Populist Politicians – Charismatic Political Strategists or Savvy Political Entrepreneurs? A Micro-Foundational Perspective on Institutional Change and Disruption

Framing populism as a type of political entrepreneurship, we integrate the political entrepreneurship and the institutional entrepreneurship literatures to conceptualize populist politicians as political entrepreneurs driving institutional change and disruption by way of leveraging uncertainty and volatility, as well through innovation and experimentation. In doing so, we explore populism’s micromechanisms and how do populist politicians drive institutional change and disruption as political entrepreneurs? We propose a process model of populist-driven institutional change and make three contributions to institutional theory. First, we provide an actor-centric understanding of institutional change. Second, we address the lack of theorizing populism’s micromechanisms and in the process deepen the theoretical understanding of institutional change processes more broadly. Third, we also touch on the potential pharmakon-type effects of populism in terms of institutional innovation and experimentation, which then leads to the emergence of so-called proto-institutions. These kinds of institutions can help us understand institutional origins not from a long-term evolutionary perspective but from short-term political strategy through influencing “the institutional matrix”.