Kurt Weyland
University of Texas at Austin · Political Science
Active 1990–2024
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About
Kurt Weyland is a Professor and the Mike Hogg Professor in Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts. His academic focus includes democratization and authoritarian rule, social policy and policy diffusion, and populism in Latin America and Europe. His work involves analyzing political processes and institutions, with particular attention to the dynamics of democratization and authoritarianism, as well as the spread of policies across different contexts. As a distinguished scholar, he contributes to understanding the political developments and challenges within these regions, providing insights into the mechanisms of political change and stability.
Research topics
- Political Science
- Computer Science
- Sociology
- Law
- Public administration
- Library science
- Political economy
Selected publications
Populism’s Threat to Democracy: Comparative Lessons for the United States
Perspectives on Politics · 2020 · 186 citations
1st authorCorrespondingHow grave is the threat that populist leaders pose to democracy? To elucidate the prospects of the United States under president Donald Trump, I conduct a wide-ranging comparative analysis of populism’s regime impact in Europe and Latin America. The investigation finds that the risks have been overestimated. Populist leaders manage to suffocate democracy only when two crucial conditions coincide. First, institutional weakness, which comes in various types, creates vulnerabilities to populist pow…
Populism as a Political Strategy: An Approach’s Enduring — and Increasing — Advantages
Political Studies · 2021-03-31 · 119 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingResponding to Rueda’s questions, this essay explains the political-strategic approach (PSA) to populism and highlights its analytical strengths, which have become even more important with the emergence of populist governments across the world. PSA identifies populism’s core by emphasizing the central role of personalistic leaders who tend to operate in opportunistic ways, rather than consistently pursuing programmatic or ideological orientations. PSA is especially useful nowadays, when scholars’…
Constraining Dictatorship: From Personalized Rule to Institutionalized Regimes
Political Science Quarterly · 2021 · 89 citations
1st authorCorrespondingHow Populism Dies: Political Weaknesses of Personalistic Plebiscitarian Leadership
Political Science Quarterly · 2021-12-22 · 35 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingDemocracy's Resilience to Populism's Threat
Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2024-01-11 · 34 citations
book1st authorCorrespondingThe recent global wave of populist governments, which culminated in Donald Trump's victory in 2016, has convinced many observers that populism is a grave threat to democracy. In his new book, Kurt Weyland critiques recent scholarship for focusing too closely on cases where populist leaders have crushed democracy, and instead turns to the many cases where would populist-authoritarians have failed to overthrow democracy. Through a systematic comparative analysis of thirty populist chief executives…
Frequent coauthors
- 62 shared
Andrés Malamud
University of Lisbon
- 49 shared
Nicolás Vairo
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
- 49 shared
Carlos Sojo
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
- 49 shared
s Pérez-Liñán
University of Cambridge
- 49 shared
Bernardo Gomes
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
- 49 shared
Osamah Al-Rawhani
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
- 49 shared
Yeşim Arat
Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
- 49 shared
Ricardo Sáenz
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