Populism: From a Political Movement and an Ideological Concept to an Institutionalized Framework. Reshaping the Democratic Framework in Romania, Hungary and Poland

The main issue when discussing populism resides not just in the field of an ideological concept, a type of discourse, a civic or popular movement, but to public policies implemented by populists in office, governing democratic societies and reshaping institutional democratic frameworks. If populism until the last decade was just a mass trend in Europe, today it is not only a mere and distant threat, but a certainty and a phenomenon to deal with in institutional analysis. Liberal democracies and their principles have been losing ground and their mechanisms have weakened so much over the years that the populist leaders and parties won elections and took over the legislative and executive power. The democracy's crisis we are facing determined the traditional parties to become out of fashion, the discontents of people with politicians to increase, the loss of votes in elections, as traditional conservative, social democratic and liberal parties failed to generate and deliver appealing public policies, and mistrust in the institutions of the state to rise. Moreover, the new challenges faced by public institutions made them less resilient to change. In this article, we aim at unravelling the main populist tools to change the "rules of the game" and transitioning from what we define as liberal democracy to illiberal democracy. Among these tools, we focus on legislative reforms mainly in jurisdiction and justice, influencing the constitutional court by creating situations that push to limit constitutional provisions and their legal interpretation. In addition, illiberal populists proceed to, at a low cost, the seizure of the public institutions, which not manifest resilience to change by changing their rules of organization and functioning. The democratic principle of check and balance among public institutions is, in this way, threatened. Another major area in which institutionalized populism manifests is in the public discourse, but not merely declarative and intentional, but seizuring mass media institutions and thus 'cropping' and adjusting information to control public opining, mainly favourable to populists. Therefore, we face a serious crisis of free speech. Although populists, both in movements and institutions, claim to fight against the corrupt governing elite, we witness the creation of a new elite incorporating the main characteristics of the traditional elite defined by Pareto and Mosca. The main threat to institutionalized and elitist populism is the ability to seizure democratic institutions, civil liberties and rights, reshaping the utility of institutions, and thus reshaping the democratic institutional framework in order to stay in power, with the costs of developing into authoritarianism and dictatorships.