Abstract
Rafael Correa radically transformed the Ecuadorian state. He boosted public sector employment and government bureaus, increased the government budget, and reinserted the state back into political and economic life in pursuit of his Citizen’s Revolution. I argue that the state’s profound makeover is a consequence of three different factors: a constitutionally powerful presidency, a president who possessed uniquely strong informal powers, and an individual with the willingness to liberally interpret constitutional limits to the power of the presidency. Through an analysis of these three dimensions, I show that what made Correa unique among Ecuadorian chief executives was not his formal power or even his ambition to exercise authority but his informal powers in the forms of partisan support and public approval. The findings suggest that future Ecuadorian presidents should be equally unconstrained in their ability to state-building projects if they enjoy sufficient informal powers and the disposition to maximize them.
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Notes
- 1.
For an in-depth examination of this evolution, see Basabe et al. (2018).
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Brendan Doherty for his help in beginning this manuscript, and Manuel Alcántara, Simón Pachano, and Francisco Sánchez for their feedback. The views expressed in this chapter are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of or endorsement by the United States Naval Academy, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.
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Polga-Hecimovich, J. (2020). Reshaping the State: The Unitary Executive Presidency of Rafael Correa. In: Sánchez, F., Pachano, S. (eds) Assessing the Left Turn in Ecuador. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27625-6_2
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