classification of patterns of transformation of party systems in EU countries under the influence of the institutionalization of a new post-industrial cleavage. Drawing on theories of cleavage and spatial competition and using party positioning databases, electoral indices and statistics, the author attempts to identify the main trajectories of the transformation of the European party systems between 1990 and 2023 and identify factors that explain the differences between them. The study identified five patterns associated with the effects of two key parameters. The first one is the structural specificity of the conditions of party competition in post-communist and other EU countries, associated with the difference between the old structured and new volatile party systems. The second parameter is the type of a country’s party-political system in accordance with Arend Lijphart’s classification — either majoritarian-polarized or coalition-consensus. While under majoritarian system the institutionalization of a new cleavage often gave rise to a radical breakdown of the old configuration of parties with the emergence of powerful populist forces, under consensus system — a smooth increase in fragmentation with the outflow of votes in favor of various new parties and the complication of the process of forming coalitions. For a number of countries other factors, such as the level of socio-economic development, ethnocentricity of politics, the type of electoral system and the stability of the welfare state appeared relatively important. In contrast, hypotheses about the significance of the initial configuration of party systems, the timing of formation of new parties and the geographical proximity of countries were not confirmed.

Friends or Foes: Is Unamendability the Answer to Democratic Backsliding?

Unamendability is often viewed as a ‘lock on the door’ that can keep enemies of constitutional democracy out, at least for a time. Unsurprisingly, it has also been invoked as a potential bulwark democratic backsliding. While it may not entirely thwart authoritarian populist takeovers, unamendability – including in the form of basic structure doctrines or constitutional identity review – is said to at least delay them, buy some time for defenders of constitutional democracy to resist, and clearly signal to the outside world (including supranational institutions such as the European Union) that foul play is afoot. This article questions such easy assumptions about the nature and operation of unamendability, both in general and in an authoritarian populist context in particular. It argues, based on the examples of India and Hungary, that unamendability is a tool either too ineffective to be deployed against authoritarian populists in power, even while courts may not have been fully captured, or one they are just as comfortable wielding as their opponents. For example, the Indian Supreme Court’s hitherto celebrated basic structure doctrine has been useless in the face of the court’s refusal to hear or decide key challenges against the government. Additionally, drawing on the Hungarian case, the article shows the dark side of constitutional identity review includes captured courts defending majoritarianism and exclusion in the name of a national identity perceived as under attack. In other words, doctrines of unamendability may quickly and subversively turn into instruments of entrenching the very authoritarian populist projects proponents of such doctrines abhor.

Exploring Conspiracist Populism in Power: The Case of Kais Saied in Tunisia

The aim of this paper is to conduct a literature review of the existing nexus between conspiracy theories and populist politics. Most of the literature considering the political nature of conspiracy theories has focused mainly on individual action and electoral choices, hence setting aside the agency of political leaders that deliberately resort to these tales to mobilise supporters. On the contrary, conspiracy theories are increasingly moving away from extremist politics to enter the institutional political arena and become part and parcel of the political narratives and strategies of institutional figures. Against this backdrop, the present work offers a new approach to investigate the connection between populist conspiracy theories and conspiracist populism and attempts to explain how conspiracist populism works and what its potential impact on contemporary democracies is. The analysis of the literature offers some theoretical insights to explore the specific case of the presidency of Kais Saied in Tunisia, which has been labelled as a form of constitutional populism integrating conspiracy theories. The inquiry on the Tunisian case demonstrates that conspiracy theories can represent both tactics and framings for populists in power, and, if democratic checks and balances are weak enough, they can lead to the erosion of democracy itself.

