From Economic Crisis to Democratic Backsliding: Evidence from Thailand and Argentina, the United States, and Greece

<jats:p>Economic crises often serve as incubators of populism. When currencies collapse, or debts spiral out of control, mainstream parties lose credibility, creating openings for leaders who claim to defend “the people” against distant elites. The cases of Thailand, Argentina, the United States, and Greece illustrate how crises enable populism, how populists frame economic struggles, and use them to subvert the political order. In Thailand, the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis led to IMF-imposed reforms that hurt the rural poor. Thaksin Shinawatra rose on a populist platform of cheap healthcare and rural development, casting himself as defender of the countryside against Bangkok elites (Phongpaichit &amp; Baker, 2009). In Argentina, the 2001–2002 default discredited neoliberal economic policies. Néstor and Cristina Kirchner mobilized popular anger against the IMF and creditors, mixing subsidies and protectionism with nationalist rhetoric (Levitsky &amp; Murillo, 2008). In the United States, the 2008 financial crash produced dual populist currents: the Tea Party and Donald Trump on the right, and Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders on the left, both targeting elites, including Wall Street and the Washington establishment (Skocpol &amp; Williamson, 2012; Frank, 2016). In Greece, Syriza rose during the Eurozone crisis, opposing austerity and demanding sovereignty from the EU “Troika” (Pappas, 2019). Across these cases, populists reframed abstract economic shocks as moral struggles, pitting ordinary people against elites, technocrats, or foreign powers (Mudde &amp; Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). Their policies emphasized immediate relief—subsidies, redistribution, debt resistance—over fiscal orthodoxy. Yet each also confronted the hard limits of global capitalism, leading to compromise, backlash, or renewed instability (Dornbusch &amp; Edwards, 1991; Kahler &amp; Lake, 2013). Economic crises highlight the tension between national democracy and global markets; populism thrives in this gap, using it to decay institutions and norms in democratic states. I argue that economic crises lead to democratic backsliding. Keywords: Populism, Economic Crises, Democratic backsliding, Greece, USA, Thailand, Argentina</jats:p>