Constructing (Il)Legitimate Democracy: Populism and Power Concentration in Newspaper Discourse on Venezuela

Imperfect Information, Democracy, and Populism∗

The modern world is complex and difficult to understand for voters, who may hold beliefs that are at variance with reality. Politicians face incentives to pander to voters’ beliefs to get reelected. We analyze the welfare effects of this pandering and show that it comes along with both costs and benefits. Moreover, we explore optimal constitutional design in the presence of imperfect informatio...

Democracy , Populism , and ( Un ) bounded Rationality ∗

In many instances, both voters and politicians are imperfectly informed about which policies are optimal. We analyze politicians’ policy choice in such situations. A distinctive element of our analysis is that we investigate how the strategic sophistication of voters’ beliefs about politicians’ behavior affects policy choice. This provides a novel approach in political economy that leads to a n...

When populism takes over the delivery of health care: Venezuela

Adequate and modern health care is not available in Venezuela at this moment. A humanitarian crisis of post war dimensions is currently rampant and afflicting all Venezuelans alike. The delivery and availability of cancer care is severely limited and inadequate. No funding is available as populist measures, mismanagement, pillaging, corruption, lack of forethought and expertise have brought the...

Populism and Human Rights in Theory and Practice: Chavez's Venezuela and Fujimori's Peru

Free indirect discourse in newspaper reports

It has recently been noted (Onrust 1994) that two journalists at the Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad have introduced a new style of reporting on soccer and other ball games. Their articles present a mix of factual reporting of events, background information, interviews and commentary, employing a variety of literary techniques. Most notably, reactions and opinions are often reported in th...