The personalization of political power revisited

The renewed prominence of strong leaders has revived classic debates on personalist rule, yet much remains unclear about how personalization unfolds beyond conventional regime boundaries. This introduction of the Special Issue argues that the key phenomenon is not only the presence of “personalist” autocracies, but the broader, incremental concentration of political authority in individual executives across regime types. Using cross-national patterns in personalist rule and executive constraints as a point of departure, it shows why static regime labels obscure important transformations in how power is exercized and contested. The Special Issue advances three claims: (1) personalization should be analyzed as a dynamic process distinct from, and not necessarily leading to, the end-state of personalist rule; (2) it proceeds through distinct mechanisms that erode institutional checks and balances and collective decision-making; and (3) its consequences are central to understanding not only the processes and outcomes of regime trajectories, but also for policymaking and political accountability. This introduction situates the Special Issue in existing debates, summarizes its core contributions, and sets out an agenda for future research on the personalization of political power.