| Popis: |
This chapter, seeking entry points to mitigate the threats to democracy posed by populist governance, discusses how elected populists behave in power. The elected autocrats of the last several years typify caudillo command, staking their claim to governance on their charisma and command of the populace and military. One facet of caudillo command is that, rather than altering basic government structures, populist autocrats commit intralegal abuses, wielding legal mechanisms against the opposition to consolidate power—because these often operate short of criminal violations, they are difficult to address. The chapter then turns to corruption. Features of populist rule that regularly invite corruption include short-term politics, the dismantling of intermediary institutions, and the tendency to reward “the people” (with, e.g., pre-election social expenditures) and punish their “enemies” (e.g., by hiking taxes on opposition strongholds). Strengthening anticorruption institutions is thus an important entry point to addressing populist rule’s distortive effects. |
