Institutional Checks Research Articles

The European Union as a Target: When Do Democratic Backsliders Rhetorically Challenge the EU?

AbstractPopulist actors who conduct democratic backsliding incrementally eat away at institutional checks on power. Whilst they largely focus on domestic institutions, European Union (EU) member states have an international democratic institution to consider as well. In this article, we present and test a theory explaining changes in backslider rhetoric towards the EU. Whilst they often claim a position of Euroscepticism, their interactions with the EU are complicated. We argue that anti‐democratic actors consider the public perception of the EU and the likelihood of enforcement and sanctions from the EU when deciding what type of rhetoric to use. Using speeches from Orbán in Hungary and Duda in Poland, we find that the effect of public opinion on speech sentiment varies between leaders. We also find evidence of position blurring in response to increases in EU threat levels.

Unmasking the Authoritarian Mob Boss: A Critical Analysis of Donald Trump’s Political Leadership

This article comprehensively examines Donald Trump’s political leadership, arguing that his tenure as the 45th President of the United States exhibited characteristics commonly associated with authoritarian mob bosses. Drawing upon various empirical evidence and theoretical political science frameworks, the study sheds light on the underlying dynamics that shaped Trump’s leadership style and its implications for democratic governance. The analysis begins by contextualizing Trump’s rise to power within the erosion of democratic norms. It explores how his rhetoric, characterized by demagoguery and the demonization of opponents, mirrors the tactics employed by mob bosses to consolidate their power and suppress dissent. Moreover, the study uncovers the striking similarities between Trump’s administration management and the hierarchical structures of organized crime, highlighting his reliance on loyalty, personal connections, and a disregard for institutional checks and balances. Furthermore, this research delves into Trump’s autocratic tendencies, as evidenced by his disdain for the free press, attacks on the judiciary, and attempts to undermine the integrity of democratic processes. It reveals how these actions align with the strategies employed by authoritarian leaders to silence opposition and perpetuate their dominance. By examining Trump’s presidency through process tracing, this study contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between authoritarianism and the erosion of democratic institutions. The findings underscore the urgent need for continued scholarly and public scrutiny of leaders who exhibit traits akin to authoritarian mob bosses to safeguard the principles of democratic governance and protect the integrity of liberal democracies.

Democracy and Autocracy in Africa

Contrary to the widespread claims of democratic regression in sub-Saharan Africa, our research on democratic processes reveals a different reality. We have found that the region's democratic journey over the past two decades has largely remained stagnant, with no significant advancements or setbacks in terms of political and civil liberties since the initial transitions in the early 1990s. However, this apparent lack of progress in African democratization masks the active efforts of incumbent leaders to undermine key actors, such as civil society, and structural conditions, such as urbanization, that could potentially lead to greater liberalization. To explain the uneven progress in democratization, despite increased political participation across the region, we argue that Africa's incumbent leaders have employed two often overlooked processes: legal institutions and international relationships. Firstly, these leaders have utilized the law and courts to restrict the ability of domestic actors to mobilize against them. By strategically using the law to consolidate their power and strengthen executive authority, they have undermined other institutional checks and balances. Secondly, incumbent leaders have effectively manipulated their international relationships to counteract the democratizing influence of external actors, including foreign donors and transnational civil society. This manipulation includes employing claims of sovereignty to resist external intervention in domestic politics.

Informal Concentration of Powers in Illiberal Constitutionalism: The Case of Hungary

Classic and new concepts of the separation of powers doctrine focus on the control of central political power. Institutional checks and balances are classic legal instruments of this control, especially the activity of independent state organs. In those countries where the political system is dominated by a populist government, the institutional checks and balances and independent institutions are under constant pressure. In a consolidated political system that has already departed from liberal constitutionalism and where constitutional institutions do function only in a formal sense (illiberal constitutionalism), institutional checks and balances lose their significance. However, in addition to the exercise of powers by independent branches of government, other legal institutions or actions can also have a significant impact on relations between branches of government, even informally. Therefore, the system of checks and balances can be described as a multi-layered structure with formal (classical) and informal elements. The article analyses in detail, how the use of informal constitutional amendments and national referendums—as additional institutions belonging to the complex system of separation of powers—instead of controlling the central political power, has contributed to the informal concentration of government power in Hungary in recent years.

