Market reforms or institutional restoration? Anti-populist strategies in power

Following periods of populist rule, Israel and Poland stand out as rare instances where anti-populist coalitions successfully unseated populist governments. Despite their similarities, these coalitions adopted fundamentally different governing strategies. While the Polish government employed militant institutional reforms to dismantle ‘captured’ state structures, its Israeli counterpart prioritised militant economic mechanisms to reshape the electorate’s relationship to populist politics. This paper introduces a novel framework to explain this divergence, arguing that when populist governments not only attack liberal democracy but also pursue unorthodox economic policy, anti-populist governing strategies are defined by a trade-off between institutional and economic militancy. Analysing three key domains – the rule of law, media, and economic policy – the findings reveal that high-intensity populist reforms in Poland necessitated a militant institutional response, whereas low-intensity reforms in Israel permitted an ‘economic fix’ aimed at re-moulding voter behaviour through market mechanisms. Ultimately, the paper argues that both strategies struggle with providing a comprehensive alternative to populism, focusing on reversal rather than structural innovation.