Government Populism in Italy, Hungary and Turkey

Whereas radical right-wing populist parties such as the Front National, the PVV and the FPÖ have attracted much attention, the diffusion of a new type of (rather moderate than radical right-wing) “government populism” has not been systematically approached in political science. This paper will sketch an “ideal type” (Max Weber) of “government populism” using the common characteristics of the governments of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy, Victor Orban in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey. “Government populism” attacks the functional elites in state institutions and attempts at bringing independent media and judiciary under government control. In addition, it emphasizes the direct communication between “the people” (in an organic vision of society) and the head of government. Thus, it has a restricted vision of democracy as electoral democracy (cf. Coppedge et al 2011) or “delegative democracy” (O’Donnell 1994). Moreover, it undermines the formal rationality of institutions by a neopatrimonial subtext, i.e. the use of public office for personal gain but also the distortion of market mechanisms by political intervention. The identification of similar patterns of government populism in a core EU state (Italy), a "new" EU state (Hungary) and a non-EU state (Turkey) highlights the appeal of this restricted conception of democracy and makes it a salient type of de-democratization, an authoritarian alternative to "liberal democracy". The paper will combine common factors in the political system to a multi-factorial explanation. "Government populism" devised by a "political entrepreneur" is facilitated by contested institutions, a weak opposition and the lack of intra-party democracy in the government party. In particular in Turkey and Italy, the opposition had tried to gain or keep its influence in state institutions and the judiciary and fostered the politicization of these institutions whereas it for some time fell short of gathering electoral majorities.