The Role of the Supervisory Board of the Indonesian Corruption Eradication Commission as the Watcher of the Watchers: Encouraging or Inhibiting the KPK's Work?

This research examines the role and complex relationship between the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and its Supervisory Board, with a focus on the Supervisory Board's function as a supervisor of accountability and integrity. The KPK Supervisory Board, which is known for its vigorous anti-corruption initiatives, has institutional control over the organization. This study examines how this supervision impacts the effectiveness of the Corruption Eradication Committee and considers whether the Supervisory Board supports efforts to eradicate corruption or is actually an obstacle to efforts to eradicate corruption. The history of the development of the KPK, the formation and duties of the Supervisory Board, as well as the legislative structure that regulates its affairs, are all included in the examination. In addition, this research also evaluates specific cases where the Supervisory Board's actions influenced the direction of KPK investigations and activities. This research takes a balanced approach, respecting the value of accountability systems but also considering any weaknesses resulting from overly burdensome supervision. The role of the Supervisory Board in preventing abuse of power, harmony between autonomy and accountability, and the impact of the Supervisory Board's decisions on the effectiveness and morale of the Corruption Eradication Commission are some of the main themes raised. Through critical analysis of these elements, this research adds a deeper understanding of the complex interactions between the Corruption Eradication Commission and its Supervisory Board and sheds light on the broader discussion in Indonesia regarding institutional checks and balances and anti-corruption initiatives.

Why Democracy Survives Populism

Abstract: This essay suggests that while populism certainly can be a mortal threat to democracy, the worst outcome is less common than observers have feared. The author's research shows that among forty populist governments in Latin America and Europe from 1985 to 2020, only seven led to authoritarian rule. It concludes that democracy often shows considerable resilience, with most populist leaders failing to suffocate liberal pluralism due to institutional checks, balances, and opposition mobilization. While the threat of populism requires constant attention and energetic countermeasures, there is no need for global alarmism.

Bread, freedom or social justice? An empirical investigation into the determinants of the Arab Spring

ABSTRACT Is it a yearning for more political freedom, or a demand for the more mundane economic necessities of life which drives large waves of potentially destabilizing mass protests against authoritarian regimes? We examine this question in the context of the Arab Spring, which originated from Tunisia and Egypt in 2011 and soon spread through the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We use a static fixed effects model and a dynamic GMM model on a panel of 14 MENA countries for the period 2006–2017 to identify the major socio-economic and political determinants of both non-violent and violent Arab Spring protests. One of the main findings of our article is that, in contrast with the “intermediate regimes hypothesis”, the intermediate regimes tend to be more stable compared to both strictly authoritarian and relatively democratic regimes. Further, more nuanced dimensions of democracy, in terms of institutional checks on the authoritarian regime, have a positive impact on stability and reducing protests. With regard to socio-economic factors, our results show that factors leading to better living standards, such as higher economic growth and higher levels of GDP per capita, and transfers in the form of public expenditure (“authoritarian bargain”) partly mitigate the grievances and the resulting protests.

The New Responsive Constitutionalism

Ideas of responsive law and regulation have been the subject of sustained scholarly attention but only recently have scholars turned their attention to what these ideas mean for constitutional law and governance. The article addresses this gap in the literature by exploring the idea of responsiveness in constitutional design and interpretation. It suggests that the idea of responsive constitutionalism points to the importance of both unwritten and written, and politically and judicially‐enforced constitutional norms in promoting democratic responsiveness. In turn, responsive constitutionalism also reinforces the value of: (1) institutional pluralism; (2) overlapping institutional authority; (3) multiple access points to institutions; and (4) broad remedial power for relevant institutions, including courts. It further suggests the need for a true balance between constitutional norms that promote rights‐enhancing forms of state action and limits on state action. And finally, it points to the value of strong institutional checks and balances and entrenchment of the ‘minimum core’ of a democratic constitution, but a more flexible set of constraints in other contexts, where the aim of a responsive constitutional model is to promote dialogue between courts and legislators. The article explores these ideas by reference to existing constitutional theoretic ideas but also through illustrations drawn from Australia, Kenya and the United Kingdom.

