Resource rents and populism in resource-dependent economies

Elena Seghezza () and Giovanni B. Pittaluga

European Journal of Political Economy, 2018, vol. 54, issue C, 83-88

Abstract: A common explanation for populism is the existence of autocratic institutions, with an autocratic regime dispelling opposition by distributing income to the ‘masses’ in the manner of the ‘bread and circuses’ of Imperial Rome. In Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, populist redistribution occurred however in conjunction with weakening of democratic institutions. We associate populist redistribution with resource rents available in the course of the commodity price cycle. When domestic production is predominantly natural resources, other industry interests are ineffective in opposing populist redistribution and preventing the undermining of democracy. Rather than associating populism with preexisting autocracy as others have done, we show empirically that, in the cases we study, resource rents facilitated populism that allowed regime change whereby authoritarian institutions were created.

Keywords: Populism; Latin America; Commodity price cycle (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: P16 P48 Q33 Q38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0176268018300387
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:54:y:2018:i:c:p:83-88

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2018.04.002

Access Statistics for this article

European Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by J. De Haan, A. L. Hillman and H. W. Ursprung

More articles in European Journal of Political Economy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().