Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/281768 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
GIGA Working Papers No. 339
Publisher: 
German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA), Hamburg
Abstract: 
Evidence points to an increasing personalisation of political power by chief executives in recent years. It is often argued that such personalisation contributes to the current trend of autocratisation and the global decline of democracy. Yet our understanding hereof remains fractured, not least because there are a plethora of tacit understandings, definitions, and concepts vis-à-vis what political personalisation is. While potentially occurring in both autocracies and democracies, the scholarship is still too often siloed according to regime type. We thus develop a framework defining the phenomenon as a process in which the chief executive personalises power in policymaking and policy implementation by weakening the constraining capacities of relevant actors. The "personalisation of executive power" (PEXP) runs through three distinct mechanisms: personnel management, institutional engineering, and power arrogation. We illustrate the usefulness of our conceptual framework with four case studies during the COVID-19 pandemic: El Salvador, Ghana, South Korea, and Zimbabwe.
Subjects: 
autocracy
democracy
executive
decision making
concentration of political power
personalisation
Covid-19 pandemic
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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