Infected Politics in the Pandemic: How Medical Populism Shapes Politics on Two Continents

This article investigates how populist leaders in power across Europe and the Americas responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on the extent and form of medical populism—the calculated use of health crises to challenge establishment authority, mobilize support, and promote alternative governance. Drawing on speeches and public statements from a select group of populist heads of government—including Orbán, Matovič, Maduro, López Obrador, Bukele, Bolsonaro, and Trump—we compare cross-regional discursive patterns using a framework developed. Contrary to expectations of ideological or regional uniformity, we find that medical populism is a transnational and trans-ideological phenomenon. While expressions vary, all leaders engaged in anti-elitist, conspiratorial, or anti-scientific rhetoric. Centralized political authority and weak healthcare systems, rather than ideology, more reliably explain the intensity of medical populist discourse. These findings challenge the common belief in the literature that populist misinformation is mainly connected to the radical right or low institutional trust, and highlight instead the structural incentives that drive medical populism in times of crisis.