National-neoliberal Fiscal Populism in Romania

Based on Mudde’s classical approach, this chapter defines fiscal populism as a thin-centered ideology that pits the fiscally pure people against fiscally predatory, with a fiscal general defined by the populists. The main purpose of this ideology (and the policies derived from it) is to fiscally favor domestic capital over factions of foreign capital that are not essential to the domestic growth model, with domestic labor interests placed in a subordinated role. By looking at the case of Romania in the 2010s, this chapter advances the concept of national-neoliberal fiscal populism to analyze the transformations of fiscal policy under populist rule. The empirics suggest that this term is sufficiently apt to conceptualize a particular translation of populism to the politics of fiscal distribution.