The political economy of populists in power, between policy and polity: Evidence from the Israeli case

This paper explores the connection between the current wave of populism, economic policies and governance practices. We first review the different ways in which populist political economy has been conceptualised, focusing on the relationship between populism and neoliberalism in terms of both policy and polity. We then briefly discuss right-wing populist governments’ recent economic policies and institutional changes. We argue that, while representing a continuation of neoliberalism in some areas, right-wing populism may, when in power, undermine neoliberal economic policies and institutional power by subverting governance norms and reintroducing the state as a major actor in the economy. To demonstrate and support our argument, we analyse the Israeli case, in which the right-wing populist leader Benjamin Netanyahu led three governmental coalitions between 2009 and 2019. We focus on the Israeli government’s response to the cost-of-living crisis and the housing crisis. We show that the populist Israeli government went beyond clientelism and welfare chauvinism and moved towards a more redistributive and expansionist economic agenda. To finance and legislate this agenda, it used unorthodox, short-term governance practices to bypass or overcome institutional limitations.

Populism in power and bailout conditionality: evidence from Greece

ABSTRACT The article focuses on the policy record of the Syriza-Anel coalition that governed Greece from 2015 to 2019. The goal of the article is to contribute to the understanding of decision-making and policy choices of populists in power by focusing on the strategies, constraints, and opportunities available to populist governments under conditions of crisis and bailout conditionality. Using a process tracing methodology, the main finding of the article is that populist governments, even when forced to implement externally imposed policies that they oppose, maintain their populist character and ideology. The main lesson from the Greek experience is that populist governments can leverage the prioritization by the creditors of fiscal policy targets in order to stall reforms in other policy areas and pursue illiberal political reforms. This finding challenges the ‘moderation’ hypothesis concerning the ideological effect of governmental experience on populist parties.

Populist attitudes and support for democracy among Latin American bureaucrats

Despite macro-level patterns that link populists in power with democratic backsliding, it is unclear how populist attitudes correlate with attitudes about democracy among individuals. Scholars have only recently turned their attention to this issue and produced inconclusive results. Using our unique survey of Latin American bureaucrats, we investigate how populism operates among bureaucrats, a set of actors with a crucial role in democratic governance. We analyze each of three dimensions of populism separately (anti-elitism, pro-people orientation and Manicheanism). Building on recent scholarship finding that populists are dissatisfied democrats, we examine the relationship between attitudes about each dimension of populism and satisfaction with and support for democracy. We extend current scholarship by deploying two measures of satisfaction with and four measures of support for democracy, including support for checks on the executive. We find that those scoring high on underlying dimensions of populism rate the quality of democracy lower but are not less satisfied with the system in their countries. We also find that those with pro-people attitudes consistently support democracy, including checks on the executive. Those with a Manichean outlook, in contrast, are less supportive of democracy and favor increased executive powers. These complexities suggest the need for more research on the concept of populism, as well as supporting the need for understanding how attitudes among important social groups, particularly institutional actors, may differ from the overall population.

The EU Accession to the Istanbul Convention: The Argument From the ‘common Accord’ Practice

Abstract The main purpose of this article is to analyse the Council’s practice of ‘common accord’ as the argument behind the tardiness of accession to the Istanbul Convention by the European Union. It presents how political and legal factors condition the accession of the Istanbul Convention by the European Union. In light of the Court of Justice Opinion 1/19, there are no legal obstacles to the accession; therefore, the tardiness of ratification arose from the political context, which consists of the EU’s constitutional crisis, populists in power, and liberal decision-makers succumbing to them. Based on the sociological assumption, the case study confirms the existence of the practice of ‘common accord’ as an effect of the conditions mentioned above. Nevertheless, the social need to access the Istanbul Convention is urgent.

Populism and Protest Intensity: A Cross-National Analysis

Populist studies are increasingly interested in the effects that populism has on the politics of contemporary democratic systems. This article analyzes the relationship between populist parties and politicians and the intensity of political protest. Arguing that populists generate feelings of anger and outrage at establishment politicians, develop close relationships with social movements, and instigate further polarization and resistance from the opposition, the existence of populist actors in a political system is believed to generate more political protests. Using a unique dataset of populist parties in European, Latin American, and North American countries, cross-national testing demonstrates strong positive correlations between the presence of populists in power and anti-government demonstrations, testifying to the effect that populists have on protest activity. Tests for the existence of populist parties in the opposition, however, reveal no empirical support for increased levels of political protest, implying that the strongest effect only comes once populists come to power. These results provide necessary nuance to our understanding of the destabilizing effects of populism and its consequences for contemporary liberal democracies.

