TY - JOUR

T1 - Praising the leader

T2 - personalist legitimation strategies and the deterioration of executive constraints

AU - Brunkert, Lennart

AU - von Soest, Christian

N1 - Funding Information: Both authors contributed equally to this article. The paper was presented at the 2020 virtual American Political Science Association Annual Meeting and Exhibition (September 10-13, 2020). We very much thank the panel participants as well as Sebastian Hellmeier, Stefan Kruse, Chris Welzel, and Kurt Weyland for their valuable suggestions on prior versions of the article. We are also grateful for the two reviewers’ constructive comments and swift turnaround time. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

PY - 2023/3/1

Y1 - 2023/3/1

N2 - In the face of current democratic backsliding and autocratization processes, research has rediscovered issues of autocratic legitimation. However, the question of whether rulers’ personalist rhetoric to bolster their legitimacy is followed by congruent political action remains underspecified. Using new expert-coded measures for 164 countries from the Varieties of Democracy project, we examine the political rhetoric–action link using using fixed effects models. The results confirm that shifts towards personalist legitimacy claims are no cheap talk but oftentimes important warning signals for a substantial deterioration of democratic quality, manifested in weaker judicial and legislative oversight of the executive branch. However, in contrast to much current concern, we show that liberal democracies seem to largely escape the negative repercussions of government discourses that increasingly stress the uniqueness of the ruler.

AB - In the face of current democratic backsliding and autocratization processes, research has rediscovered issues of autocratic legitimation. However, the question of whether rulers’ personalist rhetoric to bolster their legitimacy is followed by congruent political action remains underspecified. Using new expert-coded measures for 164 countries from the Varieties of Democracy project, we examine the political rhetoric–action link using using fixed effects models. The results confirm that shifts towards personalist legitimacy claims are no cheap talk but oftentimes important warning signals for a substantial deterioration of democratic quality, manifested in weaker judicial and legislative oversight of the executive branch. However, in contrast to much current concern, we show that liberal democracies seem to largely escape the negative repercussions of government discourses that increasingly stress the uniqueness of the ruler.

KW - autocratization

KW - charisma

KW - judicial constraints

KW - legislative constraints

KW - Legitimacy

KW - legitimation strategies

KW - person of the leader

KW - political rhetoric–action link

KW - Politics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85142672551&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/3ed51285-e221-37c9-a227-32d149c1a806/

U2 - 10.1080/13510347.2022.2150760

DO - 10.1080/13510347.2022.2150760

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85142672551

VL - 30

SP - 419

EP - 439

JO - Democratization

JF - Democratization

SN - 1351-0347

IS - 3

ER -