Populism and corruption management- a theoretical framework

The relationship between corruption and populism is complicated (Mendilow and Phélippeau 2021; Kossow 2019) and remains rather unexplored. If corruption is high in a country, populist parties tend to gain more electoral support (Engler 2016; Foresta, 2020; Snegovaya and Petrova 2020) by simply pointing out how elites are corrupt and acting against the people (Mudde 2004; Mungiu-Pippidi, 2018; Csehi, 2019). Yet, the level of corruption increases when populists come to power (Kostadinova 2023; Transparency International 2022; Engler 2020; Adam 2019). While we already know about the structural factors related to the institutional occupation (Gryzmala-Busse, 2019; Soyaltin-Colella 2020) and the redistributive policies (Kubbe and Harel-Fisher 2021; Vukovic 2020; Adam 2019) to explain how populist governments sheltered their regime from any major backlash, we know relatively little about how they fake as pure and persuade the public of their integrity. This paper seeks to fill this theoretical gap by proposing a theoretical framework for populist corruption management and explores the (discursive) strategies and tactics employed by political leaders to deal with corruption scandals that plague their administrations and remain resilient in front of their constituencies.