Populism and institutional capture

Nicholas Chesterley and Paolo Roberti ()

European Journal of Political Economy, 2018, vol. 53, issue C, 1-12

Abstract: This paper analyzes the relationship between populism and institutional capture. Populist politicians provide voters with a utility boom followed by a subsequent bust. Non-populists provide a constant level of utility. Once elected, however, politicians of both types are able to seize control of institutions to ensure their re-election. We show that in equilibrium, populist politicians may capture institutions to avoid being voted out of power during the bust: non-populists do not. Voters rationally elect a populist if voters discount the future sufficiently or if it is too costly for the populist to seize control of institutions. Unfortunately, both types of politician may prefer not to strengthen institutions, either to allow their capture or to discourage the election of the populist.

Keywords: Voting; Populism; Capture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D73 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268016302026
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Populism and Institutional Capture (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:53:y:2018:i:c:p:1-12

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2017.06.004

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by J. De Haan, A. L. Hillman and H. W. Ursprung

More articles in European Journal of Political Economy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().