The Political Economy of Populism

Guriev, Sergei; Papaioannou, Elias

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3542052

Cited by 92 publications

(106 citation statements)

References 261 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

104

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Our paper is related to a rapidly growing literature on populism. See in particular Norris and Inglehart (2019), Algan et al (2017), Guiso et al (2017), Bonomi et al 2020, Levy et al (2020) and other papers cited by Guriev and Papaioannou (2020). While this literature too seeks to explain why economic distress is associated with support for populist parties, or why voters hurt by adverse economic shocks support right wing policy platforms, the suggested explanations are quite different from our own.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 68%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Economic Shocks and Populism: The Political Implications of Reference-Dependent Preferences

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper studies electoral competition over redistributive taxes between a safe incumbent and a risky opponent. As in prospect theory, economically disappointed voters become risk lovers, and hence are intrinsically attracted by the more risky candidate. We show that, after a large adverse economic shock, the equilibrium can display policy divergence: the more risky candidate proposes lower taxes and is supported by a coalition of very rich and very disappointed voters, while the safe candidate proposes higher taxes. This can explain why new populist parties are often supported by economically dissatisfied voters and yet they run on economic policy platforms of low redistribution. We show that survey data on the German SOEP are consistent with our theoretical predictions on voters' behavior.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 68%

“…These recent phenomena are also consistent with historical evidence showing that large recessions induced by financial crisis are associated with increased polarization and a shift towards new radical right wing parties (Mian et al 2014, Funke et al 2016). The survey by Guriev and Papaioannou (2020) cites other relevant contibutions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic Shocks and Populism: The Political Implications of Reference-Dependent Preferences

2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The estimates of the intensity of exposure of an area to the welfare reforms are "deeply rooted in official statistics" drawing in "data from the Treasury's own estimates of the projected savings, the government's impact assessments, and benefit claimant data." 21 The exposure of an area to specific reforms is measured as the financial loss per working age adult in a district and year. The aggregate figure masks a wide range of variation in the intensity of treatment, which is driven by the heterogeneity in the distribution of benefit claimants across the United Kingdom prior to the reforms.…”

Section: B Exposure Of Welfare Cuts At the District Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Did Austerity Cause Brexit?

Fetzer

2019

American Economic Review

324

206

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper documents a significant association between the exposure of an individual or area to the UK government’s austerity-induced welfare reforms begun in 2010, and the following: the subsequent rise in support for the UK Independence Party, an important correlate of Leave support in the 2016 UK referendum on European Union membership; broader individual-level measures of political dissatisfaction; and direct measures of support for Leave. Leveraging data from all UK electoral contests since 2000, along with detailed, individual-level panel data, the findings suggest that the EU referendum could have resulted in a Remain victory had it not been for austerity. (JEL D72, F15, F60, H53, I38)

show abstract

“…This annual poll surveys around 1,000 respondents from each of more than 120 countries, with broad coverage of democracies and informational autocracies. 11 As a rough proxy for membership in the informed elite, we use here a dummy for whether the respondent had completed tertiary education.…”

Section: Beliefs Of Elites and Massesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a related paper,Shadmehr and Bernhardt (2015) analyze the inference problem for citizens who must decide whether the absence of "bad news" is due to state censorship or to a lack of bad news for journalists to report 11. As data are for recent years, almost all nondemocracies in the Gallup World Poll are informational autocracies.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Informational Autocrats

Guriev

Treisman

2019

Journal of Economic Perspectives

Self Cite

270

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In recent decades, dictatorships based on mass repression have largely given way to a new model based on the manipulation of information. Instead of terrorizing citizens into submission, “informational autocrats” artificially boost their popularity by convincing the public they are competent. To do so, they use propaganda and silence informed members of the elite by co-optation or censorship. Using several sources, including a newly created dataset on authoritarian control techniques, we document a range of trends in recent autocracies consistent with this new model: a decline in violence, efforts to conceal state repression, rejection of official ideologies, imitation of democracy, a perceptions gap between the masses and the elite, and the adoption by leaders of a rhetoric of performance rather than one aimed at inspiring fear.

show abstract

The Political Economy of Populism

Cited by 92 publications

References 261 publications

Economic Shocks and Populism: The Political Implications of Reference-Dependent Preferences

Economic Shocks and Populism: The Political Implications of Reference-Dependent Preferences

Did Austerity Cause Brexit?

Informational Autocrats

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About