Judicial Reform or Abusive Constitutionalism in Israel

AbstractHow should the constitutional reform in Israel be assessed in comparative terms? Comparative constitutional understandings point to the centrality of three key sets of norms as part of the ‘democratic minimum core’: (i) commitments to free and fair, regular multi-party elections; (ii) political rights and freedoms; and (iii) a system of institutional checks and balances necessary to maintain (i) and (ii). Any change in judicial power and independence must be assessed against the benchmark of the democratic minimum core, and by reference to its cumulative practical effect on a system of institutional checks and balances.We claim that recent changes in Israel may already threaten these institutional checks, and have the potential to do more damage in the future, if given broad effect and if combined with further changes in the power and independence of the Supreme Court. On this basis, we suggest, the relevant changes should be viewed as either ‘abusive’ or ‘proto-abusive’ in nature. By threatening to undermine both the power and independence of the Supreme Court of Israel, they directly threaten the health of the constitutional checks and balances system and, hence, the ‘democratic minimum core’ in Israel.

Who’s to blame for democratic backsliding: populists, presidents or dominant executives?

ABSTRACT When backsliding occurs at the hands of populist presidents who were elected in landslide elections, producing dominant executives with few institutional checks and weak opposition parties, should we blame the decline in democracy on their populist ideology, their presidential powers, or their parties’ dominance in the legislature? The literature on democratic backsliding has mostly arrived at a consensus on what backsliding entails and collectively has revealed its growing prevalence around the globe. Yet, scholars have not settled on causal explanations for this phenomenon. We assess the evidence for recent ideology-centered arguments for democratic backsliding relative to previous institutional arguments among all democratically elected executives serving in all regions of the world since 1970. We use newly available datasets on populist leaders and parties to evaluate the danger of populists in government, and we employ matching methods to distinguish the effects of populist executives, presidents as chief executives, and dominant executives on the extent of decline in liberal democracy.

Institutions and Political Restraint

AbstractRecent political developments worldwide have focused attention on the fraying of political norms, often understood as informal restraints on opportunistic behavior. We present a model to study how norms of restraint interact with institutional checks and balances. In the model, an election determines which party holds office in each period over an infinite horizon. Each period presents the majority party with an opportunity to modify a status quo policy. However, informal norms and formal institutional barriers limit its ability to do so by providing soft and hard constraints to policymaking, respectively. We show that political cooperation can be easier to sustain in political systems with fewer checks and balances, when political norms are sufficiently stringent. Under optimal norms, increasing polarization makes norms easier to uphold, while also reducing welfare. Finally, norms maintained by minority parties are less sustainable, and voter optimal norms require minority concessions to achieve greater electoral competitiveness.

When does bureaucracy function in autocratizing regimes? the court of auditors in Turkey

ABSTRACT Turkey has experienced a radical political transformation within the last decade. The promising reforms of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in its early years have gradually given way to autocratic politics. The transition to a presidential regime has further widened the executive’s control over the institutional checks and bureaucratic accountability mechanisms. Yet, the Court of Auditors – Turkey’s supreme audit institution – has continued to publish audit reports on numerous institutions, including AKP-run municipalities and private companies owned by AKP supporters, and revealed corruption, waste and irregularities in public spending. This article argues when certain domestic conditions (censored public servants, co-opted mainstream media, and suppressed opposition) are met, bureaucracy can function in autocratizing regimes since it does not generate political power costs for the government, but instead provides legitimacy to the incumbents in the international institutions of the liberal democratic order.

Tracing the Optimal Level of Political and Social Change under Risks and Uncertainties: Some Lessons from Ancient Sparta and Athens

The present paper is inspired by the notions of “financial risk” and “financial uncertainties” and transfers their basic reasoning to social science analysis; that is, it develops a theoretical analysis in order to explain social and political change. We know that the degree of social and political change depends on the set of established institutions in a society. Societies can face two extremes: volatility, e.g., rapid changes that lead to instability, which increases the risk of a system or regime collapsing, or rigidity, which does not permit necessary adaptation and change and thus may again increase the risk of the regime collapsing. Thus, an optimal (or ideal) point of change is between the two extremes, permitting change that is neither too sudden and fast nor too slow and inflexible. To illustrate this, we analyze two cases from ancient Greece: Sparta, as a society and state with too many institutional checks and balances that led to rigidity and collapse, and Athens, which in the 5th century BCE had an institutional setting with very limited checks and balances, which again led to near collapse until the late 5th century BCE, when new institutions that were related to some efficient checks and balances were introduced that enabled the state to survive in a world of changing circumstances and balances of power.

