Legislative populism, ideological alignment, and human freedom

Populist movements portray society as divided between “the people” and “the elites” and often seek to relax institutional constraints. This paper examines how right- and left-wing populism relate to human freedom, measured by the Human Freedom Index. Our main contribution is to study populism as a legislative phenomenon and to show that its institutional associations depend on ideological alignment within legislatures. Using panel data for 76 democratic countries since 2000, we construct indices of legislative populism and use factor analysis to derive data-driven dimensions of human freedom. The central finding is conditional. Populist representation is most strongly associated with weaker institutional outcomes when populist parties are ideologically aligned with same-side legislative majorities. Right-wing populism is associated with weaker rule of law, civil liberties, and security; left-wing populism with weaker security and smaller government. Election-year interaction tests yield similar implied effects in election and non-election years, consistent with limited confounding from election-year shocks and short-run electoral updating. Executive populism matters for some outcomes but does not eliminate the relevance of legislative populism.