In early 2019, I worked on a comparative analysis about what happens when a populist leader/party wins state office. It was published in the Journal of Democracy and can also be found here. Perhaps the major finding in that piece was the following:
“Once populists become established in power, what are the paths that a nation might take? The available cases suggest that there are three: 1) Populism might entrench itself and become systemic, inducing weakly liberal parties to shift in a populist direction; 2) populism might turn into outright autocracy; or 3) liberal forces might defeat populism at the polls and return to power” (p74).
The whole logic was condensed simply in the following graph: Continue reading “What path is Trump’s U.S. on?”
