Institutional Pathways

Abstract

Abstract This chapter documents the harmful impact of personalist parties on institutional checks on the executive. It first discusses the factors explaining the maintenance of executive constraints in democracies and how these factors diminish with ruling party personalism. It then shows that because personalist parties lack the incentive and capacity to restrain leaders’ attempts to grab power, constraints on the executive weaken when these parties win office. Specifically, it finds that ruling party personalism decreases the chance that leaders will face constraints in the state’s legislative, judicial, and bureaucratic institutions. Importantly, the whittling away of executive constraints brought on by party personalism is even worse when the leader’s party has a large legislative majority. This suggests that personalist parties do little to stand in the way of a power-seeking leader’s agenda. By weakening executive constraints, ruling party personalism opens the door for subsequent actions that culminate in the deterioration of democracy.