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The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy from Within

Online ISBN:
9780191994968
Print ISBN:
9780198888079
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Origins of Elected Strongmen: How Personalist Parties Destroy Democracy from Within

Erica Frantz,
Erica Frantz
Associate Professor, Michigan State University
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Andrea Kendall-Taylor,
Andrea Kendall-Taylor
Senior Fellow and Director of the Transatlantic Security Program, Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
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Joe Wright
Joe Wright
Professor, Pennsylvania State University
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Published online:
23 May 2024
Published in print:
7 May 2024
Online ISBN:
9780191994968
Print ISBN:
9780198888079
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

Since the end of World War II, democracies typically fell apart by coup d’état or through force. Today, however, they are increasingly eroding at the hands of democratically elected incumbents, who seize control by slowly chipping away at democratic institutions. To better understand these developments, this book examines the role of personalist political parties, or parties that exist primarily to further their leader’s career as opposed to promote a specific policy platform. Using original data capturing levels of personalism in the parties of democratically elected leaders from 1991 to 2020, this book shows that the rise of personalist parties around the globe is facilitating the decline of democracy. Personalist parties lack the incentive and capacity to push back against a leader’s efforts to expand executive power. As such, leaders backed by personalist parties are more likely to succeed in their efforts to dismantle institutional constraints on their rule. Such attacks on state institutions, in turn, reverberate throughout society, deepening political polarization and weakening supporters’ commitment to democratic norms of behaviour. In these ways, ruling party personalism erodes horizontal and vertical constraints on a leader, ultimately degrading democracy and raising the risk of democratic failure.

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