Riders on the storm: the politics of disruption in European member states during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT This paper explores how democracies handle the trade-off between public safety and fundamental democratic principles. We show that an exogenous shock, like the pandemic, creates incentives for governing elites to deploy self-empowering mechanisms to avoid institutional checks and balances – with lasting consequences for democratic performance. We examine this prospect in Italy and Romania. These cases have a long history of institutional gridlock; such history reinforces incentives to work around traditional institutions in responding to the pandemic. While the two cases vary in terms of the quality and resilience of their democratic institutions, we find that elites displayed a similar propensity to overlook the intricate institutional balances during a moment of crisis. In Italy, the executive strengthened its power relative to the legislature; in Romania, the strengthening is relative to the judiciary. This finding has implications in assessing the risk for falling standards of liberal democracy across the European Union.

From ‘revolution’ to war: deciphering Armenia’s populist foreign policy-making process

ABSTRACT Since April 2018, Armenia has gone through a series of dramatic events. Convinced of its ‘democratic invincibility,’ the regime that emerged after ‘the Velvet Revolution’ espoused the view that Armenia’s new, democratic facade must secure increased support from Brussels and Washington and continued loyalty from its security provider – the Kremlin. Nevertheless, the perennial security issues, chief among them the unresolved Nagorno Karabakh conflict, were overlooked by the new elite. This article examines the sources of the foreign policy-making style of the populist regime in Armenia and explores the extent to which they have affected the decision-making process and its ‘resultants.’ The article argues that the incoherent and erratic nature of the new regime’s policy formulation and enactment, which underestimated acute security challenges and degraded existing institutional checks and balances, caused unprecedented wreckage to Armenia’s national security architecture.

Corruption and Challenges of National Security in North Central Nigeria: An Appraisal

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to find out the major reasons for the existence of corruption in contemporary Nigeria, the existing relationship between corruption and Nigeria's national security and whether corruption has effects on Nigeria's national security. Methodology: The methodology adopted was descriptive survey carried out in North Central States region of Nigeria using primary method of data collection via random sampling technique and data was analyzed with the aid of SPSS software which percentages, mean and standard deviation were computed using one-way ANOVA to test the hypothesis in order to determine the relationship between variables. Results: The study found out that corruption significantly affects Nigerians national security and further revealed that lack of effective institutional checks was one of the major factors that gave rise to corruption, while corruption has impeded development in Nigeria by promoting poverty, inequality, unemployment, rising wave of crime and other social vices. The findings recommended strong institutional checks in the fight against corruption at all levels, depoliticization of anti-graft agencies, election of citizens with proven integrity into positions of authority and aggressive move by government at all levels to improve the welfare of citizens by poverty reduction, education and promoting equal opportunities to social and economic survival. Unique Contribution to Theory and Practice: The study has contributed in adding value to the existing pool of knowledge and policy makers in efforts to win the fight against corruption and insecurity in Nigeria particularly in North Central States which have been badly hit by corruption and insecurity as well as underdeveloped.

Republican Manners, Monarchic Vigor: The Federalist Defense of Pardon Power

The US Constitution grants the president a virtually unlimited pardon power. The Ratification Debates demonstrate that disputes between Federalists and Anti-Federalists over the pardon power were based on their disagreement about separation of powers theory. Because Anti-Federalists feared that pardon power could be abused and promote monarchy, they insisted on textual restrictions (“parchment barriers”). The Federalists rejected these demands, moving beyond the Anti-Federalists’ “pure” theory of separation of powers and advocating a complex system of institutional checks and balances. This approach allowed the Federalists to show how the executive’s institutional structure not only improved the president’s use of pardon power but also helped prevent abuses. The president’s pardon power is as unlimited as the British king’s, but the Federalists insisted that it could nevertheless be safely granted to a republican magistrate because Congress could check misuse via an equally extensive power: impeachment and removal.

