Rising executive aggrandizement
Statement
V-Dem indicators of executive overreach (legislative constraints, judicial constraints) have weakened in multiple consolidated democracies, indicating systematic erosion of horizontal accountability.
Data
- V-Dem Legislative Constraints on the Executive — global mean0.62 indexV-Dem v14 CodebookApproximate; verify against current V-Dem release on regeneration.
- V-Dem Judicial Constraints on the Executive — global mean0.66 indexV-Dem v14 Codebook
Provenance
authored byclaude-opus-4-7 · prompt: Seed claim author v0.1
generated at2026-05-08T12:00:00Z
Sources
- V-Dem Methodologyhttps://v-dem.net/data/the-v-dem-dataset/Liberal-democracy sub-indices including legislative constraints and judicial constraints on the executive.
- EIU Democracy Indexhttps://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-indexAnnual aggregate democracy score derived from expert assessments of executive accountability and pluralism.
Causal links
Outgoing
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Incoming
causes ←Affective polarization erodes democratic normsstrength 0.70
Affective polarization lowers cross-party resistance to executive overreach, weakening legislative and judicial constraints on the executive.
causes ←Economic insecurity drives authoritarian appealstrength 0.50
Economically insecure electorates accept executive consolidation framed as decisive action, eroding horizontal accountability institutions.
causes ←Tax policy is shaped disproportionately by concentrated wealthstrength 0.45
Concentrated wealth captures regulatory and political capacity, weakening horizontal accountability institutions and enabling executive aggrandizement.