De facto differentiated disintegration in the European Union. The case of Poland

ABSTRACT This article seeks to shed light on the evolution of demand for differentiation in Poland. First, it argues that since EU accession Poland has moved from instrumental towards quasi-constitutional differentiated integration, and towards differentiated disintegration de facto. Second, it conceptualizes non-compliance in the rule of law area as a manifestation of differentiated disintegration de facto understood as polity-related deliberate and enduring circumvention of EU legal framework. Third, it argues that this mode of de facto differentiation constitutes a challenger strategy of Poland’s populists in power aimed at undermining the foundations of the European polity. Accordingly, the Polish case provides an illustration of ‘post-functionalism reversed’: it is not a Eurosceptic public that constrains a pro-integrationist government, but a Eurosceptic government that drives differentiation and disintegration without explicit support from the largely pro-integrationist public.

Opposing populists in power: how and why Polish civil society Europeanised their opposition to the rule of law crisis in Poland

Opposing populists in power: how and why Polish civil society Europeanised their opposition to the rule of law crisis in Poland

Populists in power: trust in public institutions and support for strong leadership in the post-authoritarian democracies of Indonesia and the Philippines

ABSTRACT How does support for strong leadership affect institutional trust in post-authoritarian democracies? Studies suggest that fostering trust in public institutions is contingent upon citizens’ favourable evaluation of the government’s institutional performance, whereas individual’s cultural orientations and political values are seldom given much interest. However, the resurgence of leaders with ‘populist’ tendencies presents an empirical puzzle, which may reveal intriguing political patterns in the context of comparative democratization (and autocratization). This study theorizes that citizens’ need for economic deliverance and social stability develops agreeable attitudes towards prevailing public institutions even though political incumbents project authoritarian tendencies. Using public opinion data from the seventh wave of World Values Survey (WVS7), this study finds that citizens in Indonesia and the Philippines—two of the region’s post-authoritarian democracies i.e. fragile democracies with spells of authoritarian rule manifest high support for a political system with a strong leader unconstrained with electoral and congressional intervention. Consequently, this favourable attitude makes them more likely to express higher institutional confidence. Overall, the findings shed light on the paradoxes of contemporary politics confronted not only with authoritarian resilience, political illiberalism and personalist rule but also of the enduring nondemocratic psychological disposition among citizens in settings with troubled democratic transitions.

Populist Foreign Policy and Mobilization in Bolivia

The goal of this article is to explore the role of mobilization in the foreign policies of populists in power. To do so, we focus on the main features and changes of Bolivia’s foreign Policy under its populist president Evo Morales (2006-2019) with regard to its two most prominent conflictive bilateral relations, with the US and Chile. In both domains, Morales departed from the foreign policy of previous governments. By ending cooperation with the US, the Morales government sought to establish a sovereign counternarcotics policy in line with its core constituency’s demands of legalizing coca crops. On the key issue of relations with Chile seeking to negotiate a sovereign access to the Pacific Ocean, the Morales government exhibited more continuity initially. However, by referring the stalemated conflict to the International Court of Justice, Morales eventually changed his country’s approach to finding a resolution. Tracing Morales’ discourse over time reveals an intensification of populist as well as hostile rhetoric in periods of domestic political instability. Thus, our findings support the theoretical expectation of a particularly close link between domestic politics and foreign policy under populists in power. Thereby, populism may lead to a more conflictive foreign policy in some cases. However, neither does populist mobilization over foreign policy matters necessarily drive foreign policy change, nor does it preclude genuine bilateral dialogue.

