Why are citizens of free countries increasingly disenchanted with democracy and tempted to vote for populists and authoritarians?
Peruse the press or spend an afternoon with recent academic literature, and you will find that one answer stands out: democracies have failed to deliver. Call it the “Deliveroo theory of politics,” after the popular app that delivers a meal to your door in record time.
Maybe economies have not grown enough, wages have stagnated, inequality has risen, or leaders have been corrupt and self-serving. The list of possible factors is long, but they all point in the same direction: voters are so fed up with a lack of tangible benefits that they turn to populists who, despite their clownish and crass behavior, come across as different from the political elite – more decisive and able to get things done.
The upshot of the Deliveroo theory of politics is that “getting democracies to deliver” is the key to preventing populism and democratic backsliding. It is the kind of argument you hear from left-leaning reporters, reform-minded politicians, and well-meaning NGO leaders. It sounds plausible. But is it true?
If only it were. Even a brief look at a few cases raises questions about this conventional wisdom. India was on a sustained, if somewhat volatile, growth path since economic reforms began in 1991, long before Narendra Modi became prime minister. The Philippines had been growing at more than 6% per year in the four years before Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016. Are those obvious examples of “failure to deliver”?
More systematic analyses bear out skepticism about Deliveroo politics. One paper looked at 12 cases of democratic backsliding, focusing on three core economic indicators – inequality, poverty, and growth – in the five years leading up to pivotal elections that brought populist-authoritarians to power. In most cases, growth was stable prior to the onset of backsliding; and in five countries, growth was so high that they were considered developmental stars. Likewise, in eight of the 12 cases, inequality was trending downward before the pivotal elections that brought populists to power. In the four countries where it was not, inequality remained roughly stable. Perhaps most strikingly, poverty levels had fallen in nine of the 12 countries.
Poland provides the best evidence against the Deliveroo theory of politics. The country was in decrepit shape, with a backward economy, when communism ended in 1989. As Simon Kuper points out in a recent Financial Times article, between 1990 and 2020, only China’s economy grew faster than Poland’s. Today, Poles have average incomes close to those in Japan. Yet they have “somehow emerged from a 30-year economic miracle very distrustful of their elected leaders and polarized between nativists and liberals.” The nativist Karol Nawrocki’s recent election to the Polish presidency makes this clear.
When populists come to power, they do real damage. In one influential study, three German economists compared the economic performance of populist-led countries to that of a synthetic country of similar characteristics. They found that countries governed by populists grow about one percentage point per year less than the comparator – both in the short run (five years) and the long run (over 15 years).
In more naive times, one might have thought that populists’ poor governance record would subject them to the self-correcting discipline of the ballot, as voters punished incompetent leaders. Not today. Unemployed steelworkers in America’s Rust Belt did not get the economic lift promised during President Donald Trump’s first term. Yet those pivotal industrial states – Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin among them – helped return Trump to the White House in 2024, with a record 77.3 million votes.
The puzzle extends to populists who weaken not just the economy but also civil liberties and the rule of law. During Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s (AMLO) presidency, Mexico’s economy barely grew, violent crime surged, and, according to V-Dem, a democracy-focused institute at the University of Gothenburg, the country underwent a dramatic “anti-democratic plunge.”
Despite these abysmal results, AMLO finished his six-year term with an approval rating of around 74%. His hand-picked successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, won with the highest vote share in Mexico’s democratic history.
So, it is far from evident that “failure to deliver” is the main reason behind voters’ frustration. Of course, well-paid and well-fed constituents with access to outstanding schools and hospitals are more likely to be satisfied (other things being equal) with the functioning of democracy. But why, in so many cases of apparently adequate delivery, do voters turn to populist authoritarians and continue to vote for them even after they underperform?
Politicians like Trump and AMLO are unconcerned with the capacity to deliver. Their appeal is to a much darker and identity-obsessed corner of the human soul. You won’t see them looking sheepish if the economy falters or fails to create jobs, because they can always claim to have restored national pride, while blaming economic failure on someone else – whether foreign migrants or local elites.
The politicians who run on managerial competence, get elected, and then fail to deliver are the ones in real trouble. Exhibit A is the United Kingdom’s prime minister, Keir Starmer. The chatter at the local pub is not about whether he will go, but when. Deliveroo politics, anyone?
Andrés Velasco, a former finance minister of Chile, is Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
