Populism and Academic Freedom

Silva, Rui (2026) Populism and Academic Freedom. Public Choice. ISSN 0048-5829

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Abstract

Academic freedom empowers scholars to influence public discourse and debate, cultivate critical reasoning, discuss ideas that challenge traditional values, and impose a soft check and balance on governments. For those reasons, governments have specific preferences regarding the extent of academic freedom, especially when led by populists, whose ideology, values, and strategic features are frequently at odds with the implications of this freedom. Using a quasi-experimental design, we confirm that academic freedom declines significantly under populist governments, a pattern largely independent of their host ideology. Those negative consequences increase after multiple populist terms, and extend more broadly to the substance of speech and the flow of information. Altogether, these results highlight the incompatibility of populism with democratic guarantees.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability: Data and replication package can be found at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CSMZOX.
Uncontrolled Keywords:	academic freedom,democracy,iv,populism,weather,sociology and political science,economics and econometrics ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3312
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Economics
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Applied Econometrics And Finance Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Economic Theory
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication... https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	25 Aug 2026 10:41
Last Modified:	11 Sep 2026 11:50
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/104329
DOI:	10.1007/s11127-026-01462-x

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