Five months into his second term, it is clear that Donald Trump is trying to remake American executive power in fundamental ways. He has taken a series of actions that openly violate the law, and complied with court orders only begrudgingly, often with significant foot-dragging. Meanwhile, he is undermining the authority of the courts rhetorically. The result is not a clear “constitutional crisis,” but instead an erosion of the system of checks and balances that underpins our constitutional order. It offers a vision of executive power that is outsized and personal, and will leave a poisonous legacy.

Comparative politics scholars call such systems “hyper-presidential.” This term is used to describe systems in Latin America and the post-Soviet space in which presidential power is so great as to be effectively immune from checks and balances. The core idea goes back to the work of Yale political scientist Juan Linz in the 1990s. Linz was a fierce critic of presidential systems, arguing that they encourage winner-take-all elections and populism, which can “bring on a refusal to acknowledge the limits of the mandate.” In Linz’s view, this risk is exacerbated by the possibility of gridlock introduced by the separation of powers. If Congress inhibits a president’s agenda, the system may be unable to deliver on promises made during the campaign, leading the president to seek workarounds or bypasses to constitutional constraints. Examples include a resort to emergency rule or using the power of executive decree as a substitute for legislation. Sometimes presidents will also pack the courts to obtain supportive rulings, or disable independent checks on their power.

There have been many signs that the second Trump administration is building a hyper-presidential system.

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