Erosion of Competition Policy in the Age of Populism: Cases of Hungary, Mexico and Turkey

ABSTRACT This paper examines how populist governments politicize competition policy and the agencies responsible for enforcing it, focusing on the cases of Hungary, Mexico, and Turkey. We argue that competition policy has critical importance for populist governments as its control helps them advance their policy objectives and facilitates their political survival. We propose that populist governments interfere in competition policy through one of three strategies, co‐optation, sabotage, and dismantling, which we argue are adopted contingent upon the degree of populists' legislative majority. Through a structured comparative analysis of the three cases, we find that although populist governments prefer to co‐opt competition agencies, they can do so only if they command large majorities in parliaments, such as in Hungary and Turkey. Those with weaker majorities, such as in Mexico under Andrés Manuel López Obrador, sabotage them, a strategy that may result in agency resistance, and eventually the dismantling of the agency if populists end up gaining a majority in the parliament.