The Political Economy of Populism

Abstract

Populism is the big topic in political science now. The study of the latest re-emergence of populist parties and leaders has managed to attract some of the most talented young scholars. In this rigorously researched book Petar Stankov offers an original theory of populist cycles, focusing on identity, economy and societal fairness. In addition, he offers empirical explanations of those cycles and valuable insights into the consequences of populist governance."

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

“…In addition, political preferences of voters may be formed by political messages and narratives that are strategically chosen by political leaders in response to economic conditions (Rodrik, 2021). Indeed, prominent articles stress the need to think carefully about the interaction of political cleavages, policies and social identities and to think about party preferences as endogenously formed as a key part of identity politics (Akerlof and Kranton, 2000;Collier, 2020;Stankov, 2021) -a position we agree with and found it important to highlight. 2…”

Populism and Crisis in Indonesia: Politicization of Economy, Identity, and Personalistic Leadership

“…It assumes that greater shocks in one domain will spill over into other domains, thereby substantiating the impacts of respective shocks on electoral support to populists. [10].…”

How Populism Harms Prosperity: Unified Populist Rule Reduces Investment, Innovation, and Productivity

“…While populists often attract votes by vowing to redistribute from a "powerful elite" to the ordinary people, they do not actually reduce pretax and transfer income inequality (e.g., Houle and Kenny 2018; Strobl et al 2023). Neither do they improve real consumption per capita (Stankov 2020). Funke, Schularick, and Trebesch (2023) nd that, after 15 years, per capita income in countries ruled by populists is 10% lower compared to plausible non-populist counterfactuals.…”

“…We conceptualize and code a new variable that more accurately measures populism across place and time. We expand beyond the data coverage more typical of research on populism, which is often relegated to regions such as Latin America or disparate case studies Edwards 1990, 1991;Dalio et al 2017;Stankov 2018Stankov , 2020Campos and Casas 2021;and Strobl et al 2023): we include both developed and developing countries over more than 50 years. We de ne populism to re ect political reality and do justice to how populists adopt public policies that affect their country's long run economic development.…”