Corruption, Populism & Democratic Political Freedoms: The US, Israel & Hungary

This paper explores the theoretical and empirical relations between three large concepts that are often discussed separately — Corruption, Populism, and Democracy. Each of these complex concepts has many dimensions: thus, one can talk about economic1 and political corruption (and the relations between them), define populism in many alternative ways, and examine democracy from the perspectives of sustaining social institutions or keeping political freedoms. The analysis offered here aimed to be theoretical by proposing generalizations about the three concepts — Corruption, Populism and Democracy — but in order to formulate those generalizations, even as mere hypotheses, the study examines what we view as several key cases for the exploration of the relations between the three generalized concepts. The analysis will dwell in some detail on three country cases where the relationships between corruption, populism and democracy seem to be particularly suggestive and theoretically and empirically relevant: the United States, Israel and Hungary under the leadership of Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu & Victor Orban, respectively. The empirical cases will provide us with the diversity of regime types that we consider, hypothetically at this stage of explorative research, as a critical variable in determining the forms of both corruption and populism, as well as the interaction between them and, most importantly, their impact on democracy and political freedom.