How to reconcile populist voter demand with rational business interests? Explaining change and stability in the governance of migration and finance in Poland's PiS government

This paper examines the varying effects of populist and illiberal regimes on the regulatory state. It aims to explain the contradictory changes to the governance of migration and finance under the populist PiS government in Poland after 2015. Referring to a national conservative agenda, the government has sought to curtail the inflows of finance and people from abroad. Consequentially, state governance became illiberal in the area of finance, including by curtailing central bank independence and strengthening national finance. Unexpectedly, the populist government maintained a liberal governance of labour migration, thus sustaining the country’s status among the top countries in the reception of immigrants. To explain these varied governance outcomes, this paper contends that populist governments expand illiberal state interventions concerning issues that do not face opposition from the domestic private sector. In policy domains with substantial backlash from the corporate sector, the government successfully deployed a "responsibility deflection" strategy to offset a potential perforation of its populist credibility. The government could maintain a very liberal, fragmented governance of migration without facing voter backlash by dispersing responsibility over migration policy at lower levels in the ministries and decentralized \textit{powiat} offices across the country. The findings of the paper paint a more nuanced, strategic portrait of populist governments that seek to reconcile populist voter demand with the preference of the profit-oriented corporate sector. This way, it becomes evident how the preferences of populist governments to exert control over the regulatory state are interlocked with their management of private sector preferences.