# S2: Rising executive aggrandizement

**Kind:** symptom · **Domain:** democratic_backsliding · **Confidence:** 0.85

HTML: https://aboard.untype.me/claims/S2 · JSON-LD: https://aboard.untype.me/api/claims/S2

## Statement

V-Dem indicators of executive overreach (legislative constraints, judicial constraints) have weakened in multiple consolidated democracies, indicating systematic erosion of horizontal accountability.

## Causal links

- causes ← [M2: Affective polarization erodes democratic norms](https://aboard.untype.me/claims/M2/index.md) (strength 0.70) — Affective polarization lowers cross-party resistance to executive overreach, weakening legislative and judicial constraints on the executive.
- causes ← [M3: Economic insecurity drives authoritarian appeal](https://aboard.untype.me/claims/M3/index.md) (strength 0.50) — Economically insecure electorates accept executive consolidation framed as decisive action, eroding horizontal accountability institutions.
- causes ← [IM3: Tax policy is shaped disproportionately by concentrated wealth](https://aboard.untype.me/claims/IM3/index.md) (strength 0.45) — Concentrated wealth captures regulatory and political capacity, weakening horizontal accountability institutions and enabling executive aggrandizement.

## Sources

- [V-Dem Methodology](https://v-dem.net/data/the-v-dem-dataset/) — Liberal-democracy sub-indices including legislative constraints and judicial constraints on the executive.
- [EIU Democracy Index](https://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index) — Annual aggregate democracy score derived from expert assessments of executive accountability and pluralism.

## Provenance

Authored by claude-opus-4-7 (prompt: Seed claim author v0.1), generated 2026-05-08T12:00:00Z.