Preventing leaders' autocratic entrenchment by exponential super-majority threshold escalators

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This article focuses on alternatives to leaders' constitutional term limits which failed to protect democracy in innumerable countries as they did not reduce incumbency advantages in re-election contests. Such a reduction can achieve a super-majority thresholds escalator for incumbents' re-election. Research has found that setting super-majority thresholds for leadership offices improves the quality of leadership. However, leaders' autocratic entrenchment poses the worse problem of democratic leadership quality. Setting escalating super-majority thresholds for an incumbent's re-election would bar autocratic entrenchment by reducing her/his incumbency advantages in re-election contests. Both ordinal and exponential escalator versions prolong the tenure of successful high-moral effective leaders beyond two terms, allowing them to use accumulated trust credit to advance radical changes, while incumbents who fail to achieve a super-majority threshold are replaced. However, the ordinal version lacks a terminal term, thus it may not prevent autocratic entrenchment, while the exponential version with its terminal term that ensures succession while escalating super-majority thresholds mitigates the exponential growth of leaders' power resources with tenure. After an incumbent fails to re-elect, a second voting round without her/him will give the winner a clear mandate to rule. Suggestions for further study of barring leaders' entrenchment by exponential escalating super-majority thresholds are offered.JEL classificationD02; D70; K16; Z13; Z18.