As February’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) fades from the news, one image still sticks in the mind: Throughout the convention, a larger-than-life golden statue of former U.S. President Donald Trump graced the merchandise hall.
Some have called the installation a perfect metaphor for the state of the Republican Party. Since leaving office, Trump has nonetheless continued personal attacks on prominent members of the party, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, while pressuring others within the party to censure, condemn, and purge party leaders who he sees as disloyal—all on-brand for a president who, over his four years in office, sought to steadily increase his own power and influence relative to others in the Republican Party.
The personalization of political parties isn’t unique to the United States. All around the world, democratic politics is increasingly becoming a personal affair; leaders are amassing more power relative to their political parties so politics more strongly reflects the leader’s preferences rather than being a bargaining process among multiple actors and institutions. If the trend continues, liberal democracy will suffer.
Political science has long seen personalism as a problem in authoritarian settings. And since the end of the Cold War, there has indeed been a decisive shift toward personalism in autocracies. Leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega have steadily concentrated power from parties and institutions to themselves. Even in China, President Xi Jinping has bucked decades of consensus-style decision-making, wrangling power away from the Chinese Communist Party and into his own hands.
A quick tour around the world, however, suggests that the trend toward personalism is afflicting democracies too. Beyond Trump, democratically elected leaders such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte are dominating headlines and increasing their prominence relative to the traditional political establishment. Personalism isn’t limited to these well-known populists though. The Czech Republic’s Andrej Babis, Senegal’s Macky Sall, Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko, and Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina all rank high on personalism but low on populism.
This isn’t just a matter of flashy examples shading perception: Our research underscores the trend as well. Using a set of indicators that measures the relative power between the leader and the political party, we find that personalism in democracies has been on the rise since the early 2000s, accelerating more rapidly since 2015.
In some ways, the move toward greater personalism in democracies has been happening slowly over the course of the last several decades. Researchers have anecdotally linked the rise of personalization to the growth of electronic media, and especially to television in the 1950s and 1960s. Television, including the rise of major televised political debates during national election campaigns, for example, significantly influenced how voters viewed their leaders. The rise of the internet and other digital tools is adding fuel to the dynamic as they allow leaders to reach an even larger audience.
Beyond broadcast’s sheer power, digital technologies also create new opportunities for leaders to selectively censor and manipulate their media environments, more effectively controlling the narratives that surround their leadership. Indeed, data shows that democratic leaders who more effectively use the internet to monitor and censor social media and create social media alternatives tend to be more personalist. This suggests that personalist leaders are using digital tools to lessen resistance to their power grabs and create an environment more conducive to their amassing of power.
Personalization is a major threat to today’s democracies, namely because personalist leaders breed polarization in the societies they govern. That’s because in these systems, policy choices more strongly reflect the leader’s preferences rather than a bargaining process among multiple actors and institutions. Those groups not aligned with the leader and sidelined in the decision-making process are likely to grow disillusioned, deepening the divide between political camps.
The case of Venezuela—long one of Latin America’s most stable democracies—illustrates this dynamic. Former President Hugo Chávez’s efforts to personalize politics splintered Venezuelan society, generating deep divisions over what the rules of the game should be and who should have access to power. This divide widened as he further concentrated power. As the distance between Chavistas and the opposition grew larger, so did the violations of democracy his supporters were willing to accept to ensure his continued dominance. Chavez’s personalization of power paved the way for political polarization, ultimately setting in motion a period of authoritarianism with him at the helm—a system that his successor Nicolás Maduro has sustained.
Ultimately then, personalism and democracy can’t coexist. It enables incumbent power grabs and the incremental dismantling of democracy that has become the most common way democracies break down. In Europe, Erdogan and Orban exemplify the trend. Both leaders successfully increased their own influence and control over their political parties and senior party elite, subsequently facilitating their ability to dismantle other institutional checks on their power.
Meanwhile, personalization gives leaders greater bargaining power over the rest of the party elite, making it more difficult for even aligned elites to push back against the leader’s efforts to consolidate control. In Hungary, Orban’s creation of the Fidesz party and his move from the center-left to the right fractured party leadership and enabled Orban to oust party leaders in opposition to his rule. This paved the way for the rise of officials loyal to Orban, many of whom were not previously part of the Hungarian political establishment and lacked deep government experience. When party elites view their future prospects as being tied to those of the leader, it raises their incentive to support that leader even as he takes away more of their power.
All this should be a cautionary tale for the Republican Party and its current enablers. Should Trump return to politics and head a GOP increasingly dominated by him and his loyalists, the trend toward personalization in the United States would accelerate, with Trump furthering his efforts to pick insurgent primary challengers, increase his control over party funds, and replace traditional conservatives in local branches of the party. With the party fully in his control, it would be hard for U.S. democracy to bounce back.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
