by Vandna Bhatia
In her recent article, How do populist discourses influence policy termination?, author Vandna Bhatia explores the relationship between populist political discourse and policy termination. Through a lens of ideational politics, the article offers a rare and timely contribution to the underdeveloped field of policy termination. Drawing on two high-profile cases from Ontario, Canada—the termination of the province’s carbon cap-and-trade programme and the repeal of its sexual health education curriculum—Bhatia shows how populist leaders use discourse to construct compelling narratives, mobilise coalitions, and legitimise disruptive strategies for dismantling existing policies.
Policy termination is often assumed to be rational and evidence-based, yet previous research has highlighted how political factors frequently override analytical evaluation. However, there has been limited exploration of how and why political ideas exert this influence. Bhatia addresses this gap by analysing the role of populist discourse and its use of ambiguous, emotionally resonant ideas to build support for termination. Populism, she argues, operates less as a coherent ideology and more as a mode of political communication that constructs ‘the people’ in opposition to corrupt, uncaring elites. These discourses serve as “coalition magnets,” drawing together disparate constituencies around simplified but powerful narratives of betrayal and renewal.
The article applies this ideational lens to the case of Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party under Doug Ford, whose 2018 election campaign was saturated with anti-elite, anti-establishment rhetoric. Once elected, Ford moved quickly to terminate key policies of his predecessors, including the province’s cap-and-trade scheme and the sexual health curriculum. In each case, Bhatia examines how the government framed termination not as technocratic reform but as a necessary act of reclaiming control on behalf of ‘ordinary people’.
The cap-and-trade programme was portrayed as a costly and elitist “slush fund” that penalised hardworking taxpayers. By conflating it with unrelated energy pricing issues and carbon taxes, the Ford government broadened the conflict and built a wide-ranging coalition of opposition. The termination was swift and largely successful, despite legal challenges and widespread criticism from environmental groups and fiscal oversight bodies.
By contrast, the attempted repeal of the sexual health curriculum—framed as a moral issue about parental rights and state overreach—proved far less durable. Although Ford’s populist discourse successfully mobilised a vocal minority, it failed to align with the values of most Ontario parents, who supported comprehensive education and trusted expert advice. The government ultimately reintroduced a nearly identical curriculum under a different label, tacitly acknowledging the limits of its ideological appeal.
Through these contrasting cases, the article highlights how populist discourse may facilitate termination, but only when ideas resonate with lived experience and material interests. Transactional appeals tend to produce more robust coalitions than values-based ones. Bhatia also argues that populist governments are more willing to bypass institutional constraints, often at significant democratic cost, in pursuit of policy termination.
This article deepens our understanding of how political ideas and discourse can influence termination decisions, particularly in contemporary populist contexts. It opens up valuable new directions for research on ideational politics and the strategic deployment of discourses in policy change.
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You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Bhatia, V. (2025). How do populist discourses influence policy termination?. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2025), available from: < https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2025D000000071>
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