eprintid: 10050931
rev_number: 20
eprint_status: archive
userid: 654
dir: disk0/10/05/09/31
datestamp: 2018-06-22 13:17:39
lastmod: 2018-06-26 12:20:58
status_changed: 2018-06-26 12:20:58
type: working_paper
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Ádám, Z
title: Authoritarian populism at work: A political transaction cost approach with reference to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary
ispublished: pub
keywords: authoritarian populism, democratic populism, political transaction costs, political exchange, Hungary
abstract: This paper conceptualizes authoritarian populism in an institutional economics context. Examining the literature on populism in political science, it considers authoritarian populism a degraded form of democracy that holds elections in regular intervals as means of popular legitimation, but undermines pluralism and constrains political choice. Based on the theory of transaction cost economics, the paper argues that authoritarian populism reduces political transaction costs by vertically organizing political exchange instead of the horizontal organization characteristic of liberal democracy. Electoral demand for such a shift rises at times of crises and a mismatch between formal and informal political institutions. This is what happened in Hungary towards the end of the 2000s, in a period of socially costly fiscal stabilization and the troubles of the global financial crisis. Correspondingly, voters have given Prime Minister Orbán strong mandates to govern at three consecutive elections since 2010, who transformed Hungary into a textbook case of authoritarian populism.
date: 2018-05
publisher: UCL Centre for Comparative Studies of Emerging Economies (CCSEE)
official_url: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ssees/comparative-studies-emerging-economies/working-papers
oa_status: green
full_text_type: pub
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
full_text_status: public
series: UCL Centre for Comparative Studies of Emerging Economies Working Papers
number: 2018/2
place_of_pub: London, UK
pages: 21
citation:        Ádám, Z;      (2018)    Authoritarian populism at work: A political transaction cost approach with reference to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.                    (UCL Centre for Comparative Studies of Emerging Economies Working Papers  2018/2). UCL Centre for Comparative Studies of Emerging Economies (CCSEE): London, UK.       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10050931/1/Douarin_Working%20Paper%202018.2-2.pdf