Populist pressure, economic regulation, and regulatory independence in Latin America

Populist pressure on central bank independence has been widely studied (e.g., Binder 2021; Goodhart & Lastra 2018; Meyer 2020) and has been shown to affect central bank decision-making (Gavin & Manger 2023). However, we do not know whether similar pressures have influenced economic regulation and how potential pressures impact on the regulatory process and sectoral outcomes. Whilst there is no systematic evidence to date, there are cases and anecdotal evidence showing a relationship between populism and regulation in Latin America, impacting the quality of regulation. To further explore this relationship, we introduce a novel, longitudinal dataset covering 33 countries in Central and South America, including the Caribbean, across five sectors. The dataset includes detailed information about each specific period of agency directors, statutory regulations on term duration, and contextual details on appointments, linked to extant data on populism in government. Building on the new dataset, we assess whether populist governments take a distinct approach towards dealing with independent economic regulators, and explore what the potential patterns look like.