Executive Aggrandizement: Understanding the Silent Erosion of Democratic Constraints

Abstract

Studies of executive aggrandizement face a double measurement problem. Measures of aggrandizement may include institutions that constitute liberal democracy, while broad composites may treat substantively different executive practices as interchangeable. This article develops a measurement‐oriented classification that reduces direct overlap with the V‐Dem Liberal Democracy Index and compares distinct practices under common analytical rules. Using V‐Dem v15 data and a common sample of 17,404 country‐years across 179 countries from 1901 to 2024, country‐ and year‐fixed‐effects models estimate conditional within‐country associations for five lagged practices. Patronal‐distributive allocation, judicial purges, and personalist/mobilizational legitimation are negatively associated with liberal democracy. Executive corruption is consistently imprecise, whereas politicized administrative appointments are negative only in some specifications. Item‐level, restricted‐period, timing, and first‐difference analyses document practice heterogeneity but also show exceptional persistence; negative future‐lead estimates prevent a causal or sequential reading. The primary contribution is a bounded measurement and modeling strategy that preserves comparability while reducing, rather than claiming to eliminate, outcome overlap. Its linked theoretical contribution is a practice‐family account of executive aggrandizement: politically coordinated practices may coexist and remain interdependent without becoming interchangeable indicators or stages in a common causal sequence.