Essays on Conceptualising Policies Linked to Populist Rhetoric in Europe and Measuring Their Effects in Hungary

In this doctoral thesis, we tried to answer the following overarching research question: what are the effects of policies linked to populist rhetoric on economic growth? To do so, we answered three smaller research questions in each of the papers that are part of this dissertation: one to conceptualize the independent variable, one to conceptualize policies linked to populist rhetoric in Europe, and one that measures the effect of such policies in the Hungarian case. In the first paper, we see how concept formation, concept stretching, and social contexts are fundamental in the conceptualization of populism. The paper shows that the current understanding of populism could learn a great deal from the context of when it was first studied, which is late 20th century Latin America. More specifically, that the current understanding of populism is flawed in two ways. The first way regards concept formation. In fact, contrary to the current understanding of populism, understanding something in the way it manifests can still be a valid way to understand it. All social sciences, deduce the existence of a phenomenon from some its a posteriori manifestation. The problem that concerned populism the most is the framework that was used to interpret its Latin American manifestation. The second way regards concept stretching. Excluding political economic definitions just because they are based on the Latin American experience, which is erroneously believed to be only leftist, is simply wrong. The economic definition of populism simply does not include only leftist or inclusionary forms. This paper also stresses the often-dismissed importance of structural change and social contexts to explain national and subnational variations in understanding populism. In fact, the Latin American experience teaches us that things can be generalised only according to socio-cultural and economic context. In the second paper, we show that the number of European parties characterised by populist rhetoric is rising, and that these parties’ ...