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A Costly Commitment: Populism, Economic Performance, and the Quality of Bureaucracy
Open accessAbstract
We study the consequences of populism for economic performance and the quality of bureaucracy. When voters lose trust in representative democracy, populists strategically supply unconditional policy commitments that are easier to monitor for voters. When in power, populists try to implement their policy commitments regardless of financial constraints and expert assessment of the feasibility of their policies, worsening government economic performance and dismantling resistance from expert bureaucrats. With novel data on more than 8,000 Italian municipalities covering more than 20 years, we estimate the effect of electing a populist mayor with a close‐election regression discontinuity design. We find that the election of a populist mayor leads to smaller repayments of debts, a larger share of procurement contracts with cost overruns, higher turnover among top bureaucrats—driven by forced rather than voluntary departures—and a sharp decrease in the percentage of postgraduate bureaucrats.
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Public Administration Under Populist Rule: Standing Up Against Democratic Backsliding
Bauer, M. W. (2024) · International Journal of Public Administration · doi:10.1080/01900692.2023.2243400 · Cited by 104
“That populist rule causes a higher turnover of top bureaucrats is also confirmed by Sasso and Morelli (2021) and by a study on the impact of populist mayors in Italian cities – see Bellodi et al. (2023).”
Metadata
- Authors
- Bellodi, L., Morelli, M., & Vannoni, M.
- Affiliations
- Bocconi University (IT)
- King's College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Morelli, Massimo
- Venue
- American Journal of Political Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2023-04-02
- Volume
- 68
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 193-209
- ISSN
- 0092-5853 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-5907
- OpenAlex
- W4362586808
- Cited by
- 68
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 26 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 6
- FWCI
- 65.87
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- American Journal of Political Science (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Archivio istituzionale della Ricerca - Bocconi (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Research Portal (King's College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Populism, Right-Wing Movements
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Fiscal Policies and Political Economy
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Keywords
- populism, economic performance, bureaucracy quality, policy commitment, Italian municipalities, representative democracy
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