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Thomas Richter / Mariana Llanos / David Kuehn / Martin Acheampong / Emilia Arellano / Esther Song
Democratization | 2025
How do chief executives personalize power? In this paper we conceptualize the personalization of executive power based on observable processes initiated by the chief executive aiming to increase power at the expense of other political actors. This power increase can occur in both the policymaking and policy implementation stages of the political decision-making process. It can derive from efforts by the chief executive to increase authority, or from actions to reduce oversight imposed upon them by other political actors. We argue that this can be achieved through three distinct process-related mechanisms: personnel management, institutional engineering, and coercion. We illustrate the applicability of our conceptual framework with evidence on El Salvador, Ghana, South Korea, and Zimbabwe during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper makes three contributions to extant literature: We shift debates from personalism as a status to personalization as a process based on distinct mechanisms. We highlight the importance of agency during these processes by looking at the efforts of chief executives to enhance their power at the expense of other political actors. We develop an understanding of personalization based on an explicit definition of political power that is neither contingent on regime type nor constrained by spatial or temporary boundaries.
Democratization
25
