Populists in Power: Populism and Representation in Illiberal Democracies

Much of the literature on populism, particularly in contemporary advanced democracies, focuses on its disruptive power to shake up mainstream party systems, to criticize the functioning of democratic institutions, and to mobilize critical citizens against elites. This chapter considers how populists construct regimes when they have established themselves in power, taking cases from post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe as examples. We identify specific governmental policies, ideological tenets, institutional designs, and discursive practices that enable populists to stabilize their rule and forge representational linkages with large blocks of the population. The chapter questions, however, whether the success of populists in power in these cases provides an indication of how populists might succeed in advanced democracies or whether it is a result of the peculiar political conditions of post-Communism, the absence of which suggests limiting conditions in other contexts.