Sovereignty and the National Interest

Sovereignty and the National Interest Erik Jones (bio) Much of the world today is torn between national populists and liberal democrats. The national populists put the nation first; the liberal democrats argue for something closer to multicultural multilateralism. In doing so, they offer distinct visions of how sovereignty and the national interest interact. For national populists, sovereignty is an expression of the national interest; whoever wields sovereign authority should ensure that the national interest is served. For liberal democrats, sovereignty is the responsibility to determine what is in the nation's best interests and then to reconcile competing claims and distribute scarce resources accordingly. The two groups also offer contrasting views of world order. The national populists focus on self-help and mutual respect. The liberal democrats emphasise integration, cooperation, and solidarity. Viewed side-by-side, the two worldviews present irreconcilable differences in the constitution of political authority and the structure of international relations. Hence it is tempting to argue that the interaction between national populists and liberal democrats should be limited, particularly when national populism threatens to descend into authoritarianism. But there is a narrow path along which interaction between national populists and liberal democrats can be beneficial, when national populists promise to reconnect members of society who have lost representation within liberal democratic politics. Reconnecting those who fall away from politics is essential to the stability of liberal democracy over the longer term. Indeed, the same point applies for populists from all parts of the political spectrum, and not just the nationalist right that is so prominent in Europe, Turkey, Brazil, India, and the United States today. The question is whether and how populists can effectively represent their constituents while at the same time adapting to liberal democratic norms for reconciling competing interests. That question has not received much attention in the scholarly literature.1 We know a lot more about the origins [End Page 392] and nature of populism, and about how populism can lead to authoritarianism by undermining democratic norms and institutions, than we know about how populists become something closer to mainstream liberal democrats. Research on populists in power is still in its infancy.2 The key to striking a beneficial relationship between national populists and liberal democrats lies in reinforcing the formal and informal institutions that underpin the liberal democratic connection between sovereignty and the national interest. The 'rule of law' debate in Europe and the United States is about protecting those institutions that frame the exercise of sovereignty and ensure that the national interest is defined within the context of liberal democratic politics. So long as those institutions are resilient, national populists will have little choice but to learn how to exercise sovereignty to identify the interests of the nation, rather than bending sovereignty to the service of a national interest they take as given. A study in contrast This relationship between sovereignty and the national interest seems abstract when presented at the start of an essay, but it comes across concretely when laid out in political speeches. Consider the contrast between Donald Trump and Barack Obama. When Donald Trump gave his first address to the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 2017, his message was simple. True patriots everywhere should invest their sovereignty – a word he used twenty-one times during the speech – in the pursuit of the national interest. As Trump explained, 'if we do not invest ourselves, our hearts, and our minds in our nations, if we will not build strong families, safe communities, and healthy societies for ourselves, no one can do it for us'. His only qualification to this notion of self-help is that 'in fulfilling our obligations to our own nations, we also realize that it's in everyone's interest to seek a future where all nations can be sovereign, prosperous, and secure'.3 Trump left open the question how those sovereign nations should reconcile competing claims with one another. Trump's UN speech was different from any given by a United States president to the General Assembly. When Barack Obama spoke at the United Nations the year before, he never mentioned the term sovereignty. There is no question for Obama that the...

Use of Civilisational Populist Informal Law by Authoritarian Incumbents to Prolong Their Rule

Once voted into office, populist governments have often found undemocratic means to prolong their stay. The literature on populists in power is evolving and expanding. However, it has mainly focused on how the populists in power attack institutions such as the judiciary, rule erosion, and dirty institutionalism. How populists make use of the law and the judiciary to prolong their authoritarian rule remains an area that is under-researched. The populists’ use of informal institutions such as the unofficial law when in power has not been studied either. This paper addresses these gaps in the populism literature by studying Turkey’s Islamist populist ruling party’s use of informal law in prolonging its authoritarian rule. The paper argues that the Islamist civilisational populist AKP has been using informal Islamist law for both the legitimation of its rule and the repression of the opposition. It shows how the AKP officials, the state’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), the pro-AKP Sharia scholars, and other informal religious authorities employ the civilisational populist Islamist legal narrative to argue that according to Sharia it is obligatory to choose the side of the God that is represented by the AKP and to vote against the infidel opposition that is an existential danger to the pure Muslim people of Turkey and their religion. The paper combines and contributes to two theoretical strands. The first is civilisational populism, and the second is the informal institutions, with a focus on informal law and legal pluralism.