The aging leader: Approaching age as a factor in international relations

This article goes against the grain of traditional approaches in international relations by claiming that a leader’s biological age is a factor in this individual’s execution of foreign policy. The traditional logic of political science that has generally been diminishing the impact of a leader’s individual features on policy for the sake of institutional procedures needs to be reassessed. A common assumption is that an aging king or president, especially those entering the eighth or ninth decade of their lives, are likely to make prudent, balanced, and wise political decisions due to their rich experience. However, this notion lacks sufficient empirical support from history. The physical “wear and tear” of the aging leader, along with their declining psychological functions, are likely to negatively impact their foreign-policy decisions that may fall under the influence of the leader’s information overload, cognitive narcissism, profound stubbornness, as well as their irrational sense of urgency, and their tendency to overcompensate. In democracies, the political tenure of top politicians is limited by constitutional terms or scheduled elections. In authoritarian systems, only the top figure’s death or incapacitation become actual “schedulers” of their political tenure. Although a person’s advanced age should not disqualify him or her from public office, without institutional checks on the leader’s judgements and behavior as well as the critical power of public opinion and the press, the aging authoritarian leader can become unpredictably risky.

Study of Prevalence of Lifestyle Diseases and Comparison of their Risk Factors among Serving Personnel of Army

Introduction: Lifestyle diseases have multifactorial causation risk factors. Armed forces personnel although constitute healthier sections of society but are not spared from prevalent pandemic of lifestyle diseases in country. This research aims to study the prevalence of lifestyle disease to highlight the importance of keeping suitable preventive measures in place to control the epidemic of lifestyle diseases among the middle-aged army personnel. Materials and Methods: The study is a cross-sectional community-based epidemiological design of 2956 armed forces personnel, aged 35 years and above, selected by multistage random sampling. Data were collected on pretested open-ended questionnaire. Statistical analysis was done using Chi-square test, unpaired t-test, and multiple logistic regression techniques. Results: The study revealed that consistent statistically significant association between major sociodemographic, potential behavioral, and clinical risk factors of lifestyle diseases, especially dietary risk factors, namely snacking in between meals, consumption of energy-dense foods, physical inactivity among tradesman, cooks, clerks contributing to higher prevalence of lifestyle diseases among them. The study indicates that the prevalence of overweight and prehypertensive among study sample is suggestive of alarming proportions. Conclusion: Multi-cross-sectoral-integrated strategies for provisioning of comprehensive health-care and strengthening surveillance mechanism pertaining to prevention and control of lifestyle diseases are the need of the hour. Genuine dietary modifications; improving cooking practices; sustained efforts to be physical active, stringent mechanisms to ensure definite working hours, minimize work-related stress; institutional checks on tobacco, alcohol, substance abuse; screening for lifestyle disease risk factors; addressing common risk factors are desirable lifestyle interventions.

The Future of the U.S.-Philippines Alliance: Declining Democracy and Prospects for U.S.-Philippines Relations after Duterte

executive summary: This article examines the Philippines' democracy under the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte and assesses the ramifications of democratic decline for the future of the U.S.-Philippines alliance under the next administration. main argument The anti-democratic policies of the Duterte administration have subverted institutional and societal checks on executive power, threatening the U.S.-Philippines alliance as an instrument of U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific. Duterte successfully reshaped domestic politics to augment his regime's influence over the legislature, judiciary, local governments, military, and economy, and openly sought to jettison the alliance for closer diplomatic and economic ties with China that would help him subvert domestic checks and balances on his administration. To repair and augment its alliance with the Philippines, the U.S. must recognize that the country's democratic decline is highly unlikely to reverse once Duterte leaves office and should transparently develop policies to incentivize the next administration and policymakers in the Philippines to roll back Duterte's anti-democratic policies. policy implications • If Duterte's successor continues to consolidate power domestically by weakening institutional checks on the administration's authority and coercing political opposition into silence or compliance, military cooperation between the U.S. and the Philippines will falter and create new vulnerabilities threatening U.S. interests in the Pacific region. • The Biden administration should reconfigure U.S. security assistance under the schema of positive conditionality to discourage further efforts to undermine democratic governance and degrade human rights conditions from the next presidential administration in the Philippines. U.S. assistance should also be optimized to support the Philippines' military modernization while prioritizing economic and technical cooperation to mitigate the challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, economic recession, and pervasive low-intensity conflict. • Whereas the application of sanctions on individuals responsible for supporting human rights violations can be a coercive tool of diplomacy in extremis, it is more important that the U.S. offer inducements for curtailing these violations through bilateral efforts to expand investments from U.S. companies to Philippine business, particularly through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and the Millennium Challenge Corporation.