Are populist leaders playing the public? Examining the effect of populism on common and luxury good imports

Populist movements have grown significantly around the world in recent years. Populist ideologies typically view social and political elites as the enemy of the people; however, populist leaders are themselves part of the elite class, and are politically and financially dependent on other elites to some degree. We use principal-agent theory to examine whether populist leaders act as constrained agents by faithfully representing the people’s interests, or whether they actually pursue elite interests. We use panel data on more than 170 countries from 1993 to 2019 to look at total imports and imports of luxury goods under populist regimes to examine whether populist leaders try to carve out exceptions for elite interests. We find that both total imports and imports of luxury goods decline under populist regimes, and further decline over time. This suggests that populists act more as constrained agents to the people.