2 - The War on Institutions

Summary

Populists in power usually maintain the institutions inherited from the pre-populist past, but use several strategies to render them hollow. These strategies include capture (institutions being staffed with new individuals who lack value commitment to the original rationales for having the institution), duplication (institutions being paralleled by new ones, with ostensibly the same competencies, which overshadow and sideline the original institutions), erosion (legal changes or de facto changes, to the point of rendering the institution purely perfunctory), expansion (when institutions are granted legally unlimited powers), or migration (when they are transferred to another institutional context). The chapter shows in detail how populists in power capture electoral institutions, public media and media boards, NGOs etc). The trajectories of backsliding are such that the changes are often obscure and incremental. The truly toxic effects are caused by the interaction between various changes.