Populist policymaking is not only about courts and media crackdowns. It can also hide in technical reforms. In Poland under PiS, changes to academic journal rankings were used to reward allies, promote ideology, and claim responsiveness. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Together with Izabela Szkurłat and Magdalena Szydłowska, we argue that populist policymaking is multi-purpose governance. A single reform can: ➡️appear responsive to “the people” ➡️embed ideological content ➡️channel resources to loyal actors

The reform of Poland’s academic evaluation system looked like a technical adjustment. In practice, it reshaped how prestige and funding were distributed across universities and disciplines.

1️⃣Humanities and 2️⃣Polish-published journals were given a boost – framed as responsiveness to scholars worried about internationalisation.

But most of all, 3️⃣Catholic-affiliated journals gained disproportionately, embedding a conservative-nationalist agenda and rewarding pro-government institutions.

This shows how populist reforms can be formally legal, yet designed to entrench ideology and institutionalise patronage. Higher education policy, often overlooked, is a crucial site of populist governance: shaping elites, promoting ideology, and redistributing resources.