Populism and patronage: why populists win elections in India, Asia, and beyond
In: Oxford scholarship online
In: Political Science
Populist rule is bad for democracy, yet in country after country, populists are being voted into office. This work shows that the populists such as Indira Gandhi and Narendra Modi win elections when the institutionalised ties between non-populist parties and voters decay. Yet, the explanations for this decay differ across different types of party system. Paul Kenny focuses on the particular vulnerability of patronage-based party systems to populism