The road to dictatorship is cleared by the expansion of executive power. Whether in Hungary, Turkey, El Salvador, or Venezuela, elected presidents and prime ministers have used their constitutional authority and legislative majorities to undermine, and ultimately capture, other institutions.
These countries are just illustrative of a broader trend: anti-democratic executives have progressively packed the judiciary, purged the civil service, undermined electoral management bodies, silenced independent media, prosecuted dissidents, restricted non-governmental organizations, regulated the business sector in favor of cronies, and politicized the security forces. Small actions against those institutions, under the cover of executive immunity, eventually accumulate into the breakdown of democracy.
- How can we distinguish legitimate conflicts among institutions, part of normal democratic politics, from dangerous executive aggrandizement?
- What do we know to be the best strategies to contain or delay the anti-democratic expansion of executive power?
- Can democracy advocates act effectively against illiberal executives without embracing radical positions themselves? What instruments do they mobilize?
- Can executive overreach be reversed? What does success look like?
The 2025 Global Democracy Conference (GDC) on Global Democracy and Executive Power will convene scholars and practitioners to address these urgent questions, combining the inspiration of academic research and practical experience. The GDC will adopt a comparative perspective to inspire new research questions with practical implications, and to support activist engagement in academic and policy debates.
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