When One Gets Stronger, Does the Other One Get Weaker?

• In Event: Legislatures and Legislators in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

When One Gets Stronger, Does the Other One Get Weaker? Using an IRT Approach to Measure the Relationship between the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. Broadly speaking, when focusing on the internal dynamics of dictatorships, we think of power as a fixed pie that is distributed across the different parts of the regime (i.e., executive, legislature, judiciary, party, military, etc.). For a would-be personalist ruler, the only way to concentrate power is by taking it from the other parts of the regime. The question is, who exactly suffers when rulers concentrate power? Is everyone equally suffering or do rulers target specific institutions of the regime first? Conversely, when regimes depersonalize, which parts of the regime are re-empowered? We try to examine these questions using an IRT measurement approach to capture the strength of the ruler, legislature and judiciary over time.

Authors

• Matthew Charles Wilson, University of South Carolina

• Josef Woldense, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities