Teoria política do populismo

A Political Theory of Populism
Daron Acemoglu
MIT
Georgy Egorov
Northwestern University
Konstantin Sonin
New Economic School
September 21, 2012
Abstract
When voters fear that politicians may be in‡uenced or corrupted by the rich elite, signals of integrity
are valuable. As a consequence, an honest politician seeking reelection chooses ‘populist’policies— i.e.,
policies to the left of the median voter— as a way of signaling that he is not beholden to the interests of
the right. Politicians that are in‡uenced by right-wing special interests respond by choosing moderate, or
even left-of-center policies. This populist bias of policy is greater when the value of remaining in o¢ ce is
higher for the politician; when there is greater polarization between the policy preferences of the median
voter and right-wing special interests; when politicians are perceived as more likely to be corrupt; when
there is an intermediate amount of noise in the information that voters receive; when politicians are more
forward-looking; and when there is greater uncertainty about the type of the incumbent. We also show
that ‘soft term limits’may exacerbate, rather than reduce, the populist bias of policies.
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