What they say and what they do: populist distraction and dual-use political technologies in the European union

Analysts of populism have tended to focus on what leaders say more than on what they do. In this paper, the relationship between what populists say and what they do is examined against a constitutional and legal backdrop that elaborates the opportunity structures within which populist leaders govern and against the backdrop of an EU struggling with dissent. Contrasting the pro-Christian rhetoric of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Jarosław Kaczyński with the actions taken by their governments, we can see that Kaczyński was much more likely to act on the basis of his rhetoric while Orbán was more likely to use his rhetoric to distract and wrongfoot his political opposition. The opportunities each had to act, however, depended on the broader constitutional and electoral systems that controlled if and when they were constrained and their success depended not only on popular support for their actions but also on the EU’s responses to the forms that populism took in each country.