ABSTRACT
In the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, representative institutions were revived in previously authoritarian political systems. However, the newly empowered legislatures often continued to be vulnerable to executives bent on aggrandizing their power. Several factors contributed to legislative vulnerability: the requirements of governing the modern nation-state, the continued globalization of public policy issues, the more intimate relationship between executive leaders and citizens facilitated by a fully democratized electorate and media environment, and, more recently, the rise of populism. The latter may be viewed as not simply a threat to legislative power but in some cases, a threat to the project of representative democracy itself.