Backlash policy diffusion to populists in power.

We analyze how parties respond programmatically to populist parties in power abroad. Political parties often copy the policies of governing parties in other countries–a phenomenon that contributes to waves of transnational policy diffusion. We report the first large-scale comparative study showing that populist parties in government abroad trigger the opposite reaction: instead of inspiring emulation, their highly visible governing dilemmas provoke a policy backlash by parties in other states. We argue that dilemmas arise because populist parties confront unique and debilitating trade-offs between maintaining their anti-system posture and governing effectively, which make them electorally vulnerable. Other parties observe foreign populists’ governing dilemmas and respond by distancing themselves in order to avoid these problems. We detect this “foreign populist backlash effect” using spatial econometric analysis, a method that allows us to estimate international policy connections between parties, applied to over 200 European parties’ programmatic positions since the 1970s. Our findings illuminate parties’ election strategies and show that this backlash effect constrains the spread of populism across Western democracies.

Do international rents bolster democratic backsliding under populist governments? Evidence from Latin America

The political science literature often points to populism as the cause of democratic backsliding. The literature purports that populism undermines democracy's liberal component, meaning the horizontal checks and balances on executive power by legislatures and courts and the vertical checks and balances by civil society, such as a free press and social movements. Populists promote political polarization to build sustainable ruling coalitions during and between elections that legitimize and support the illiberal policies above. However, this debate often ignores the economic tools that populists in power possess, such as capturing direct and indirect international rents to finance clientelist mechanisms to co-opt political support. This paper contributes to the rich literature on how economic rent conditions the negative relationship between populism and liberalism by disaggregating the moderating effects of direct and indirect international rents through panel regression models in 18 Latin American countries from 1991 to 2019. I find that direct international rents, such as natural resource rents, moderated a deepening in processes of democratic backsliding. Contrastingly, indirect international rents, such as remittances, moderately mitigated democratic backsliding.

An Economic Understanding of Populism: A Conceptual Framework of the Demand and the Supply Side of Populism

This article assesses progress in the economics-centred literature on populism along three key themes and develops a conceptual framework to better understand the phenomenon. On the demand side (t − 1), economics research identifies the effect of an exogenous economic shock on a marginalised segment of society and works with the economic voting hypothesis. On the supply side of populists in power (t), in the literature, populist rule is typically associated with unsustainable expansionary fiscal and monetary policies and with trade protectionism. At t + 1, by using rational and biased belief assumptions, economists provide implicit inputs for a seemingly paradoxical question: why is a populist re-elected even if most populist policies assumably end up in Pareto inferior outcomes? This article summarises and criticises the relevant economic literature and shows that not only political science, but economics scholarship is instrumental for studying populism at all three stages.

Populist Capture of Foreign Policy Institutions: The Orbán Government and the De‐Europeanization of Hungarian Foreign Policy

AbstractDespite a growing interest in the relationship between populism and foreign policy, we know little about how populists in power engage with Europeanized foreign policy institutions. Bridging between research on populism and foreign policy (de‐)Europeanization, this article develops a theoretical framework for examining the impact of PRR parties in government on core features of national foreign policy institutions. First, it identifies three dimensions – organizational priorities, the allocation of authority, and organizational culture – and related indicators for the assessment of foreign policy de‐Europeanization. Second, it argues that the impact of PRR parties in government on national foreign policy institutions depends on two main factors: their ‘foreign policy preferences’ and their ‘action capacity’. Whilst the article demonstrates substantial de‐Europeanization in Hungary's foreign policy institutions under successive Orbán governments, it also shows that the possession of a strong action capacity alone is not enough for institutional changes to take place.