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The article deals with the policy consequences of populist actors in office and the conditions conducive to policy outputs in line with their positions. It does so by focusing on the under-researched variant of inclusionary populism and the ways in which inclusionary populist parties, after entering government, addressed the demands of unrepresented categories of workers, such as food-delivery couriers in the platform economy («riders»). Empirically, the article investigates the cases of Podemos in Spain and the Five Star Movement in Italy, and their participation in the policy process that led to the adoption of the so-called Ley de Riders and Decreto riders, which modified the dispositions about the employment and social protection of food-delivery couriers in inclusionary terms. The article analyzes the role of the two parties and the main factors that drove the policy process from the agenda-setting phase to the adoption of the new legislation. Methodologically, it relies on 10 semi-structured interviews with experts and policy actors who directly participated in the formulation of the two decrees. Interviews were complemented with the analysis of academic articles and experts’ commentaries, to investigate the policy content of the two legislative texts, and newspaper articles, to retrace the policy process. The article finds that the two inclusionary populist parties, once in office, promoted and achieved inclusionary policy outputs in relation to riders’ working rights, conditionally to the support of centre-left governmental allies and the active involvement of social partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The launch of the European Pillar of Social Rights occurred at a phase of endogenous critical juncture for Social Europe. By analyzing the Pillar's formulation and adoption process, we investigate to what extent the European Commission used the involvement of civil society and policy responsiveness to foster change in the modes of governance and legitimize stronger intervention in the social sphere, by re‐launching the methods of coordination introduced in the 1990s. Methodologically, we rely on a content analysis of EU policy documents before and after the public consultations, a content analysis of over 60 position papers and on interviews with policy actors. We find that despite increased openness and responsiveness, the Pillar initiative did not allow to alter the predominance of 'soft law' routes and patterns of intergovernmentalism characterizing the governance of EU social policy, a result that further qualifies the conditions that lead (endogenous) critical junctures to generate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]